Adobe's Experimental Camera App Will Now Critique Your Photos Like a Pro
Project Indigo uses AI to tell you what's wrong with your shot, what to remove from the frame, and how to reshoot it. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Key points
- Adobe's Project Indigo, an experimental iOS camera app, added AI-powered photo critique and editing suggestions in a 2025 update.
- The app uses Google's Gemini Nano, a compact AI language model, to generate feedback on framing, lighting, colour, and emotional impact.
- A new object-removal tool lets users toggle out people, vehicles, wires, and clutter without drawing on the screen.
- Adobe says features are available only to select testers and may never reach a general release.
Most of us look at a photo we've just taken and think: something's off, but what? Adobe's answer is to build a critic directly into the camera.
Project Indigo, Adobe's experimental iOS camera app first reported by TechCrunch, launched last year with professional manual controls and multi-frame super-resolution (a technique that combines several rapid shots into one sharper image). Its latest update goes further, adding features that use a large language model, the same category of AI technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, to review your photos and suggest improvements.
Marc Levoy, the engineer leading Project Indigo who previously shaped the camera system inside Google's Pixel phones, has a clear philosophy here. He argues that asking users to type a text prompt to edit a photo is asking too much. Finding the right words to describe what you want is hard. So most of the new tools work as buttons and toggles, producing consistent, predictable results rather than a creative lottery.
The photo critique feature reads a finished image and returns a short opinion on four things: framing (how the subject sits in the shot), lighting, colour, and emotional impact. It reads like notes from a photography tutor. You might not agree with every call, but the feedback is specific enough to actually learn from.
A companion feature, capture and edit suggestions, goes a step further. It looks at what's in your viewfinder before you shoot and recommends changes: shift the angle, adjust exposure, move that object on the left. One reviewer was told to remove a hexagonal white object cluttering the frame. The app then shows you which Adobe Lightroom controls, the sliders inside Adobe's popular photo-editing software, would improve an existing shot.
The object-removal tool is where things get visually impressive. Older apps, including Apple Photos and Google Photos, have offered object removal for years, but they require you to manually circle or paint over whatever you want gone. Project Indigo gives you a checklist instead: background people, rubbish bins, wires and poles, fences, vehicles. Tap a toggle, and the AI fills the gap. Early tests show clean results with no obvious smearing or strange repeated textures.
Should ordinary photographers actually use this?
Right now, no, because access is limited to selected testers. Adobe is treating this as a live experiment, and these features may never ship publicly. But the direction matters. A camera app that explains why a shot is weak is genuinely useful for anyone trying to improve. The object-removal checklist is a real convenience upgrade over manual selection.
The app also includes a style-transfer tool that converts photos into watercolour or pen-and-ink looks, and a free-text editing prompt for changes the preset buttons don't cover. Adobe is currently running the AI features on Google's Gemini Nano model but says it could swap in its own Adobe Firefly model later.
