Adobe this week announced “Project Indigo,” a new camera app that was built by the brains behind the Pixel camera, but it’s not on Android just yet.

To build the computational photography-focused camera found in its Pixel phones, Google enlisted the help of Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz. Both engineers worked with Google from 2014 through 2020, when they left following the Pixel 4. Kainz, in particular, was responsible for the impressive night-time photography on Pixel devices.

After leaving Google, both Levoy and Kainz ended up at Adobe as detailed on their respective LinkedIn profiles, and now we’re seeing the fruits of their efforts at the company.

In a post, Marc Levoy says that his team at Adobe – called “Nextcam” – have launched “Project Indigo” (no, not that one) after five years of development. Levoy describes the project as a “computational photography camera app” that “offers a natural SLR-like look, full manual controls, the highest possible image quality, and new photographic experiences, including on-device removal of window reflections.”

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A further blog post from Adobe dives into what sets “Project Indigo” apart.

This starts, of course, with the computational photography that first made the Pixel camera so great. “Indigo” will capture and combine more frames than most cameras, while also “more strongly” under-exposing those photos. The result is an end picture that has “fewer blown-out highlights and less noise in the shadows” at the expense of taking a little bit longer to actually take the image. The app captures up to 32 frames, where Pixel Camera would only capture 15 frames as Android Authority points out. “Indigo” can also output both JPEG and raw images that still benefit from computational photography enhancements.

The app also benefits from “local tone mapping” for improved HDR and, being an Adobe product, is “naturally compatible with Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.” Users will also choose between “Photo” and “Night” modes, with the former benefitting from zero shutter lag, while the latter focuses on longer exposure times. “Night” mode is best used on a tripod and can detect when handshake is reduced to really expand its capture times for the best results.

“Project Indigo” avoids AI in capturing more detail while zoomed in, using “multi-frame super-resolution” to increase detail. This means that the “extra detail in our super-resolution photos is real, not hallucinated.”

Finally, “Indigo” has pro controls over the focus, shutter speed, ISO, exposure, and white balance, as well as the number of frames captured in a burst. Computational photography is still employed with pro controls, but the user has additional control over it.

The results, seen below, can clearly be absolutely stunning.

There’s also a “Removing Reflections” button that can remove glass and window relfections after an image is taken.

While “Project Indigo” is just an “experimental camera app” for the time being, Adobe has made it freely available through the App Store for iPhone 14 and above (or iPhone 12 Pro and above). An Android version is “for sure” coming later, but there’s no timeline there, nor any word on what devices will be able to use it. With Levoy and Kainz at the helm, it seems obvious that Pixel devices will be on that list, but it’s impossible to say for certain just yet.

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