Adobe Project Indigo is a new photo app from former Pixel camera engineers

Adobe has launched a new iPhone camera app called Project Indigo, developed by the team behind the Pixel camera, including Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz. The app combines computational photography techniques with pro controls and new AI-powered features to address common smartphone camera complaints. Project Indigo aims to provide a more natural look, similar to what an SLR might produce, rather than using aggressive tone mapping and sharpening. The app uses mild tone mapping, boosting of color saturation, and sharpening to achieve this natural look. It also features fully manual controls and the highest image quality that computational photography can provide, with options for JPEG or RAW files. Project Indigo achieves high-quality images by under-exposing shots and combining up to 32 frames. The app includes experimental photo features like "Remove Reflections," which uses AI to eliminate reflections from photos. Levoy and Kainz, who popularized computational photography at Google, joined Adobe to build a universal camera app, with the goal of providing better photos through software. Project Indigo is available for free on iPhone 12 Pro and up, or iPhone 14 and up, with an Android version coming in the future. The app is an interesting test of whether a third-party app can produce better photos than the default camera app and gain popularity among users.