Adobe's Project Indigo: Photog Revolution!

Adobe has launched Project Indigo, a free computational photography camera app for iPhones that offers advanced manual controls and aims to provide an SLR-like quality to mobile photos.

Author

Jonas Ngoenha
June 20, 2025 • Reading Time: 5 minutes

At left is a handheld snapshot of San Francisco, taken using an iPhone 16 Pro Max's native camera and the 5× lens, but pinch-zoomed to 10×. | Adobe

At right is a comparable snapshot taken using Indigo, which uses multi-frame super-resolution. The Indigo photo has less noise and more detail (without hallucination) than the native camera photo. | Adobe

The Story: Adobe has launched Project Indigo, a free computational photography camera app for iPhones that offers advanced manual controls and aims to provide an SLR-like quality to mobile photos. Designed for both casual and serious photographers, Indigo utilizes sophisticated techniques to enhance photo quality in various lighting situations while allowing for significant customization in the photography process.

The Details:

  • Project Indigo enables capturing multiple images and combining them to produce well-exposed, lower-noise photos, excelling in low-light scenarios. Users can benefit from the app's Night mode, which merges up to 32 frames for superior detail and dynamic range.

  • The app supports full manual controls for shutter speed, ISO, and white balance, enabling photographers to push their creativity in ways that traditional smartphone cameras can’t.

  • Adobe aims for a natural, realistic look in photos, setting Indigo apart from the overly processed "smartphone look" by minimizing aggressive tone mapping and AI adjustments.

  • All image outputs can be saved in both JPEG and RAW formats, making it suitable for advanced editing and ensuring compatibility with Adobe’s ecosystem, especially Lightroom.

“As a fun example of how our manual controls can be used, we built a continuous slow-drip water rig (left), and with an iPhone 16 Pro Max running Indigo and mounted on a tripod, set the number of frames to 1, the shutter speed to 1 second, pressed the shutter button, and during that second fired an external strobe. Some example results (lightly edited) are shown at center and right.” | Adobe

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At left is a single-image photo taken by an iPhone under 1/10 lux illumination. (It's so dark you couldn't find your keys if they dropped on the floor!) | Adobe

At right is a handheld photo taken by Indigo, which has captured and merged 32 images (sometimes called frames) to reduce imaging noise. | Adobe

Why It Matters: Project Indigo represents a significant leap toward bridging the gap between smartphone photography and professional-level capabilities. By focusing on computational techniques that enhance dynamic range and reduce noise, Adobe empowers mobile photographers to capture images that can compete with traditional DSLRs. This app's unique approach not only enhances the quality of photographs but redefines what is expected from mobile photography, encouraging creatives to explore and expand their artistic boundaries.

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