Adobe's 'Project Indigo' app will help you take better photos on your iPhone

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A new initiative from Adobe aims to improve smartphone cameras and computational photography in general to give a more natural, SLR-like look to iPhone photography.

Two people sitting at a round table with breakfast, in front of a large window showing a scenic mountain view. The room is softly lit.
Project Indigo can help dramatically reduce smartphone-camera deficiences. Image credit: Adobe



A new paper from Adobe Fellow Marc Levoy and Senior Scientist Florian Kainz discusses their latest project, which is embodied in a new Project Indigo app available for iPhones. In addition to what the inventors hope is a more "natural" look, the project aims for the highest image quality possible on a mobile device.

In the new research paper explaining the project, the pair detail their approach to achieving more authentic photo images. The app under-exposes more strongly than most camera apps, but also captures, aligns, and combines "more frames when producing each photo -- up to 32 frames" in a single exposure.

"This means that our photos have fewer blown-out highlights and less noise in the shadows," Levoy and Kainz write -- but also note that taking a photo with the 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."

This approach results in less "smoothing" than in most smartphone camera apps, which better preserves natural textures. It also avoids what might be called "global tone mapping," where typically the brightest point in a smartphone photo is used to set the exposure for the entire photo.

This often results in very bright objects appearing correctly balanced, while anything darker than the brightest point is underexposed. This makes it more difficult to edit the image later to correct the underexposed portions, especially if the RAW image format wasn't used.

Creating super-resolution images



A further issue is the problem of zooming. Smartphones lack true optical zoom lenses, so when users "zoom in" on a subject, the camera now reads only the central portion of the sensor -- further reducing image quality.

The Indigo camera app overcomes this issue by using a technique called "multi-frame super-resolution," quickly capturing multiple images of the scene at different resolutions and zoom levels in order to reduce noise.

Two versions of a cityscape featuring tall buildings, with the right version appearing clearer and more detailed than the left.
An example of super-resolution correction of a distant subject. Image credit: Adobe



"We then combine these images to produce a single photo with more detail than is present in a single image," the authors say. "And because we've captured different viewpoints, the extra detail in our super-resolution photos is real, not [computationally] hallucinated."

The Indigo app also offers smartphone photographers a wealth of controls, designed specifically for smartphone photography. "We offer the obvious controls over focus, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, and white balance -- the latter with separate control over temperature and tint, like Lightroom," the authors point out.

"But since each photo is the result of combining a burst of frames, Indigo also offers control over the number of frames in the burst," the developers say. "This gives photographers a way to trade off total capture time against noise level."

One additional future feature of the app offers an exciting new possibility for smartphone users. The Indigo developers want to be able to render the final look of the photo in real time in the viewfinder -- a genuine "what you see is what you get" image.

For example, this would allow photographers to make a darker image by lowering the brightness of the preview rather than shortening exposure time. Conversely, you can make a brighter image by raising the shadows rather than increasing the exposure.

Two vintage San Francisco maps with detailed grid layout, highlighting streets, parks, and coastline, featuring bold orange and green areas and text boxes for key locations.
Indigo can also intelligently remove lighting reflections from lit subjects. Image credit: Adobe



Likewise, some advanced photographic techniques -- such as removing lighting reflections from a lit subject that is under glass or plastic, for example -- would be possible "in camera" using Indigo, the developers say.

The developers see Project Indigo as a set of technologies, currently used in a same-named app, as a platform of techniques "that may eventually be deployed in Adobe's flagship products, especially Lightroom." The app is available for free in the App Store.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,670member
    Didn't know the newer iPhones needed much help here, but any improvement is always welcomed. Curious to see how much more realistic this is or if it's actually AI doing the combining pf photo bursts. 

    Thought Apple was already doing image combinations. Maybe this is more advanced than that? more frames to compute = better quality? Hopefully. 

    Les smoothing is great though. So will definitely be an improvement there. 
    edited June 21
    zeus423
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  • Reply 2 of 8
    anthogaganthogag Posts: 132member
    I am a monthly plan Adobe customer. I installed this on my 16 Pro. 

    10x is smoother compared to native iPhone camera at 10x digital zoom. 

    The app can freeze on some features. For example, using the AI Denoise experimental feature, the app froze on one picture.  
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 8
    danoxdanox Posts: 3,887member
     Two things subscription and do you trust Adobe?
    neoncatvirtualshift
     1Like 1Dislike 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 8
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,779member
    danox said:
     Two things subscription and do you trust Adobe?
    There is a link to the free app in the article, near the top. That's not to say that it couldn't become part of a subscription service in the future, of course, but for now, there's no cost.

