Latest news with #MarcLevoy
Phone Arena
9 hours ago
- Phone Arena
Your iPhone camera can now take better photos thanks to the minds behind Google Pixel
Adobe launched a new iPhone camera app to help you capture sharper, clearer photos. It is free, works on recent iPhones and doesn't even require an Adobe account to start shooting. Adobe just dropped a new computational photography app for iPhones called Project Indigo. And interestingly, one of the people behind it is Marc Levoy, the same guy who helped build the computational photography magic that made Google's early Pixel cameras stand out (and no, it's not available on Android yet, which is kind of ironic).Released last week via Adobe Labs, Project Indigo is free and you won't have to bother with logging into an Adobe account to use it, too. It works on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max and all iPhone 14 models and up. However, Adobe recommends using it on an iPhone 15 Pro or later for best results. The app captures up to 32 frames and combines them into a single photo – kinda like HDR or Night mode on your iPhone, but taken further with more control and more frames. Sure, you'll sometimes have to wait a few extra seconds after snapping, but the payoff is cleaner shadows, less noise and better dynamic range. See the difference: left is a single iPhone shot in very low light (1/10 lux), while right is Indigo's handheld photo, merged from 32 frames to cut down on noise. | Image credit – Adobe You can also adjust how many frames the app captures in each burst, giving photographers the freedom to choose the right balance between how long the shot takes and how much noise ends up in the photo. Plus, there's a Long Exposure mode for those who want to experiment with cool motion blur effects. Indigo offers a "Long Exposure" button. | Image credit – Adobe The app relies on AI to save photos in both regular dynamic range and the more detailed high dynamic range. Adobe mentions that Project Indigo plays well with Camera Raw and Lightroom for further editing. And, just like you'd want from a pro-level camera app, it gives you hands-on control over things like focus, ISO, shutter speed, white balance (with fine-tuning for warmth and tint), and exposure adjustments. Project Indigo also improves digital zoom by using a multi-frame super-resolution technique. When you zoom in beyond 2×, it snaps several slightly shifted shots – thanks to your natural hand movement – and merges them to create a clearer, sharper photo. On the left, a San Francisco snapshot from an iPhone 16 Pro Max (5x lens, 10x digital zoom). On the right, the same scene via Indigo's multi-frame super-resolution. Notice Indigo's clearer detail and less noise, especially in the building windows. | Image credit – Adobe Unlike some AI zoom tricks that just make up details, this method relies on actual tiny shifts to rebuild the image resolution, resulting in a more authentic and higher-quality app is serving as a testing ground for features that could show up in other top-tier Adobe products, like a tool to remove annoying reflections. Looking ahead, the team is working on adding an Android version, a portrait mode and even video capture capabilities. Your iPhone can take better pics. | Image credit – Adobe One of the coolest things smartphones brought us is having a decent camera right in our pockets – ready to snap good photos with just a tap. Plus, you can edit and share those shots all from the same device, which is super Project Indigo tackles some of the biggest gripes people have with phone photos today – like images that are too bright, lack contrast, have way too much color saturation or suffer from heavy smoothing and sharpening. Adobe is aiming to fix those issues right at the source. Full disclosure: I couldn't try the app myself because I have an iPhone 13 mini, which isn't supported due to 'physical memory constraints' (bummer). The app also doesn't work on iPhone 12 or 12 from what Adobe's shown, Project Indigo looks like a real step up – delivering sharper details, better lighting and photos that look great even blown up on big this is just the beginning, it's exciting to think about what Adobe might bring next – whether that's a new version of Indigo or something fresh that blends mobile photography and editing with next-level computational photography and AI. Oh, and speaking of AI – Adobe's Firefly app just launched on iOS and Android, letting anyone create images and videos just by typing what they want. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase This offer is not available in your area.
