Comparison

Photon Library 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

Photon Library

Organize and enjoy your photos and videos with a sleek, intuitive media management app. It offers a streamlined approach to browsing, viewing, and organizing your collections with a clean interface and smart features.

Highlights
  • Clean, modern interface
  • Smart album organization
  • Calendar view
  • Favorites section
  • Smooth, responsive performance
Features
Read full description

Rediscover your memories with Photon Library, a sleek, intuitive photo and video manager for iPhone and iPad. Browse, search, organize, and clean up your library in a thoughtfully designed interface built around the moments that matter. BROWSE AND RELIVE - Enjoy a clean, modern layout that keeps your photos front and center - Open any photo with a smooth zoom transition from its thumbnail - Start a slideshow from an album or a custom selection of photos - Swipe up on a photo to see details, including where it was taken on a map - Browse by date with Calendar view - Revisit your favorites anytime FIND ANYTHING, FAST - Search by place. Type “Madrid” to quickly find photos taken there - Refine results by date range, media type, screenshots, or favorites - Search album names and combine filters to narrow down exactly what you want - Keep your location data private. Place searches run entirely on your device ORGANIZE WITH EASE - Pin your most important albums to keep them close at hand - Collapse and expand album groups to reduce clutter - Filter albums by name to jump straight to what you need - Select multiple photos quickly by dragging across the grid - Add photos to albums, share them, or mark favorites with a long press RECLAIM STORAGE - Find photos and videos you may no longer need using date range and media type filters - Protect what matters by excluding favorites and items already stored in albums - Preview everything before you delete it - Review your selection and deselect anything you want to keep Photon Library is a refreshing alternative to complicated photo-management apps. Declutter your library or enjoy your memories with less friction and more control. Simplify your photo library. Download Photon Library and rediscover your memories with ease. Requires iOS 26 or later.

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

Photon Library4 screens
Project Indigo4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Project Indigo at Free against Photon Library's $6.99. Project Indigo also leads on iOS requirement (18.5 vs 26.0). On review sentiment, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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

Project Indigo is free to download; Photon Library costs $6.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 16, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Photon Library versus Project Indigo: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPhoton LibraryProject Indigo
Price$6.99Free — better
Rating—3.8 (702 ratings) — better
Positive reviews41.2% of reviews45.2% of reviews — better
Number of ratings—702 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS26.018.5 — better
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB347 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLateNiteSoft S.L.Adobe Labs, Inc.

Customer experience

Photon Library

Written reviews17 reviews
Positive41.2%
Neutral5.9%
Negative52.9%

Project Indigo

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

Bugs and requests

Photon Library

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

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

None

Photon Library

No in-app purchases

None

Project Indigo

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Photon Library free?
Photon Library costs $6.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Project Indigo free?
Project Indigo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Photon Library or Project Indigo have ads?
Neither Photon Library nor Project Indigo shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Photon Library or Project Indigo?
Photon Library ships an update every 3 weeks, and Project Indigo every 3 weeks. Most recently, Photon Library was updated on September 16, 2026 and Project Indigo on September 25, 2026.

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