    In what way do I need to "trust" Adobe (or not trust them)? They're a reputable company with a long-established business. You can use the app without a cellular connection, which would suggest that the images are not going anywhere other than on your own device. What's to trust or not trust?

    Have you not heard of Adobe prior to this article or something?
    virtualshiftwilliamlondon
     0Likes 2Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 8
    Didn't know the newer iPhones needed much help here, but any improvement is always welcomed. Curious to see how much more realistic this is or if it's actually AI doing the combining pf photo bursts. 

    Thought Apple was already doing image combinations. Maybe this is more advanced than that? more frames to compute = better quality? Hopefully. 

    Les smoothing is great though. So will definitely be an improvement there. 
    This camera, the built in camera and just about every smartphone camera are all doing computational photograph. They all use multiple photos stitched together to make an image and then apply adjustments to create the final look. So, the big difference here is the difference in those adjustments. Most smartphone camera apps go for sharpened images that are really saturated and have low contrast. What Adobe is going for is more like what you would get from a film camera. It goes for higher contrast, more natural colors and doesn't apply a ton of sharpening to the final image. It does underexpose to avoid blowing out highlights. In film photography it is easier to recover detail from over exposed highlights and harder to pull detail from the shadows. The inverse is true for digital. It is harder to recover blowout highlights and easier to pull detail from shadows. Ultimately, it comes down to the question of "Which camera produces images you like?" If you like saturated imagines with sharper lines then this isn't the best camera. If you like more natural colors and softer lines then is would probably better fit your tastes. Worth nothing that most smartphone cameras go for really sharp images that are highly saturated because that is what most people like. Of course that is if you are shooting jpg. If you are shooting RAW there are fewer differences. In the current DNG standard the raw file is created from the multiple shots and then adjustments are applied but not to the imagine layer. That means you can undo the sharpening and saturation. The underexposing would still be relevant but not a big deal, lowering the exposure value on the iPhone is a pretty trivial step. 

    There are a few other things this camera offers, you can set ISO and shutter speed. It is unique to this camera but those things aren't in the built-in camera. It also claims to have a better digital zoom. 

    TL;DR - The big thing this camera offers is a different look, awesome if you like this particular look. The hype around it comes from the fact that it is made by Adobe, other than caring that name it doesn't really offer any features that don't exist in other camera. 





    muthuk_vanalingam
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  • Reply 6 of 8
    charlesncharlesn Posts: 1,546member
    Not an Adobe fan, but cannot wait to try this. At least to my eye, there was a certain point in iPhone photography where all of the whiz-bang computational blah-blah to give us "perfect" photos stopped looking like what my eye was seeing. There was just something off, and all that processing yielded what became known as the "iPhone-y" look. (For all I know, the same has happened with Android phones, but I've never used Android.) I'm very curious to start shooting scenes with/without this Adobe app and see how they compare. That this app even exists tells you that the issue with the iPhone-y look is a real thing for a sizable number of people. 
    edited June 22
    muthuk_vanalingam
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 7 of 8
    charlesn said:
    Not an Adobe fan, but cannot wait to try this. At least to my eye, there was a certain point in iPhone photography where all of the whiz-bang computational blah-blah to give us "perfect" photos stopped looking like what my eye was seeing. There was just something off, and all that processing yielded what became known as the "iPhone-y" look. (For all I know, the same has happened with Android phones, but I've never used Android.) I'm very curious to start shooting scenes with/without this Adobe app and see how they compare. That this app even exists tells you that the issue with the iPhone-y look is a real thing for a sizable number of people. 
    There are several other good cameras as well. Moment (aLeo gives great video options)  and Halide are two that I have used and liked. Or, depending on your iPhone you can shoot in ProRAW and then have far more control over the look of your photos. 
    williamlondon
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  • Reply 8 of 8
    Someone (I guess that's me!) should note that PI won't run on every iPhone, regardless of its iOS version. Only the 12/13 Pro and Pro Max, 14, 15, and 16 series are supported. If you install it on an unsupported phone (like my SE 2020), you'll see an error message. Why iOS allows it to be installed mystifies me - although I suspect Adobe could/should have limited its availability via the App Store, too. 
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