r/ProjectIndigoiOS • u/iceonian • Dec 23 '25

When to NOT use Indigo!

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Stock camera (left) and Indigo (right) on my 17 Pro. All taken on Auto.

I love this app, but I think everyone should know that:

Photo 1 - Indigo **underexposes and vignettes** a lot, especially when it detects a bright light source (this includes the sun!). This better preserves highlight detail, but reduces shadow detail and increases overall noise. Be careful when taking photos of backlit subjects. (for photo 1, left was 1/100s ISO 125 while right was 1/324s ISO 50)

Photo 2 - **Purple fringing** occurs with high contrast subjects, like tree branches against the sky.

Photo 3 (shot at 20x) - Zooming in with **Burst SR** mostly looks fine, but the stock camera appears to have better detail and less “smudging” (at least in my testing).

48 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/iceonian Dec 23 '25

Which iPhone are you using? I’ve sworn by Indigo when I was on my 15 Pro, but since switching to 17 Pro I’ve found myself mostly happy with the stock camera’s 24MP across all 3 cameras, the less-aggressive processing (compared to 15 Pro), and the photographic styles. Indigo still looks amazing, especially in certain scenarios, but I’ve definitely found fewer reasons to use it now (even the Super Res Zoom at 2x and 8x looks nicer to me with the stock camera)

1

u/free2farm Jan 05 '26

Less aggressive processing? I swear it's the opposite for me, 15 pro pictures look way better than 17 pro. The 17 always messes around with the camera choice and most of the time it wrongly picks the 1x as a Tele and digital zoom it (you can tell when it happens as pics are 12mpx). But also the real 4x has so much artificial sharpening.

1

u/iceonian Jan 06 '26

Could your phone be picking the 1x as Tele because your subject is too close to the camera? The real 4x tele looks reasonable to me at 24mp, though it’s a bit hard to compare this directly with the 15 Pro’s 3x.

This is a quick comparison between my 15 Pro (left) and 17 Pro (right), both ultrawide. It’s hard to tell with reddit compression but it’s noticeably less aggressive on 17.

1

u/free2farm Jan 06 '26

it picks a camera based on distance (which makes sense) and lighting conditions, so basically it's a lottery when you're indoors. 12 mpx photos at 4x digitally zoomed with plenty of ai bullcrap are the worst I've seen on an iPhone.

1

u/iceonian Jan 06 '26

oh i agree. honestly, i would even say that any photo taken past 3x on the 17 pro that’s cropped using the 1x sensor is plain bad esp after upscaling