Adobe's Indigo Camera App Adds AI Editing Tools, But Skips Its Own AI Models

Key points

• Adobe updated its Indigo iPhone camera app to version 1.1 in 2025, adding a suite of AI-powered editing tools called "AI Playground".
• The new tools run on Google's Nano Banana AI model, not Adobe's own Firefly AI, which powers most of the company's other creative software.
• Adobe is testing free access to the feature with a small percentage of Indigo users, with no account sign-in required.
• Adobe fellow Marc Levoy says a paid version will follow if the experiment proves popular.
• Images edited with the new tools do not yet carry Adobe's standard AI-labelling metadata, though the company says it is working to add that.

Adobe's Indigo app started life as a camera tool for iPhone photographers who miss the hands-on control of a traditional SLR camera, the kind with a big interchangeable lens that you turn and click manually. Version 1.1, released this year, takes the app somewhere different: generative AI editing, where software creates or erases parts of a photo rather than just adjusting brightness or colour.

The new section inside the app is called AI Playground. It has four tools. Styles applies AI-generated filter effects that can make a photo look like an illustration or shift its lighting mood. Object Editing removes people or distracting items from the background and fills the gap with AI-generated scenery, similar to Google's Magic Eraser feature on Pixel phones. Photo Guidance analyses a shot and suggests how to reshoot or edit it. Custom Edit is a free-text tool where you type a plain-English instruction, such as "make the sky look stormy", and the AI attempts it.

Here is the notable part: Adobe is using Google's Nano Banana AI model to power these features, at least for now. Nano Banana is a compact AI model designed to run efficiently on devices like phones. Adobe says it may swap in other models later. That choice is striking because Adobe has spent years building its own Firefly AI models, which are trained on licensed images and marketed heavily on being safe for commercial creative work.

Adobe fellow Marc Levoy, who leads the Indigo project, described the rollout in an announcement blog as an experiment. A button inside the app lets users skip the AI tools entirely and use Indigo as before. Access is free, requires no account, and is currently reaching only a small slice of users.

What does this mean for people who care about photo honesty?

Right now, photos edited with Indigo's AI tools do not automatically get labelled as AI-altered. Adobe normally attaches C2PA Content Credentials, a behind-the-scenes tag that flags AI involvement, to images made with Firefly. Indigo does not do that yet. Google's Nano Banana model does embed an invisible SynthID watermark, a hidden digital signal detectable by specialist tools but not visible to the human eye. Levoy acknowledged the gap and said the team is working on adding the full credentials standard.

Levoy put the responsibility plainly: "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."

For everyday users, the practical picture is straightforward. If you already have Indigo, the update is free and easy to skip if you dislike it. If the experiment succeeds, expect a paid tier to follow. And if you share edited photos publicly, be aware that AI-altered content labels are not yet in place.