2025 has seen Adobe make a big push into mobile offering more of its services than ever on both iPhone and Android. The latest release for iPhone is called Project Indigo, and it’s a camera app. This is one of Adobe’s experimental Labs projects, and it uses computational photography breakthroughs to offer iPhone users a tool for capturing natural looking photos.
Project Indigo comes from the same team behind the original Google Pixel camera app, which was praised for its impressive results with computational photography tech. That’s what the team wants to do again for iPhone users with Adobe, but it wants to update everything for the modern day.
The team explained in a blog post that the app is designed to help people avoid what it calls the “smartphone look.” It explains that as photos that are, “overly bright, low contrast, high color saturation, strong smoothing, and strong sharpening.”
The post continues, “To the discerning photographer, or anybody who views these photos on a larger screen than a phone, they may look unrealistic.” To do this, Project Indigo captures a burst of photos at once to reduce noise and offer higher dynamic range.
A HDR image captured in Project Indigo by Adobe’s team (Credit: Adobe)
The app comes with a wide range of additional tools allowing you more control over focus, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance. It also saves your photos in Raw for easier editing. If you subscribe to Adobe Lightroom, you can even send images directly to the software for quick editing.
The downside is it will likely work slower than your standard iPhone Camera app. It may take more time and effort to get these shots, but for enthusiasts that can often be worth the effort. The blog post says, “Taking a photo with our app may require slightly more patience after pressing the shutter button than you’re used to, but after a few seconds you’ll be rewarded with a better picture.”
There’s also a dedicated night mode, which intentionally uses even longer exposure times to capture more detail. Other features include AI-based denoising tech, reflection removal, and a feature that aims to improve zoom shots.
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Project Indigo is downloadable for free from the Apple App Store now. It works on all Pro and Pro Max phones from the iPhone 12 onward, and it also works on the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, and iPhone 16e.
You don’t need to login to an Adobe account, which is unlike most products from the company. The blog post says an Adobe sign-in isn’t required “at present,” which suggests it may be subject to change in the future.
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About James Peckham
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