Everyone has taken a picture that looked perfect in the moment but turned out a little blurry or oddly lit. Usually you just shrug and move on. Adobe wants to give you a second opinion on the spot.
The company said on July 20 that it is adding new AI-powered tools to Project Indigo, its experimental camera app for iOS. First launched last year, the app already lets you shoot and edit photos. Now it will also critique them.
Two new features handle the feedback. One is a general photo critique that looks at your shot and tells you what works and what doesn't. The other offers capture and editing suggestions - basically telling you how to make the next one better. Adobe says the goal is to simplify AI editing because crafting a suitable text instruction can be surprisingly hard.
The app also gives users the ability to erase unwanted objects using toggles for specific items (people, trash, wires, etc.), adjust depth-of-field effects, and choose from five visual treatments: watercolor, pen-and-ink, ink line with color wash, monochrome, or a backlit subject look.
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The person running Project Indigo is Marc Levoy. He previously worked on camera software for Google Pixel phones. Levoy was blunt about why these features are designed the way they are. He said, "finding the perfect prompt to tweak a photo or get the right result can be a tricky endeavor."
That is a problem a lot of people run into with generative AI tools.
Project Indigo tries to solve that by using buttons and sliders instead of relying purely on text prompts.
The results are more predictable than typing a sentence. That said, the app still includes a text-based custom edit option for people who do want to type out instructions.
Adobe could swap it for its own Firefly model or other options down the road, depending on how testing goes.
Project Indigo is part of Adobe's broader push to integrate artificial intelligence into creative workflows, a strategy that includes the Firefly generative AI model for Photoshop and other tools. The camera app, which remains an experimental project, allows Adobe to test novel interactions before rolling them out to its flagship applications. Levoy's previous work on Google Pixel's computational photography - like HDR+ and Portrait Mode - gives the app a strong foundation in real-time image processing.
By adding AI critique features, Adobe aims to bridge the gap between casual photographers and advanced editing, similar to how smartphone cameras now automatically suggest improvements. The use of a Google Gemini model rather than Adobe's own Firefly suggests the company is still exploring the best AI backbone for these tasks, keeping its options open as the technology evolves.
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