Adobe’s ‘Natural Look’ Camera App Takes a Big AI Turn With Project Indigo’s New Playground

• From SLR-style realism to AI experiments
• July 2026: Indigo gains LLM-powered critique tools
• AI Playground: a structured GenAI suite
• The AI model — and Adobe’s cautious rollout

Adobe’s ‘Natural Look’ Camera App Takes a Big AI Turn With Project Indigo’s New Playground
Adobe’s once “natural look” camera app is rapidly transforming into a testbed for aggressive generative AI, raising questions about how much help photographers really want from algorithms.

§From SLR-style realism to AI experiments

Project Indigo launched last year promising a “more natural (SLR-like) look” for iPhone photos, positioning itself as a subtle, realism-focused camera tool. Initially, it emphasized pro controls, multi-frame super‑resolution, and different capture modes rather than heavy computational manipulation.

§July 2026: Indigo gains LLM-powered critique tools

On July 20, Adobe began rolling out new AI features that use large language models to critique photos and suggest edits, expanding Indigo far beyond its original brief. The app can now offer a “professional” opinion on framing, lighting, colors, and emotional impact, plus advice on reshooting — for example, telling a user to remove a distracting object from the frame.

Alongside critique, Adobe added advanced object removal, depth-of-field generation, and style application, aiming for button-based, more deterministic outcomes instead of fiddly prompt crafting.

§AI Playground: a structured GenAI suite

In the version 1.1 update, Adobe formalized these tools into an “AI Playground” with four sections: Styles, Object Editing, Photo Guidance, and Custom Edit. Each section uses pre-engineered prompts behind simple buttons or toggles, and users can tap again to get slightly different results.

Object Editing now removes people, trash, wires, vehicles, and other clutter via toggles, then fills gaps with generative AI, echoing Google’s Magic Eraser but with more granular controls.

§The AI model — and Adobe’s cautious rollout

Instead of its own Firefly models, Adobe is “leaning on Google’s Nano Banana AI model” for this initial rollout but says it may swap in other providers later. Access is currently free and limited to a small percentage of users as an experiment, with an opt-out button to keep the app in its older, more traditional mode.

Adobe fellow Marc Levoy says the goal is to “learn how people use GenAI-powered editing,” adding that if the tools prove popular, “we will eventually offer a paid version,” hinting at a future subscription or upsell path for AI-enhanced mobile photography.

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