“A big, blank canvas can sometimes be the biggest barrier,” Erin Boyce, Photoshop’s senior marketing director, told Engadget in an interview. “This really speeds up time to creation. The idea of getting something from your mind to the canvas has never been easier.” The new feature is simply called “Generate Image” and will be available as an option in Photoshop right alongside the traditional option that lets you import images into the app.

An existing AI-powered feature called Generative Fill that previously let you add, extend or remove specific parts of an image has been upgraded too. It now allows users to add AI-generated images to an existing image that blend in seamlessly with the original. In a demo shown to Engadget, an Adobe executive was able to circle a picture of an empty salad dish, for instance, and ask Photoshop to fill it with a picture of AI-generated tomatoes. She was also able to generate variations of the tomatoes and choose one of them to be part of the final image. In another example, the executive replaced an acoustic guitar held by an AI-generated bear with multiple versions of electric guitars just by using text prompts, and without resorting to Photoshop’s complex tools or brushes.

These updates are powered by Firefly Image 3, the latest version of Adobe’s family of generative AI models that the company also unveiled today. Adobe said Firefly 3 produces images of a higher quality than previous models, provides more variations, and understands your prompts better. The company claims that more than 7 billion images have been generated so far using Firefly.

Adobe is far from the only company stuffing generative AI features into its products. Over the last year, companies, big and small, have revamped up their products and services with AI. Both Google and Microsoft, for instance, have upgraded their cash cows, Search and Office respectively, with AI features. More recently, Meta has started putting its own AI chatbot into Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. But while it’s still unclear how these bets will pan out, Adobe’s updates to Photoshop seem more materially useful for creators. The company said Photoshop’s new AI features had driven a 30 percent increase in Photoshop subscriptions.

Meanwhile, generative AI has been in the crosshairs of artists, authors, and other creative professionals, who say that the foundational models that power the tech were trained on copyrighted media without consent or compensation. Generative AI companies are currently battling lawsuits from dozens of artists and authors. Adobe says that Firefly was trained on licensed media from Adobe Stock, since it was designed to create content for commercial use, unlike competitors like Midjourney whose models are trained in part by illegally scraping images off the internet. But a recent report from Bloomberg showed that Firefly, too, was trained, in part, on AI-generated images from the same rivals including Midjourney (an Adobe spokesperson told Bloomberg that less than 5 percent of images in its training data came from other AI rivals).

To address concerns about the use of generative AI to create disinformation, Adobe said that all images created in Photoshop using generative AI tools will automatically include tamper-proof “Content Credentials”, which act like digital “nutrition labels” indicating that an image was generated with AI, in the file’s metadata. However, it’s still not a perfect defense against image misuse, with several ways to sidestep metadata and watermarks.

The new features will be available in beta in Photoshop starting today and will roll out to everyone later this year. Meanwhile, you can play with Firefly 3 on Adobe’s website for free.

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VideoGigaGAN beats other Video Super Resolution (VSR) methods because it avoids the usual artifacts and flickering introduced by GAN (General Adversarial Networks), according to Adobe. At the same time, it adds sharpness and detail — where most other systems fail to do do both of those things at once.

Of course, the system is making up detail that doesn't exist out of whole cloth, so this wouldn't be suitable for things like forensic video enhancement, à la CSI-style crime shows. But the detail it does add looks impressively real, like skin textures, fine hairs, swan feather details and more.

The model builds on a large-scale image upsampler called GigaGAN, according to to Adobe's researchers. Previous VSR models have had difficulty generating rich details in results, so Adobe married "temporal attention" (reducing artifacts that accumulate over time), feature propagation (adding detail where none exists), anti-aliasing and something called "HF shuttle" (shuttling high-frequency features) to create the final result.

If added to products like Premiere Pro or After Effects, it could allow video producers to make low-resolution shots look a lot better, though using AI too enhance people is a controversial practice. There's no word yet on whether Adobe plans to do this (currently, the clips are short and only play at 12fps) but plenty of companies including NVIDIA, Microsoft, Blackmagic Design and others are working on AI upscaling technology as well.

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The new features will likely be popular, as video cleanup is one a common (and painful) task. The first feature, Generative Extend, addresses a problem editors face on nearly every edit: clips that are too short. "Seamlessly add frames to make clips longer, so it's easier to perfectly time edits and add smooth transitions," Adobe states. It does that by using the AI to create extra media, helping cover an edit or transition.

Another common issue is junk you don't want in a shot that can be tricky to remove, or adding things you do want. Premiere Pro's Object Addition & Removal addresses that, again using Firefly's generative AI. "Simply select and track objects, then replace them. Remove unwanted items, change an actor’s wardrobe or quickly add set dressings such as a painting or photorealistic flowers on a desk," Adobe writes.

Adobe shows a couple of examples, adding a pile of diamonds to a briefcase via a text prompt (generated by Firefly). It also removes an ugly utility box, changes a watch face and adds a tie to a character's costume.

