Adobe released new Firefly tools for Photoshop and Illustrator on Tuesday, offering graphic designers more ways to use the company’s in-house AI models. Adobe’s new features let creative workers describe what they want with brief prompts and receive AI-generated textures or images that could otherwise take hours to create.
As Adobe doubles down on AI, the company walks a fine line with some of its loyal users who feel threatened by it. The company trained Firefly on the work of many creative workers and even pays Adobe Stock’s photographers and illustrators an annual bonus for this privilege. In light of this, Adobe says it is taking a “creator-friendly approach,” offering Creative Cloud customers a limited number of generative credits every month at no added cost.
“This is all value that’s baked into their Creative Cloud plan,” Adobe’s VP of product marketing, Deepa Subramaniam, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We just want to put this technology in the hands of our users, so they’re very generous credit limits.”
Illustrator is releasing a new tool in beta, “Generative Shape Fill,” where users can add details and textures to shapes through text prompts or by selecting a style reference. The feature is powered by an updated beta version of Adobe’s Firefly Vector model, which is also being released on Tuesday. In a demo, Adobe Creative Cloud Evangelist Paul Trani showed how the new feature comes with sliders to select how much detail a creator can add. After Firefly generates those details, Illustrator allows the user to edit them; that sets it apart from most AI image generators.
For Photoshop, Adobe is making Firefly’s text-to-image generator broadly available, allowing users to create AI images in the application by pressing “Generate Image” and describing what they’d like. This is powered by Adobe Firefly’s Image 3 Foundation model and was previously only available in beta.
Even though Adobe isn’t charging a premium subscription for generative AI like some competitors, it’s still seeing returns. On its latest earnings call, the company said customers were converting to pricier plans as a means to get more generative credits for Firefly. (One generative credit is equivalent to one generation for other AI tools.) Since launch in March 2023, Adobe says Firefly has generated more than 9 billion images.
Illustrator also received an array of new features that don’t use generative AI. Adobe’s new Dimension tool allows users to calculate lengths and angles of an image in Illustrator. Illustrator’s beta tool, Mockup, allows you to realistically place a logo on any product just by uploading an image. Previously, Mockup would only let you place a logo on a predetermined set of images. With Retype, Illustrator can recognize fonts, match them, and allow you to use them elsewhere.
As for Photoshop, the pixel-based workspace is making a new Selection Brush tool and Adjustment Brush tool generally available, both aiming to streamline repetitive tasks.
