Adobe’s new camera app uses generative AI for natural looks

Adobe’s experimental camera app is pivoting in a significant new direction. Originally launched last year as Project Indigo with a focus on delivering a “more natural (SLR-like) look” for iPhone photography, the Indigo camera app now introduces a full suite of generative AI editing tools , and notably, it isn’t relying on Adobe’s own Firefly AI models to power the changes.

Dubbed the “AI Playground” toolset, Adobe is framing this update as an experiment. A built-in opt-out button allows users to keep using the app in its original form. Over the next few weeks, a small percentage of Indigo users will get free, no-login-required access to the new features. “Our goal is to learn how people use GenAI-powered editing. Depending on its success we may extend the experiment, or expand the user pool, or run follow-on experiments,” says Adobe fellow Marc Levoy in the announcement blog. “If the feature proves popular, we will eventually offer a paid version.”

The AI Playground, arriving with version 1.1, is divided into four sections: Styles, Object Editing, Photo Guidance, and Custom Edit. According to Levoy, each section “contains multiple buttons or toggles, which trigger GenAI with prompts we have engineered for them.” If an edit doesn’t land, users can tap the button again and “typically get something slightly different.”

Styles applies preset AI-generated filter effects to photos shot in Indigo, transforming them into illustrations, altering lighting, and more. Object Editing removes people, objects, and other distractions from backgrounds, with generative AI filling the gaps , similar to Google’s Magic Eraser. Photo Guidance is a feedback tool that analyzes your images and suggests reshoots or edits.

The final feature, Custom Edit, offers broader prompting capabilities. If a Styles preset doesn’t quite hit the mark, users can describe exactly what they want changed. For this update, Adobe is using Google’s Nano Banana AI model “to start,” though it may switch or add other models later.

This is a stark departure from Indigo’s original identity. When my colleague Allison first reviewed it, she called it a “camera app built by camera nerds for camera nerds.” It leaned on computational photography to help mobile photographers capture SLR-like quality, with manual controls for focus, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. Yet the integration of generative AI may have been part of the plan all along. “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,” Levoy said at launch.

Notably, this experiment lacks the usual rigor Adobe applies to AI transparency. Levoy says the Indigo team is working on adding C2PA Content Credentials , a metadata standard already used by Firefly models , to images edited with Indigo’s generative tools. He also notes that Nano Banana already applies Google’s invisible SynthID watermark. “Whether the edits you apply are ‘fair’ or ‘misleading’ depend on what you do, who you share the images with, and how you present them,” Levoy says. “In the end, nothing can be implemented that reduces the importance of behaving responsibly.”