Adobe had made a big push into mobile this year, offering more of its services than ever on both iPhone and Android. The latest release for iPhone is a camera app called Project Indigo. It’s one of Adobe’s experimental Labs projects, and it uses computational photography breakthroughs to offer iPhone users a tool for capturing natural-looking photos.
Project Indigo comes from the same team behind the original Google Pixel camera app, which was praised for its impressive results with computational photography tech. That’s what the team wants to do again for iPhone users with Adobe, with a modern update.
The app is designed to help people avoid what it calls the “smartphone look,” the team explained in a blog post, or photos that are “overly bright, low contrast, high color saturation, strong smoothing, and strong sharpening.”
“To the discerning photographer, or anybody who views these photos on a larger screen than a phone, they may look unrealistic,” the team adds. So, Project Indigo captures a burst of photos at once to reduce noise and offer higher dynamic range.
A HDR image captured in Project Indigo by Adobe’s team (Credit: Adobe)
The app comes with a wide range of additional tools allowing you more control over focus, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance. It also saves your photos in Raw for easier editing. If you subscribe to Adobe Lightroom, you can even send images directly to the software for quick editing.
The downside is it will likely work slower than your standard iPhone Camera app, though for enthusiasts, that can often be worth the effort. “Taking a photo with our app may require slightly more patience after pressing the shutter button than you’re used to, but after a few seconds you’ll be rewarded with a better picture,” the team says.
There’s also a dedicated night mode, which intentionally uses even longer exposure times to capture more detail. Other features include AI-based denoising tech, reflection removal, and a feature that aims to improve zoom shots.
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Project Indigo is downloadable for free from the Apple App Store now. It works on all Pro and Pro Max phones from the iPhone 12 onward, and it also works on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, and iPhone 16e.
You don’t need to log in to an Adobe account “at present,” which suggests it may be subject to change in the future.
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