Adobe Releases an iPhone Camera App with Full Manual Control
Longtime favorites like Lux’s Halide are at the top of the prosumer camera app industry, which has no shortage of fantastic options for photography enthusiasts. With a free experimental software developed by the same team that created the first Google Pixel camera, Adobe has now chosen to enter the market.
You already have an idea of what this team, which is now at Adobe, is interested in and capable of if you recall the early days of the Google Pixel and its strong emphasis on computational photography. With a few significant exceptions, its latest software, Project Indigo, carries that same attitude to the iPhone.
Reduce the “smartphone look”
Fundamentally, Adobe’s response to the most common grievances regarding smartphone images nowadays—”overly bright, low contrast, high color saturation, strong smoothing, and strong sharpening”—is Project Indigo.
With a focus on photography, computational photography
In order to minimize noise and maintain highlight quality, Project Indigo employs an intriguing method for multi-frame image capture: combining up to 32 underexposed frames into a single photo. If that seems like what the HDR or Night mode on your iPhone’s default camera does, then it is. However, Project Indigo goes beyond, using more frames and more control.
The compromise? Cleaner shadows, fewer noise, and more dynamic range are the rewards of occasionally waiting a few additional seconds after pushing the shutter.
Project Indigo uses the same multi-frame computational stack for producing RAW/DNG files in addition to JPEGs, which is another wonderful touch. The majority of smartphone camera apps don’t do that.
Completely manual controls
Project Indigo offers manual control over focus, ISO, shutter speed, white balance (including temperature and tint), and exposure compensation—all of which you would expect from a sophisticated camera app.
However, it also “offers control over the number of frames in the burst,” giving photographers complete command over the ratio of noise levels to capture time. Even better for artistic motion blur effects is the “Long Exposure” mode.
Digital zoom without the distortions caused by painting AI
Project Indigo uses multi-frame super-resolution to address digital zoom quality as well. Using your natural handshake, the app automatically takes several slightly offset frames and merges them to create a sharper final image if you pinch zoom past 2× (or 10× on the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s telephoto lens).
However, this method uses real-world micro-shifts to rebuild resolution, which promises a far better result than AI-processed super-res tools that occasionally manufacture detail.
Designed for Lightroom users
It should come as no surprise that Project Indigo has a close integration with Lightroom Mobile, as it is an Adobe project. Regardless of whether you’re working with JPEG or DNG files, you may send photographs directly into Lightroom for editing when they are captured.
Integrated experimental features
Project Indigo also serves as a testbed for features that might eventually be released more widely throughout Adobe’s ecosystem because this is Adobe Labs territory. An AI-powered “Remove Reflections” function that assists in cleaning up images taken via windows or glass is one interesting early example.
Beginning with the iPhone 12, Project Indigo is compatible with all iPhone Pro and Pro Max models, as well as all non-Pro devices beginning with the iPhone 14. The app is now accessible on the App Store, is free, and doesn’t require an Adobe account. Nevertheless, Adobe advises using a more recent iPhone model for optimal performance due to the CPU-intensive nature of the app’s picture processing.