Hindustan Times
15 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
iPhone users can now capture DSLR like photos with Adobe's new camera app
Adobe has released Project Indigo, a free experimental camera app to bring computational photography to iPhones. This app is created by Adobe's Nextcam team, including Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz. Both of them are known for their work on Pixel Camera's computational photography features. The app is a work in progress and is available on the App Store to download. Project Indigo brings computational imaging techniques to smartphone photography by combining them with traditional camera controls. Unlike a stock smartphone camera app that captures a single photo, the Indigo app captures up to 32 underexposed frames per photo. The app then uses computational photography to align these frames to create images with significantly lower noise, higher dynamic range and natural photos. To maintain the natural aesthetics of a photo, this app uses subtle, globally tuned image processing rather than aggressive enhancements. The app supports both JPEG and RAW formats to give photographers the flexibility to extensively edit the photos while retaining the low noise and an improved dynamic range. The Project Indigo app is available on the Apple App Store and is compatible with iPhone Pro and Pro Max models starting from the iPhone 12 series. And for non-pro models, it supports iPhone 14 and onward. For the next experience, Adobe recommends using the iPhone 15 Pro or a new model due to the app's heavy processing requirements. It offers a very simple camera user interface, Photo and Night mode, with all the controls including shutter speed, ISO, white balance and focus, similar to a professional DSLR camera. The app is also seamlessly integrated with the Lightroom mobile app. This allows the users to export images directly to the Lightroom app to adjust the colours and tone. An early access setting lets the user use Project Indigo as a camera app inside the Lightroom app. Project Indigo is available only on iOS devices, and it's free to use without any signup needed. Adobe plans to expand the apps available to Android in the future. The roadmap also includes bringing more photography modes like portrait, panorama, video and advanced exposure. Adobe is also planning to introduce tone presets and looks to give more creative control to the users.
Hindustan Times
18 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
A philosophical war over the iPhone camera app
It is not at all intriguing that Adobe's latest release of Project Indigo, a free experimental camera app for the Apple iPhone (there's an Android version coming soon), brings mobile photography back into conversation. Even more so, how it perhaps retrains focus on different approaches to often similar results. One that intersects computational photography with a camera app, or the other that takes a 'zero processing' approach towards delivering photos a user captures on their iPhone. Adobe's new free camera app, called Project Indigo, has been put together by former Pixel camera engineers and combines computational photography with a layer of AI features. Likely, a significant moment in an increasingly competitive third-party camera app ecosystem. Project Indigo, on its part, emerges from an impressive pedigree, having been developed by Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz, who were instrumental in establishing the Pixel phones as the benchmark smartphone cameras for many years (and many consider that to be the case even now as well). It wasn't plain sailing, as competition caught up, but Pixel phones made a smart pivot towards computational photography capabilities, when the time was right. With Project Indigo, Levoy and Kainz, have access to the iPhone photography hardware. I've used it to a certain extent, and all I'll say for now is that it is simply not a reimagined version of the Pixel Camera app. This is something that is going much beyond what the default Camera app can do. But here's the thing — not all the time. As a user, there's choice, but for now perhaps not an undeniably definitive one. Project Indigo has a unique computational photography pipeline. 'First, we under-expose more strongly than most cameras. Second, we capture, align, and combine more frames when producing each photo — up to 32 frames as in the example above. This means that our photos have fewer blown-out highlights and less noise in the shadows. 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 says. This is where the big change lies — an aggressive multi-frame approach that's a more intensive computational strategy than many competitor apps, with insistence that priority is on image quality (requiring a dash of patience). This should work as well for casual users, as for the more enthusiastic demographic (I wouldn't call them professional, that side of the table has their own preferences), with the option of enabling the full array of manual controls, as well as both JPEG and raw formats. Strength in diversity? The third-party camera app landscape as it stands, reveals a fascinating philosophical divide between different approaches to smartphone photography. Halide Mark II, Camera+ 2 and VSCO, some prime names, and Final Cut Camera and Leica Lux some very likeable ones too. The idea for third-party camera apps has always been to offer a little more in terms of functionality and perhaps unlock certain functionality that the default camera app doesn't have. That's before we get to the main bit — image processing and the differing approaches. At one end of the spectrum lies the 'zero processing' movement. Halide's Process Zero, is an example. This basically means something that has no AI input and no computational photography pipeline in image processing. There are two distinct schools