The company also showed off a way it can import custom AI models. One, called Pika, is what powers Generative Extend, while another (Sora from OpenAI) can automatically generate B-Roll (video shots). The latter is bound to be controversial as it could potentially wipe out thousands of jobs, but is still "currently in early research," Adobe said in the video. The company notes that it will add "content credentials" to such shots, so you can see what was generated by AI including the company behind the model.

A similar feature is also available in "Text to Video," letting you generate entirely new footage directly within the app. "Simply type text into a prompt or upload reference images. These clips can be used to ideate and create storyboards, or to create B-roll for augmenting live action footage," Adobe said. The company appears to be commercializing this feature pretty fast, considering that generative AI video first appeared just a few months ago.

Those features will arrive later this year, but Adobe is also introducing updates to all users in May. Those include interactive fade handles to make transitions easier, Essential Sound badge with audio category tagging ("AI automatically tags audio clips as dialogue, music, sound effects or ambience, and adds a new icon so editors get one-click, instant access to the right controls for the job"), effect badges and redesigned waveforms in the timeline.

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To use the OnePlus AI Eraser, a person first has to highlight the parts of the image that need removing. These could be random people or a dirty trash can, but they can also be "imperfections" in the photo. Then, AI analyzes that area and creates a background that OnePlus claims will blend into the existing image. If it sounds familiar, it works basically the same as Adobe's Generative Fill and Google's Magic Eraser tools.

However, this is a new venture for OnePlus, which uses its proprietary LLM to power the AI Eraser. "As OnePlus' first feature based on generative AI technology, AI Eraser represents the first step in our vision to liberate user creativity through AI and revolutionize the future of photo editing, empowering users to create remarkable photos with just a few touches," Kinder Liu, president and COO of OnePlus, said in a statement. "This year, we plan to introduce more AI features, and we look forward to their upcoming availability."

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“It is with profound sadness that I share that our beloved co-founder Dr. John Warnock passed away at the age of 82,” wrote Adobe Chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen. “John has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest inventors in our generation with significant impact on how we communicate in words, images and videos.”

Warnock created Adobe with the late Dr. Charles Geschke in 1982, and served as the company’s CEO until 2000, remaining co-chairman with Geschke until 2017 (Geschke passed in 2021). The company’s original logo was created by Marva Warnock, and Adobe released its debut product, the desktop publishing software Adobe Postscript, in 1984.

Adobe went on to launch Photoshop in 1987. It subsequently developed the PDF file format, and released widely used applications like Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro and After Effects. To that end, the company helped launch the desktop publishing revolution in the ’80s, and offers key tools used for the web, video/audio editing and visual effects used in film and television.

Warnock was one of the rare CEOs with high-level technical skills. In his 1969 doctoral thesis, he invented the Warnock algorithm for hidden surface determination. He later worked with Geschke at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, but was unable to convince management to commercialize the InterPress graphics language. That led the pair to form Adobe, where they subsequently created PostScript and released it for Apple’s LaserWriter in 1985. Warnock also invented Adobe Illustrator, a drawing program that uses vectors rather than pixels to describe images.

“My interactions with John over the past 25 years have been the highlight of my professional career,” wrote Narayen. “At breakfasts with John and Chuck, we would imagine the future, however, it was our varied conversations on rare books, art, world history and politics that gave me unique insight into John, who was truly a renaissance man.”

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The new subscription plan revolves around “generative credits” (GCs), which Adobe defines as, “tokens that enable customers to turn a text-based prompt into image and vector creations in Photoshop, Illustrator, Express and the Firefly web application.” It’s a made up currency that facilitates the transmutation of your money into faster access to the Firefly AI. Once users hit their monthly allowance of GCs, they’ll be able to continue using Firefly, just at a slower rate.

The web application will be available through Creative Cloud, at the Express and Express Premium price points, as well as the free tier. Paid users will also gain access to the full paid version of Express Premium. Per a company release. Adobe Express is a new “AI first, all-in-one creativity app” designed specifically to generate commercially safe images and effects (and presumably the correct number of fingers). With it users can generate design elements, images and video, pdfs and animations in over a 100 languages, then export that content to social media and publishing platforms.For enterprise users, Firefly and Express Premium will be bundled together as an all-in-one editor.

Generative AI has not exactly been greeted with the warmest of welcomes, mostly on account of it ripping off an entire internet’s worth of art for its training. Then there was the whole subsequent “replacing actual artists with cheap AI knockoffs after stealing their work for training purposes” issue as well.

To help allay those well-founded fears, Firefly embeds Content Credentials by default in all generated works. These credentials act as a as a digital “nutrition label,” displaying the asset’s name, creation date, creation tool and a log of any edits made to it. They’re the latest measure to come out of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative, an industry group seeking to establish baseline ethical and transparency norms for AI development before the Feds step in and impose real regulations.

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Adobe Premiere Pro should get rid of your "ums" and "hmms" with an update called filler word detection — an AI-based tool that does exactly what it says before deleting them from both the audio and any transcription. It can also identify and cut any long pauses you want out of the final version. Filler word detection works through Adobe's Text-Based Editing tool, which launched earlier in the year.

