Adobe has a new computer photography camera app for iPhones.
The new app, called the Project Indigo, was released last week by Adobe Labs. It is available for free and iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 14 models and above. (Although Adobe iPhone 15 Pro recommends or new use.
According to the app description, “Instead of capturing a single image, Indigo got a burst of images and added them to a high quality image with low noise and high dynamic range.” The Indigo tries to find a natural, “SLR” images, and also offers a group of manual controls such as Focus, Shutter Speed, ISO and White Balance.
To really understand what the project is going under Indigo, I recommend reading a detailed blog post by Levy, which is now an Adobe Fellow who joined the company in 2020 to create a “Universal Camera app”, and a senior scientist Florine Cannes. This post covers things like smartphone cameras are good, how its computational photography works, how it produces a natural form for images, and some details about its image processing pipeline.
This is where I have to admit that I am not a camera expert in any way. But even I found this post very interesting and informative. The pictures in the post look great, and Adobe has a photo album that you can browse.
In the post, Levy and Cannes say the project Indigo will also be a test bed for technologies that can be included in other flagship products like a button to remove the reflection. And under the line, the team plans to create things like Team Android version, portrait format, and even video recording.
According to Levy and Cannes, “this is the beginning of a journey for Adobe – toward an integrated mobile camera and editing experience that benefits from computational photography and the latest development in AI.” “Our hope is that Indigo will appeal to casual mobile photographers who want to see their pictures like natural SLR, including when viewed on big screens, they want advanced photographers who want manual control and the highest image quality.
