Photoshop just got a massive upgrade thanks to Adobe Firefly generative AI

If you use Adobe Photoshop, you may have been watching recent advances in AI technology closely. I know I was – even branding Google's Magic Editor as the death of Photoshop.

I may well have spoken too soon, though. Adobe are fighting back with arguably the most significant update the platform has ever had, introducing generative AI to Photoshop via Adobe Firefly, which will form a native part of the app.

Users will be able to use text to add to images, or make adjustments. The results are astounding. In the image shown above – which is taken from a video demonstrating the technology, almost none of it was in the original image. The car, the pool, the sun, the clouds – all of that is the work of the Firefly AI.

The AI will automatically match perspective, lighting and style to the pre-existing image, meaning you can spend less time faffing with lighting angles and more time being creative. In the image above, we even see that work in reverse – the sun wasn't in the original shot, but the conditions elsewhere helped the AI to place it correctly.

Firefly is trained on an Adobe Stock library, too, meaning nothing the AI generates will be based on other people's work, branding or intellectual property. That's brilliant for creators, ensuring that they can use the imagery created without fear of any legal issues.

The feature will debut in the beta version of Photoshop. Users should be able to access the feature right away, with a roll-out to the non-beta version expected later this year.

Personally, I'm a massive fan of this. AI is causing all sorts of questions to be asked, spanning across a wide range of industries. Often, the technology is portrayed quite negatively, but this is truly great example of a task made effortlessly better with the help of AI.

The whole process seems so efficient, and I'm really impressed with the image quality. It's set to make the life of creators a whole lot easier – and that is never a bad thing.