Project Indigo
Project Indigo is Adobe's innovative iPhone camera app designed for photographers seeking professional-grade image quality and advanced controls, all within a mobile platform. The app delivers an SLR-like natural aesthetic, full manual controls, and cutting-edge computational photography capabilities. It supports both JPEG and raw formats, allowing photographers to capture images with exceptional detail and dynamic range.
The hallmark of Project Indigo is its computational photography, which combines multiple frames—up to 32—to reduce noise and preserve textures, resulting in photos with fewer blown-out highlights and enhanced shadow details. Unlike many smartphone apps, Indigo minimizes spatial denoising, ensuring natural textures remain intact. For raw photography enthusiasts, Indigo uniquely applies computational techniques to raw images, offering both high dynamic range and low noise, a feature not commonly found in traditional big cameras.
Project Indigo also addresses the "smartphone look" by offering a more natural visual style, akin to what an SLR might produce. It avoids excessive tone mapping, saturation, and sharpening, preferring subtle adjustments to maintain realism. The app’s AI-based Adaptive Color profile ensures compatibility with Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom, making it an ideal companion for photographers who use Adobe's editing ecosystem.
The app introduces groundbreaking features such as multi-frame super-resolution, which restores image quality lost during digital scaling, and pro controls for manual adjustments of focus, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, and white balance. Additionally, Indigo offers specialized modes like "Photo" for zero shutter lag and "Night" for low-light conditions, capturing up to 32 frames for optimal results.
Indigo's integration with Lightroom allows seamless editing, enabling users to toggle between standard dynamic range (SDR) and high dynamic range (HDR) looks embedded in the files. The app also supports advanced features like Long Exposure for creative effects, and experimental tools such as reflection removal and exposure bracketing, paving the way for unique photographic experiences.
Designed for both casual and professional photographers, Project Indigo pushes the boundaries of mobile photography with its computational and AI-driven approach. Available for free through Adobe Labs, it requires no sign-in and supports a wide range of iPhones. Future updates promise Android compatibility, additional creative modes, and expanded computational capabilities.
