Comparison

Luminar vs Project Indigo

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Luminar

This app offers powerful AI-driven photo editing tools for mobile devices. It features intuitive controls, smart enhancements for skies, lighting, and skin, and a range of editing options for composition and style. Supports RAW files and integrates with Apple devices.

Highlights
  • AI Sky Replacement
  • AI Photo Enhancement
  • AI Skin Retouching
  • AI Body Shaping
  • RAW File Editing
  • Intuitive Gesture Controls
  • Photo Filters
Features
Read full description

Luminar — Your all-in-one, on-the-go photo editor and creative companion for iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro. Explore powerful AI-driven tools and an interactive interface that responds to your touch, delivering a uniquely engaging photo editing experience. Streamlined design with unparalleled control Luminar's user-friendly design allows you to edit your photos with intuitive gestures, featuring smoothly gliding sliders and spinning dials that respond realistically to your touch with motion and sound. With Luminar, there are no complicated functions or processes. Less fuss, more creativity. Smart AI enhancements Powered by cutting-edge technology, Luminar is the revolutionary smart AI photo enhancer for your every need: - SkyAI: Seamlessly replace dull skies with brilliant ones for impressive backdrops - EnhanceAI: Effortlessly enhance photo quality with a single slide, adjusting color, tone and clarity for professional results in seconds - StructureAI: Unlock hidden details and clarity in your images, enhancing contrast and texture for striking visual impact - Light Depth: Add natural depth and dimension with AI-powered, depth-aware lighting - FaceAI: Automatically enhance face features, brighten the face and subtly refine proportions - SkinAI: Automatically retouch the skin and remove imperfections for a clean and smooth result - BodyAI: Shape a subject’s midsection in a realistic way by adding or removing volume - BokehAI: Blur backgrounds, adjust focus, customize bokeh shapes All-in-one powerhouse - Curves: Edit photos with precise color and tone adjustments, achieving the perfect balance and mood - Details: Enhance every detail with just a tap, bringing your images to life with clarity and sharpness - Crop: Easily trim, align, flip and rotate for the perfect composition, ensuring your images stand out - Landscape: Transform your landscapes with ease and enhance golden hour lighting, brighten foliage, or remove haze for breathtaking results - Monochrome: Convert your color photos to stunning black and white masterpieces, adding depth and mood to your images - Erase: Effortlessly remove distracting elements from your photos to place focus on your subjects - Photo Filters: Enjoy a diverse collection of photo effects that add a unique style to your shots - RAW File Support: Edit your RAW photos directly on your mobile, preserving maximum image quality Seamless integration with Apple devices Designed for the Apple ecosystem, Luminar makes it easy to edit photos taken on your iPhone or iPad, enhancing your editing workflow. On the iPad, you can add personal touches using the Apple Pencil for sharper details and convenient edits. Plus, discover a new immersive editing experience with Vision Pro, optimized for iPadOS and VisionOS. Luminar — Envision more Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the Luminar AI photo editor offers a range of features to suit your needs, including detail enhancement, photo retouching, color adjustment, and more. Try Luminar now and experience next-level photo editing at your fingertips. Compatibility Note: The Luminar picture editor is optimized for devices running iOS/iPadOS 17 and newer. Please note that on iPad 6-gen, certain advanced features such as Erase, Sky AI and Relight AI are not available. To access all features, you need to purchase one of the plans below: 1 Week subscription 12 Months subscription (+7 days free trial. Once the trial is over, you will be charged a yearly subscription) Lifetime license Subscriptions auto-renew at the cost of the chosen package, unless canceled 24-hours in advance prior to the end of the current period. The subscription fee is charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase. You may manage your subscription and turn off auto-renewal by going to your Account Settings after purchase. Privacy Policy: https://skylum.com/legal Terms of use: https://skylum.com/legal-eula

About

Project Indigo

This app offers advanced computational photography with manual controls for a natural, SLR-like image look. It captures bursts of photos to create high-quality images with reduced noise and enhanced dynamic range, suitable for both casual and professional users.

Highlights
  • Computational photography pipeline
  • Natural image look (SLR-like)
  • Full manual camera controls
  • Photo and Night modes
  • Super-resolution for zoom
  • Macro mode
  • Live viewfinder with histogram and zebra striping
Read full description

