The iPhone 16 Pro has already impressed us with its amazing image quality, comfortably holding its own against other top-end Android phones including the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 9 Pro. And while the default camera app makes it easy to take quick snaps, it lacks features that enthusiastic photographers need. But where Apple left a gap, Adobe has rushed to fill in.

Enlarge Image The instant shutter allowed me to capture this bird at just the right moment. Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Adobe’s new camera app — called Indigo — offers granular control over camera settings like white balance and shutter speed while also packing AI-based features like resolution upscaling for 10x zoom, denoising and reflection removal tools.

The app is available now for iPhone, so like the excitable photographer I am, I took it for a quick spin around Edinburgh.

I love this first shot of a bird flying through Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. I’ve taken advantage of two features here. Firstly, the manual white balance has allowed me to slightly warm the scene up, as I often find that the iPhone’s default camera app tends to lean on the cool side. I love the tones captured here. Secondly, the app features a zero-lag shutter, which allowed me to quickly capture the moment the bird was perfectly in line with the church spire.

It’s a difficult shot to nail, but having no delay between pressing the shutter button and the image taking makes all the difference. Adobe says it achieves this by “constantly capturing raw images while the viewfinder is running,” meaning that the image has technically already been captured when you press the button. For those of you wanting to snag high-drama shots of football games or your dog jumping for a frisbee, a zero-lag shutter is a boon.

Image taken at 10x optical zoom with denoise applied within the Adobe Indigo app. Andrew Lanxon/CNET

While the iPhone’s base optical zoom maxes out at 5x, Adobe’s Indigo app lets you digitally zoom in further with better quality. Using AI and combining multiple frames to upscale those images, they retain more detail than simply zooming in to 10x in the regular camera app. I used it here and I’m impressed at the overall clarity of the scene.

The difference in sharpness between the original image (right) and the AI Denoise version (left) isn’t immediately obvious, but it does help give the scene a bit more crispness overall. Andrew Lanxon/CNET

I also ran the app’s AI Denoise tool on the image. While there wasn’t much image noise to begin with, the tool has the added benefit of sharpening up an image, which has really helped bring some extra fine detail to the blades of grass and tree bark. I’m impressed here, as the image doesn’t look overly digitally sharpened, which can often be the case with these kinds of tools. Instead, the image looks natural and surprisingly clear for a zoomed-in shot.

That said, it doesn’t always seem to do a good job.

I actually prefer the shot from the iPhone’s default camera app (left) here over the Indigo’s version (right). Andrew Lanxon/CNET

The image from the iPhone’s built-in camera app at 10x digital zoom (left) looks sharper here, with better contrast for a richer image. The same scene taken at 10x zoom using Indigo (right) looks quite low in contrast and flat by comparison.

I like the natural tones in this straight-out-of-camera image. Andrew Lanxon/CNET

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing overall. In fact, I found many of my test images had a natural look to them, with realistic shadow tones, highlights and colors. Phone software often makes images look too processed, especially on the various phones that try and lighten shadows too much (I’m looking at you, OnePlus 13), but the images Indigo produces have a great balance, even without any Lightroom editing after the capture.

Speaking of which, it’s no surprise that as an Adobe product, Indigo makes it easy to share the image directly to Adobe Lightroom for further editing. DNG raw files are generally easy to work with (you must have HDR editing enabled, and using profiles seems to immediately blow out any highlights), although the same file did not look as good when I opened it in Google’s free Snapseed editor. It’s likely there are simply early compatibility issues, and I expect this to improve in time.

Adobe Indigo for iPhone: Should you use it?

I’ve enjoyed using Indigo, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it over the coming weeks. It definitely offers deeper functionality over Apple’s default camera app, in particular the ability to adjust white balance and other settings. I also appreciate the natural look the images provide and the flexibility of editing in Lightroom. Then there are wider features like noise reduction, reflection reduction and a night mode which I’ve yet to try.

Using Indigo as your camera does mean sacrificing Apple features like Live Photos and Photographic Styles, which are great for adding a filmic look to your images.

It was easy to add my own color grade to this raw file in Adobe Lightroom. Andrew Lanxon/CNET

I also don’t love having to use a separate camera app, especially when I often flit between shooting still images and video which is easy to do when when using the default camera. In an ideal world I’d like to see Adobe work directly with Apple to implement these features into the core camera experience.

But still, if you’re a keen photographer and want to take more granular control over your images when you’re out shooting, then Indigo is definitely worth installing and playing around with. Despite Adobe talking to CNET about its app back in 2022, it’s still best considered as being in beta (the company calls it an “experimental camera app”) with features like creative looks, portrait modes and even advanced tools like exposure and focus bracketing potentially on the cards for future updates. Also, an Android version is on the table “for sure.”

Given that it’s currently free to use and requires no sign in with an Adobe subscription, it’s well worth trying out.