Project Indigo

[Rufus]

I have not seen it mentioned here, but you may be aware that Adobe has launched Project Indigo, a camera app for iPhones. It is currently in beta testing and is free (for now!) They plan to release an Android version in due course.

It attempts to provide functionality and processing that leads to a DNG and JPEG that is more akin to a DSLR than the native Apple Photos app.

I have an iPhone 16 Pro and was disappointed with the results using the Apple Photos app. Images were over saturated and onboard processing lacked user control.

For those of us who like to process our images from a RAW file the DNG format is a much more useful staring point.

A significant limitation is that Apple does not allow third parties access to the 48MP files, so Project Indigo is constrained to 12MP.

There is a night mode and slow speed options as well the normal exposure and focusing controls.

The feedback blog is informative, and Adobe respond quickly to feedback from users.

It appears to lean towards Lightroom rather than Bridge/Photoshop for processing and file names are somewhat random in Windows, but overall, I think the app could be a great improvement, and I am looking forward to seeing a few updates.

I shall still be using the DSLR as well for a while yet, but this could improve my mobile photos.

https://research.adobe.com/articles/indigo/indigo.html

[billtils]

Thanks for posting this David. It looks like it could be a winner!

[Manfred M]

Thanks for posting. I found that the explanation and analysis of computational photography quite interesting. It gives a good explanation as to why camera phone images look so bad when printed or viewed on a decent sized computer screen.

Good news for Android users. Samsung offers something similar called "Expert Raw" for its higher end Galaxy S series. Output is 12-bit DNG that can be processed in Adobe Camera Raw / Lightroom. I can switch lenses, shutter speed, ISO and colour temperature. The wide angle lens is 200MP, but frankly, the image quality is what I would expect, not great. The trade-offs that the lens designers have to work with to means my 102MP Fujifilm 100s ii gives a lot cleaner and crisper results.

I look forward to seeing what the Indigo for Android does, when it comes out.