Adobe releases Project Indigo camera app with multi-frame noise reduction and super-resolution, and AI color processing

Adobe has released an Apple iPhone camera app, Project Indigo. The app leverages multi-frame imaging and AI processing to generate RAW and JPG photos. The research project is available in the Apple App Store and is compatible with iPhones with iOS 18.5 or higher (such as this one on Amazon).

The core feature of Project Indigo is multi-frame imaging, which combines up to 32 images taken rapidly of the same scene into one 16-bit digital negative for further processing and output. The app leverages AI technologies, including applying adaptive color profiles to the digital negative to create standard dynamic range (SDR) and high dynamic range (HDR) output files as DNGs or JPGs. Project Indigo photos use AI color profiles, so they are not true RAW sensor images that are fully undoctored, but the DNG images and colors can be further tuned in image editing apps like Adobe Lightroom.

The image stacking can be used for noise reduction, something Sony Cybershot cameras have had since the 2010 DSC-TX7. Sensor noise is typically random and each pixel does not display the same level of noise continuously over time, so the combined values of each pixel across multiple frames can be used to cancel out much of the sensor noise.

Sensor shift cameras have had the ability to create images with higher resolution than their physical sensor resolutions by offsetting the pixels just slightly with each multi-frame photo, then processing the photos into one super-resolution image. This has been available in some DSLRs going back to at least the 2015 Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II. Project Indigo utilizes natural muscle tremors in the hand and arm to simulate sensor shifting while creating a multi-frame super-resolution image.

The app has other features such as slow-shutter mode, AI reflection removal, and zero camera shutter lag. Adobe will add features the researchers find useful in future versions.

Readers who don't have an iPhone but want multi-frame noise reduction can pick up a Sony RX100 VII with 24-200 mm lens here on Amazon for use during their vacations.