Indigo is a new camera app by the guys who made the Pixel and Google Camera apps

The Pixel Camera app (formerly Google Camera) is perhaps the most influential smartphone camera app ever made. That was in large part due to the HDR+ processing and Super Res Zoom for improved hybrid zoom. Now, two of the brains behind the Pixel Camera app have launched a spiritual successor of sorts.

Adobe recently launched the Indigo camera app on the iPhone’s App Store, and it seems to build on the foundation of the Pixel Camera app. It’s no coincidence as two of the creators, Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz, previously worked on the Google Camera and Pixel Camera apps.

The duo penned a blog post describing Indigo as a computational photography camera app that provides great image quality, a more natural look, and full manual controls.

Indigo follows Google’s original HDR+ approach by combining a series of deliberately under-exposed images for each shot you take. However, Adobe’s app differs by combining up to 32 images at once versus Google’s 15 images. The team says it also under-exposes these images “more strongly” than most other solutions.

“This means that our photos have fewer blown-out highlights and less noise in the shadows,” Levoy and Kainz explained. “Taking a photo with our 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.”

Adobe also posted two images (seen below) comparing a single frame captured by the iPhone to Indigo’s multi-frame picture. The latter image unsurprisingly shows greatly reduced noise compared to the single-frame shot.

Adobe explains that this approach also means less denoising (i.e., smoothing) is needed for images. In fact, the app leans towards minimal smoothing in order to preserve natural textures, even if this means there’s some noise in the picture. This multi-frame approach with reduced denoising also applies to RAW images.

Another Pixel Camera feature that’s made its way to Indigo is Super Res Zoom. Google introduced this feature with the Pixel 3 series, combining multiple frames, your natural hand shake, and super-resolution to deliver improved hybrid zoom. Google also combined Super Res Zoom and image cropping from 1x and 5x cameras to deliver higher quality 2x and 10x shots. And Indigo offers pretty much the same approach on iPhone Pro Max models, enabling improved 2x and 10x images. In fact, the 2x and 10x zoom buttons have little “SR” icons to denote super-resolution zoom.

Adobe said Indigo offers a more natural look by avoiding strong tone mapping, aggressive smoothing, and over-sharpening. We’ve also seen most brands use semantic segmentation (e.g., object/subject detection) to make major adjustments, but Adobe claims that Indigo only makes subtle tweaks.

The Indigo camera app also offers a night mode, which combines up to 32 one-second-long images into one picture when a tripod is detected. However, the night mode still supports handheld photography, as you might expect. This behavior is in line with several other OEM camera apps, which can automatically detect a tripod and offer longer exposures.

Other notable features include zero shutter lag, pro controls (ISO, shutter speed, exposure, white balance), and a long exposure mode that supports RAW output. In fact, Indigo also lets users set the number of captured frames to be combined into an image. The latter could be useful if you need to capture a fast-moving subject.

Indigo app availability: What about Android?

Adobe has released Indigo on the App Store, and it looks like you need an iPhone with at least 6GB of RAM:

The app runs on all Pro and Pro Max iPhones starting from series 12, and on all non-Pro iPhones starting from series 14.

The company also confirmed that an Android version of the app is in the pipeline, but it didn’t reveal any more details. Other features on the way include alternative looks, a high-quality portrait mode, a video mode (with “cool computational video” features), and a panorama option.

Adobe said it’s also considering several bracketing options (exposure, focus, etc), with the camera app combining these bracketed shots. The company says these options could be handy for astrophotography or a shot that’s completely in focus.

In any event, I’m glad to see two of the minds behind the modern Pixel Camera experience working on such a robust camera app. So our fingers are crossed that the app comes to Android sooner rather than later.