Adobe announced this week “Project Indigo”, a new camera application that was built by the brains behind the Pixel camera, but it is not yet on Android.
To build the camera focused on calculation photography found in its pixel phones, Google called on Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz. The two engineers worked with Google from 2014 to 2020, when they left to follow the Pixel 4. Kainz, in particular, was responsible for the impressive night photograph on Pixel devices.
After leaving Google, both Levoy And Kainz found himself in Adobe as detailed on their respective LinkedIn profiles, and now we see the fruits of their efforts in the company.
In a jobMarc Levoy says that his Adobe team – called “Nextcam” – launched “Project Indigo” (no, not this one) after five years of development. Levoy describes the project as a “application of calculation photography camera” which “offers a natural aspect of SLR, complete manual controls, the highest possible image quality and new photographic experiences, including the deletion of reflections on the windows.”
Farther blog De Adobe plunges into what distinguishes “Project Indigo”.
It starts, of course, with the calculation photograph which first made the Pixel camera so large. “Indigo” will capture and combine more frames than most cameras, while “more” underexpired these photos. The result is a final image which has “less exploded reflections and less noise in the shade” to the detriment of taking a little more time to take the image. The application captures up to 32 images, where the Pixel camera would only capture 15 images Android authority underlines. “Indigo” can also produce JPEG and raw images that still benefit from improvements in computer photography.
The application also benefits from the “mapping of local tones” for the improvement of HDR and, being an adobe product, is “naturally compatible with Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom”. Users will also choose between “photo” and “night” modes, the former benefiting from a zero shutter shift, while the second focuses on longer exposure times. The “night” mode is better used on a tripod and can detect when the handshake is reduced to really widen its capture times for the best results.
“Project Indigo” avoids AI to capture more details while zooming before, using the “multi-trame super-resolution” to increase details. This means that the “additional detail of our super resolution photos is real, not hallucinated”.
Finally, “Indigo” has professional controls on attention, shutter speed, ISO, exposure and balance of whites, as well as the number of frames captured in a burst. Computer photography is always used with pro checks, but the user has additional control over it.
The results, seen below, can clearly be absolutely breathtaking.
There is also a button “Removing reflections” which can eliminate glass and window refections after taking an image.
While “Project Indigo” is only a “experimental camera application” for the moment, Adobe has returned it for free via the App Store for iPhone 14 and more (or iPhone 12 pro and higher). An Android version is “undoubtedly” to come later, but there is no calendar there, nor any word on which devices can use it. With Levoy and Kainz at the helm, it seems obvious that the Pixel devices will be on this list, but it is impossible to say with certainty.
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