Welcome to Project Indigo, a new camera experience from Adobe Labs. With a custom computational photography pipeline, a natural image look, and full set of manual camera controls, it offers something for professional and casual photographers alike. Also with new controls for computational cameras and a glimpse into the future of AI image processing on our Tech Previews page. Available for iPhone 12 and 13 Pro/Pro Max, and all 14, 15, 16, or 17-series devices, and initial support for iPads. For best experience we recommend using iPhone 15 Pro or newer. A COMPUTATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY CAMERA Instead of capturing a single photo, for every shutter press Indigo captures a burst of photos and combines them together to produce a high-quality photo with lower noise and higher dynamic range. PHOTO MODE VS NIGHT MODE Photo mode is intended for everyday use in good lighting and has zero shutter lag, meaning it captures the moment you wanted. Night mode is intended for use in low light. In this mode images are captured after you press the shutter button, but use longer exposure times, further reducing noise. NATURAL LOOK Photos produced by Indigo employ computational photography and AI to produce a natural (SLR-like) look for your photos, including special (but gentle) treatment of subjects and skies. This look is applied when generating JPEG images and is embedded as a rendering suggestion in raw DNG files (if enabled). All raw pixels remain intact – the look does not alter them. PRO CONTROLS Take full control of how Indigo captures the image: manually specify focus, exposure time and ISO, exposure compensation, or white balance. Includes an optional magnified loupe for setting precise focus, and white balance control allows you to tap on an object known to be neutral gray. Unique to Indigo’s Night mode is manual control over the number of frames aligned and merged into a final photo. More frames result in lower noise but longer capture time. There is also a Long Exposure mode: if the phone is on a tripod, this allows the capture of synthetic long exposure effects like “water-into-silk" with infinite number of frames where the camera captures and merges images until stopped. SUPER-RESOLUTION FOR ZOOM Using pinch-to-zoom in any camera app often results in image quality loss. To recover the image Indigo employs multi-frame super-resolution which can restore much of the lost quality. ‘SR’ indicator on the zoom buttons shows when it is active. MACRO MODE Enable Macro from the viewfinder and capture stunning close-up shots. VIEWFINDER Provides a view of the camera parameters that will be used for capture, a live histogram of the scene, zebra striping that shows you where there are over-exposed areas in the image, and a level to help you capture straight images. LIGHTROOM INTEGRATION Adobe Lightroom for mobile is the most powerful photo editor in the App Store. Indigo filmstrip allows you to send an image directly to Lightroom mobile app for editing. In addition, our raw DNG files provide maximum compatibility with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. TECHNOLOGY PREVIEWS Technology Previews will be a place where we will offer an early look at technologies that may eventually be deployed in Adobe’s flagship products, or that already appear in these products in a slightly different form: - AI Denoise is a variant of the AI-based denoising from Camera Raw and Lightroom desktop clients. It uses DNG as input, and it saves a new DNG to your camera roll. - Remove Reflections is a variant of the technology from Camera Raw and Lightroom desktop clients. It uses DNG as input, and it saves a medium-resolution JPEG to your camera roll. It tries to remove reflections when shooting through plate glass windows covering most of the camera field of view. - Face Dewarp corrects warp on faces near the edge of images captured using wide-angle lenses. It uses DNG or JPEG as input and saves a JPEG to your camera roll.

Screenshots

Luminar4 screens
Project Indigo4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Luminar at 4.8 against Project Indigo's 3.8. Luminar also leads on chart position (#173 vs unranked) and ratings volume (4.5K vs 702). Project Indigo's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 12). On price, review sentiment, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Luminar sells 9 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per 7 days. Project Indigo asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Luminar holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Luminar has 4.5K ratings behind it against 702, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 42% of Luminar's written reviews are positive against 45% of Project Indigo's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Luminar ships an update every 2 weeks, Project Indigo every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on September 24, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Luminar versus Project Indigo: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLuminarProject Indigo
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (4.5K ratings) — better3.8 (702 ratings)
Positive reviews41.8% of reviews45.2% of reviews — better
Number of ratings4.5K — better702
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
Best chart rank#173 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Vision Pro — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.5
Further details — not scored
Size642 MB347 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSkylumAdobe Labs, Inc.

Customer experience

Luminar

All ratings4,534 ratings
Positive95.1%
Neutral1.4%
Negative3.5%
Written reviews794 reviews
Positive41.8%
Neutral13.5%
Negative44.7%

Project Indigo

All ratings702 ratings
Positive64.1%
Neutral11.5%
Negative24.4%
Written reviews1,183 reviews
Positive45.2%
Neutral15.7%
Negative39.1%

User reviews

Luminar

From 4.5K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Powerful editing tools
  • 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
  • 🎨 Great AI-powered features
  • 💡 Convenient mobile editing

Room to improve

  • 🔒 Subscription-only model
  • 🐛 Buggy and slow performance
  • 💰 Expensive subscription
  • 🔙 No option to save mid-edit

Project Indigo

From 702 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Excellent image quality
  • 🚀 Powerful processing algorithms
  • 🔍 Impressive zoom and detail enhancement

Room to improve

  • 🔥 Overheating issues
  • 🔋 Battery drain
  • 🐛 Focusing problems
  • 🚫 Incompatible with some regions/devices

Bugs and requests

Luminar

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Crashes and freezes
  • Issues with saving and exporting
  • Inaccurate AI-powered tools

Requested features

4 requests
  • Batch editing and presets
  • Raw file support
  • Masking and local adjustments
  • Export options (PNG, TIFF)

Project Indigo

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Shutter sound cannot be disabled
  • AI-based features causing loss of detail

Requested features

3 requests
  • Support for higher resolution photos
  • Improved tap-to-focus functionality
  • Better optimization for battery and thermal performance

In-app purchases

9 purchases

Luminar

Subscriptions6
  • 1 Week2 variants$4.997 Days
  • 1 Month$14.991 Month
  • 6 Months$25.996 Months
Show 3 more
  • 12Months with monthly payment$39.991 Year
  • 12 Months7 Days trial$39.991 Year
  • 1 Year7 Days trial$39.991 Year
One-time3
  • Lifetime2 variants$69.99
  • Lifetime Desktop$99.99
  • Lifetime Access: Mobile + Desktop$179.99
None

Project Indigo

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Luminar free?
Luminar is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Project Indigo free?
Project Indigo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Luminar or Project Indigo?
Luminar is rated higher. Luminar averages 4.8 out of 5 from 4.5K ratings, while Project Indigo averages 3.8 from 702 ratings.
Do Luminar or Project Indigo have ads?
Neither Luminar nor Project Indigo shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Luminar or Project Indigo?
Luminar ships an update every 2 weeks, and Project Indigo every 3 weeks. Most recently, Luminar was updated on September 24, 2026 and Project Indigo on September 24, 2026.

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