Adobe brings computational photography to Apple iPhones with Project Indigo

Adobe's Project Indigo camera app brings computational photography for SLR-like look to images, pro-grade camera control, and previews of upcoming AI-powered editing tools

Adobe has launched a new camera app called Project Indigo, bringing computational photography capabilities to iPhones. The company said the app enables users to capture images with a natural SLR-like aesthetic and offers a comprehensive suite of manual camera controls. Project Indigo also includes Lightroom integration for advanced editing and a Technology Preview section for testing Adobe’s upcoming AI-powered features.

 

Adobe Project Indigo: App requirements

Project Indigo is compatible with Pro models of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13, and all models in the iPhone 14 and newer series. For the best experience, Adobe recommends using an iPhone 15 Pro or later. The app requires devices to run iOS 18.5 or newer.

 

All supported iPhone models:

• iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max
• iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max
• iPhone 14 series
• iPhone 15 series
• iPhone 16 series

Adobe Project Indigo: Details

As a computational photography app, Project Indigo captures a burst of images and merges them into a single, high-quality photo with reduced noise and improved dynamic range. This processing occurs in the background, with minimal user input.

 

Adobe said that pictures produced by Project Indigo using computational photography pipeline and artificial intelligence offers an SLR-like natural look. While this aesthetic is retained in JPEG format images, it is embedded as a rendering suggestion in raw DNG files. 

  The camera app’s viewfinder also offers a view of camera parameters that will be used for capture. Such as a live histogram of the scene, zebra striping that shows the user where there are over-exposed areas in the image, and a level to aid in capturing straight pictures.

 

Built-in features of Adobe’s Project Indigo app includes:

• Photo Mode: Designed for well-lit environments. Offers near-instant shutter response.
• Night Mode: Captures photos post-shutter press using longer exposures for low-light shots.
• Pro Controls: Users can manually set focus, ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation, and white balance. Pro Controls in Night Mode allows frame count control during merging.
• Long Exposure mode: If the iPhone is mounted on a tripod, this allows the capture of synthetic long exposure effects like "water-into-silk".
• Super-resolution Zoom: Uses multi-frame super-resolution to recover detail loss from zooming. An “SR” badge indicates when this is active.
• Lightroom Integration: Enables direct transfer to the Lightroom mobile app. DNGs are also fully compatible with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

Adobe Project Indigo: Technology Preview

The Technology Preview section, accessed via the Film Strip when viewing captured images, offers early access to experimental Adobe AI tools. Two features are currently available:

• AI Denoise: A mobile version of Adobe’s desktop denoising tool found in Lightroom and Camera Raw. Requires DNG input and outputs a new DNG file. Not available on iPhone 12 Pro.
• Remove Reflections: Eliminates glass reflections in images taken through windows. Requires a DNG input and exports a medium-res JPEG.