Experimental camera app should make iPhone photos much better

With an experimental camera app, Adobe wants to tackle some permanent criticisms on smartphone photography. Project Indigo, according to the name of the app, which was initially published for the iPhone, should significantly reduce the noise noise, make photos look more like a SLR camera and even help to remove reflections, such as photography by window panes. The app has now been published for the iPhone.

The Free app from Adobe Labs Use Computational Photography in a significantly greater extent in which the project developers than the smartphone manufacturers do. Like other third-party camera apps, Project Indigo also gives users manual controls on request.

Up to 32 individual images per photo

The heart of the alternative camera app is combining significantly more images than with the standard camera apps. While most smartphone cameras already combine several recordings, Adobe continues with up to 32 individual images in quick succession. These recordings are aligned by the software and merged into a final photo. In this way, the image noise is to be significantly reduced, which should be clearly visible, especially in the case of enlarged telephoto recordings and in poor lighting. With manual setting, photographers can set how many individual images should be combined. At the same time, the app subordinates more than other camera apps to avoid eaten lights.

Adobe also wants to overcome the typical smartphone look with overlent, low-contrast images, over-saturated colors and strong smoothing. Instead, you rely on a more natural image reproduction that comes closer to the style of a SLR camera. The app largely dispenses with aggressive local tone mapping, which brightens or darkens different areas of the image. The resulting images were more suitable for large screens and post -processing, it is said.

Android version planned

Project Indigo offers manual controls via ISO, exposure time, focus and white balance. Another focus is on the long exposure. Particularly interesting: Project Indigo can also use the advantages of computational photography in RAW files (DNG format). The files already contain the combined individual images, but still offer full flexibility for post -processing.

In the digital zoom, from double enlargement on the main lens, Project Indigo relies on multi-frame Super-Resolution. The iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has a 5x tele camera, should be able to deliver good shots even with a 10-fold increase.

With Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz, two developers are involved in the Adobe app who have already developed Google’s Pixel Camera app, which received a lot of attention in the experts due to their HDR+processing and the super-resolution zoom.

Project Indigo is available free of charge in the App Store for iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max and new as well as iPhone 14 and new. An Android version is planned, as is a portrait mode, panoramic recordings and video functions.