Background noise is processed through an AI-powered tool called Enhance Speech that Adobe touts as turning any audio into the quality of being "recorded in a professional studio." Adobe claims it will automatically remove background noise while providing you with a mix slider if you want to keep any of it.

These new features are launching in conjunction with the commercial release of Adobe's Firefly for Enterprise generative AI across Photoshop, Adobe Express and Illustrator —it beta launched this past March. Using the AI tool requires a "generative credits" subscription plan that should "enable customers to turn a text-based prompt into image and vector creations." It's also available as a web application with Creative Cloud paid plans.

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Adobe first introduced a feature-svelt online version of the popular Photoshop app in December, 2021. Originally, users could share their psd files but only if the recipient had a copy of Photoshop or Illustrator on their computer too. That changed with the introduction of Creative Cloud, which allowed for sharing without the need for a local install. The beta version of Photoshop on the web took that concept a step further by incorporating basic editing tools into the web UI geared towards "minor tweaks and quick edits" — the easy sort of stuff that took less time to fix than the program took to boot. The production version released Wednesday does all that and more.

"With this release we are starting with a focus on the needs of creators who are new to Photoshop with a streamlined user experience," Adobe VP Pam Clark wrote in a blog post. "We have brought the majority of the most commonly used Photoshop tools to the web and have streamlined the user experience, to make it easier for newer users to navigate the app."

Users will also be able to experiment with two new AI-driven tools, generative fill and generative expand. As their names' imply, these will "allow you to add, expand, or remove content from your images non-destructively, while magically matching perspective, lighting, and style of your image," Clark wrote. The features were first released as part of Firefly for the desktop edition of Photoshop.

The Contextual Taskbar is also migrating over from the desktop. This on-screen menu will observe your workflow and suggest relevant next steps. But for all the new features to play with, a number of existing tools have yet to make the jump to the web, including the patch and pen tools, smart object support and the polygonal lasso, the the company insists that they will be added with future updates.

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Adobe Express now includes features such as Generative Fill. This enables users to add, remove or replace items, people and other aspects of images using text prompts. On a similar note, the Text to Template function can help users generate editable templates for things like graphics and social media posts based on text descriptions. Text to Template is powered by the new Firefly Design Model, which Adobe says will generate content that's safe for commercial use.

On top of that, Express now offers a GAI-powered translation tool. Translate can localize content between 45 languages, Adobe says. Meanwhile, new Drawing and Painting functions enable more than 50 multicolor paint and decorative brushes. These can mimic things like charcoal, pencil and watercolor textures. The company also noted student-friendly drawing templates that are available in Express for Education can make it easy to create effects like flowers and hearts.

A handy resize tool will make it a cinch for folks to automatically get multiple versions of a design to fit all social channels, Adobe said. Meanwhile, you'll be able to use the app to directly schedule and share videos to the likes of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and X.

Adobe isn't exactly stopping with Express. At Max, it announced more than 100 new features across its main Adobe Creative Cloud applications. These include additional Firefly-powered tools for Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as new editing capabilities in Lightroom.

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Adobe is no stranger to using machine learning in its products. The company released its earliest commercial AI, Sensei, in 2016. Firefly is built atop the Sensei system and offers image and video editors a whole slew of AI tools and features, from "text to color enhancement" saturation and hue adjustments to font and design element generation and even creating and incorporating background music into video scenes on the fly. The generative AI suite is available across Adobe's product ecosystem including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop and Express, as well as on all subscription levels the Creative Cloud platform (yes, even the free one).

Firefly Image 2 is the updated version of the existing text-to-image system. Like its predecessor, this one is trained exclusively on licensed and public domain content to ensure that its output images are safe for commercial use. It also accommodates text prompts in any of 100 languages.

Adobe's AI already works across modalities, from still images, video and audio to design elements and font effects. As of Tuesday, it also generates vector art thanks to the new Firefly Vector model. Currently available in beta, this new model will also offer Generative Match, which will recreate a given artistic style in its output images. This will enable users to stay within bounds of the brand's guidelines, quickly spin up new designs using existing images and their aesthetics, as well as seamless, tileable fill patterns and vector gradients.

The final, Design model, is geared heavily towards advertising and marketing professionals for use in generating print and online copy templates using Adobe Express. Users will be able to generate images in Firefly then port them to express for use in a layout generated from the user's natural language prompt. Those templates can be generated in any of the popular aspect ratios and are fully editable through conventional digital methods.

The Firefly web application will also receive three new features: Generative Match, as above, for maintaining consistent design aesthetics across images and assets. Photo Settings will generate more photorealistic images (think: visible, defined pores) as well as enable users to tweak images using photography metrics like depth of field, blur and field of view. The system's depictions of plant foliage will reportedly also improve under this setting. Prompt Guidance will even rewrite whatever hackneyed prose you came up with into something it can actually work from, reducing the need for the wholesale re-generation of prompted images.

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