of thought on this — one that believes shunning AI is a better bet to produce beautiful, film-like natural photos, while the other believes AI does enough to accentuate detailing that may otherwise have been missed. It is a philosophical tension. VSCO, for instance, puts forward a proposition of blending the camera app with extensive editing capabilities as well as quick access to social media apps. Halide Mark II positions itself with professional-grade manual controls, and a tech called Neural Macro that allows iPhones without a dedicated macro lens to get photos with that effect. Camera+ 2 uses AI extensively, for scene detection and automatic optimisation while still providing full manual control when needed. I'd say Project Indigo is embracing a bit of the latter, but with certain diversions towards improvement, like they have explained. The fundamental disagreement about image processing is perhaps why we have differing approaches, and thereby preference based choice for users. A user perhaps has to ask themselves which side they lean on. Is the intent to capture reality as accurately as possible, or to create the most visually appealing image regardless of any computational gymnastics required? There will not be a one-size-fits-all answer. Project Indigo's entry into this ecosystem represents more than just another camera app — it signals Adobe's serious interest in mobile photography and computational imaging. Of course they pitch for closer integration with their creative apps, including the Lightroom app for smartphones. I do see Adobe with the biggest trump card up their sleeve — the mix of their own approach to research, in-house AI development which Firefly resoundingly testifies to, and the expertise of former Pixel engineers who know what they're doing. We seem to be at a point where philosophy will provide a foundation for more sophistication. Vishal Mathur is the Technology Editor at HT. Tech Tonic is a weekly column that looks at the impact of personal technology on the way we live, and vice-versa. The views expressed are personal. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives. 11% OFF ₹53,600 Check Details 6% OFF ₹135,900 Check Details 7% OFF ₹111,900 Check Details 8% OFF ₹82,900 Check Details 8% OFF ₹73,500 Check Details 14% OFF ₹59,900 Check Details ₹134,899 Check Details ₹7,999 Check Details ₹9,999 Check Details 5% OFF ₹54,999 Check Details ₹26,999 Check Details ₹15,999 Check Details
The Verge
a day ago
- The Verge
Adobe launches a new ‘computational photography' camera app for iPhones
Adobe has a new computational photography camera app for iPhones – and one of its creators, Marc Levoy, helped make the impressive computational photography features that made some of Google's earlier Pixel cameras shine. The new app, called Project Indigo, was released last week by Adobe Labs. It's free and available for the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 14 models and above. (Though Adobe recommends using an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.) It also doesn't require logging into an Adobe account to use. 'Instead of capturing a single photo, Indigo captures a burst of photos and combines them together to produce a high-quality photo with lower noise and higher dynamic range,' according to the app's description. Indigo tries to produce a natural, 'SLR-like' look for photos, and it also offers a bunch of manual controls like focus, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. To really understand what's going on under the hood of Project Indigo, though, I highly recommend reading a detailed blog post from Levoy, now an Adobe Fellow who joined the company in 2020 to build a 'universal camera app,' and Florian Kainz, a senior scientist. The post covers things like why smartphone cameras are good, how its computational photography works, how it creates the natural look for its photos, and some details about its image processing pipeline. It is here I must confess that I am not a camera expert by any means. But even I found the post pretty interesting and informative. The photos in the post do look great, and Adobe has an album of photos you can browse, too. In the post, Levoy and Kainz say that Project Indigo will also be a testbed for technologies that might get added to other flagship products, like a button to remove reflections. And down the line, the team plans to build things like an Android version, a portrait mode, and even video recording. 'This is the beginning of a journey for Adobe – towards an integrated mobile camera and editing experience that takes advantage of the latest advances in computational photography and AI,' according to Levoy and Kainz. 'Our hope is that Indigo will appeal to casual mobile photographers who want a natural SLR-like look for their photos, including when viewed on large screens; to advanced photographers who want manual control and the highest possible image quality; and to anyone – casual or serious – who enjoys playing with new photographic experiences.'
Android Authority
2 days ago
- Android Authority
Indigo is a new camera app by the guys who made the Pixel and Google Camera apps
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Adobe has launched the Indigo camera app on the Apple App Store. Two of the influential minds behind the Google and Pixel Camera apps are also working on Indigo. The team says they're planning an Android version of the app, but there's no word on a release window. 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 picks up where the Pixel Camera left off 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. Single frame output Multi-frame output 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. How else does Indigo stand out from other camera apps? 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. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
