The minds behind Google’s famous Pixel camera have just launched a new app, but this time it’s for Adobe. Called Project Indigo, the new, free iPhone camera app aims to address one of the biggest complaints about smartphone photos: they often appear over-processed and artificial.
The creators, Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz say they’re tired of photos that look overly sharp and artificially bright. Their goal with Project Indigo isn’t to have zero processing but to create a more natural look—something closer to what you’d get from a real DSLR camera. It also provides photographers with full manual controls, something professionals have been requesting.
So how does it work? The app captures up to 32 photos in quick succession, all slightly underexposed, and then intelligently combines them into a single high-quality image. This technique provides excellent detail in both JPEG and RAW files. The app also features some of Adobe’s advanced AI capabilities, including a tool that automatically removes reflections from your photos.
Levoy and Kainz are the engineers who initiated the “computational photography” trend at Google, where software became more important than hardware in capturing great pictures. While that improved all phone cameras, it also led to some over-the-top results. Project Indigo is their attempt to address this issue, and it’s also a significant test: will people download a separate app, even if it takes better photos than the one that came with their phone?
Project Indigo is currently available for free to anyone with a recent high-end iPhone (iPhone 12 Pro and above). An Android version is also in the works.
