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Adobe Indigo Adds AI Playground
20 July 2026
With the release of Adobe Project Indigo version 1.1, the company is introducing an experimental feature called AI Playground, which will only be available to a few, randomly-selected users on release.
"Our goal is to explore how generative AI can assist mobile photographers at the point of capture," writes Adobe Fellow Mark Levoy in introducing the new features in An AI Playground for the Project Indigo Camera App. "Depending on its success we may extend the experiment, or expand the user pool, or run follow-on experiments. If the feature proves popular, we will eventually offer a paid version."
OPTING IN
After downloading v1.1, you may see a splash screen announcing AI Playground's availability. You are then invited to participate in the experiment.
"To take part, you must agree to share with us your button presses while using the Playground," Levoy writes. "But we won't look at your prompts or images or upload them to our servers or use them to train AI models and since there's no sign-on, the analytics we gather are anonymous."
WHAT YOU CAN DO
After capturing a photo and reviewing it with Indigo, you'll see a Sparkle button (see the image at right) at the bottom of the screen to open AI Playground.
There are four options in the Playground: Object Editing, Styles, Photo Guidance and Custom Edit. Each contains multiple buttons or toggles, which trigger GenAI with prompts Adobe has engineered for them. If you don't like a result, click again for another version.
Among the things you can do in AI Playground are:
- Distractor removal
- Depth-of-field effects
- Stylistic edits
- Photo critiques and reshooting suggestions
- Custom prompt-based editing
In the Styles menu you'll find buttons to render your Indigo photo using specific techniques. "The buttons we provide represent techniques we have found to be most successful when applied to everyday snapshots," Levoy writes.
He provides a set of before-and-after images to illustrate what three buttons do: Pen and Ink, InkLine With Color Wash and Golden Hour Lighting.
The button names only hint at prompts used to generate the revisions.
In addition, the first pair show how the rendering respects the difference between the HDR capture and the reflective nature of a drawing, which is a lot less bright.
This release of AI Playground includes some Object Editing options using a generative model as well. In this version it's Google's Nano Banana, which requires an Internet connection.
"Within distractor removal is a list of toggles that allow you to remove one or more categories of distractors," Levory notes. "You can also add categories by typing (or dictating) what you want removed and you can save or delete these additions."
In the examples above, Background People was toggled on for Distrator Removal on the top pair while the bottom pair the distractors were Vehicles, Clutter and and Signs.
This release can also provide Feedback on your photos, providing both reshooting suggestions as well as editing suggestions.
"Producing useful suggestions is harder than you might think," Levoy admits. "Our prompt needs to advise the LLM that this is a smartphone photograph" without, say, a zoom lens so suggesting you zoom in wouldn't be helpful.
Even more fun, the Custom Edits let you create a derivative image using a text prompt.
In the examples above, the prompt for the first pair was "Pen and ink illustration in the style of Leonardo, on toned paper with white chalk." It even includes some nonsense Italian in Leonardo's backwards handwriting. The second Pair used the Pen and Ink button followed by a Custom Edit to "Remove the fence in the foreground and the people in the background."
GOOD LUCK
If these new capabilities built into a camera app sound interesting, download the Project Indigo update and cross your fingers. As Levoy warns, AI Playground "will be available only to a few percent of our users and only for a few weeks. Depending on its success we may extend the experiment, or expand the user pool, or run follow-on experiments. If the feature proves popular, we will eventually offer a paid version."
We've just downloaded the update (v1.1.0) but didn't get the splash screen.
So we'll just wish you better luck and hope to hear what you think!