Adobe brings new AI tools, motion graphics, and color features to Premiere and Photoshop Elements 2025

My 6 Favorite New Features of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Why It’s Worth Using

Using any selection tool, you can then select the Select Subject button. You can also use the Object Selection tool, which shows a red highlight over the newly intended selection before you confirm it. They both have similar results, with Select Subject typically being more accurate. Generative Fill is non-destructive, which helps you make editing decisions throughout your project without committing to specific imagery ideals. The latest Firefly Vector Model (beta) is now available in Adobe Illustrator powering Generative Shape Fill (beta), Text to Pattern (beta) and Style Reference.

Adobe Photoshop CC is an excellent tool for maintaining brand identity. It ensures high-quality images and allows users to design social media graphics, email templates, website visuals, and marketing materials. It works with many file types, making it ideal for sharing content across different platforms. The number of generative AI tools has grown significantly, almost to the point of market saturation, with new AI platforms and features appearing everywhere. Every company seems eager to integrate AI in some way, but few tools stand out in both accessibility and capability.

When I am shooting on location, I don’t always have control over the ambient lighting in the shooting space. Adobe Photoshop’s disadvantages include its subscription pricing, which can become expensive over time, and the lack of a lifetime access option. Its steep learning curve and complex interface can also be overwhelming for beginners.

Continuing the trend from the 2024 update of Premiere and Photoshop Elements, you’ll get more AI tools powered by Adobe Firefly in both programs. Along with AI, there are new quick tools, a simplified interface to work from, and the addition to access these apps from the web browser. The Selection Brush tool is also generally available, which allows users to more easily select and separate specific objects from the canvas by painting over them. You can read about these Illustrator updates in more detail on Adobe’s blog. Adobe is introducing some new tools and generative AI features to its Illustrator and Photoshop design software that aim to help speed up creative workflows.

Photoshop has more robust tools than most other image editing software, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. For example, features like Content-Aware Scale allow resizing without losing details, while smart objects maintain brand consistency across designs. Marketers and brand professionals can use Photoshop’s powerful tools to enhance their visual storytelling and create a brand image that resonates with their target audience. Photoshop’s tools have earned a great reputation for being intuitive, reliable, and highly effective across countless creative workflows. While its generative AI may not be as advanced as ComfyUI and Stable Diffusion’s capabilities, it’s far from terrible and serves many users well. For quick, simple tasks like removing an object in a single image, Photoshop is hard to beat — it can achieve results in seconds with minimal effort.

There’s no animation feature and its Brush Tool is lacking, with only a basic brush library—but plugins do exist if you require more. The Background Removal tool uses AI to select and mask complex backgrounds. The Smart Erase tool also allows you to quickly erase large areas of the image by detecting similarities in the photo. It applies the edits of your RAW photo as a Smart Object in Photoshop’s layers panel. Affinity Photo is one of a trio of software from Serif Affinity, released to the public in 2015. Canva acquired Affinity in 2024, giving more development power to its already great suite of tools.

Fill your skill gaps with Adobe’s generative AI tools

Those limitations will soon include all Firefly-powered tools in Photoshop and Lightroom, too. The results vary in success, but if your image has a stark contrast between colored areas, and you experiment with the blend modes after selection, you can create realistic recolored results. Using AI, this tool lets you select an area of the image to keep in sharp focus while sending the rest of it into a soft blur. It uses depth perception rather than choosing an area of the flat photo, and you can choose a spot within a distance from the camera. The Depth Blur filter is a fun way to add some aperture depth to your image in post-production. While this can be best achieved when taking a photo by using a shallow depth of field, sometimes the moment passes without thought.

All the tools are on the toolbar on the left side, making them easy to access and fun to play around with. While the interface is not as user-friendly as some other options, it’s hard to argue with what Photopea gives you for free. While Photoshop is indeed a great tool and can be extremely useful for many situations, it’s also expensive and over-saturated with features you’ll probably never use. If you buy a subscription for just yourself, it costs $23 per month, which is more than three times the amount of an Apple TV+ subscription.

Opt for different size ratios to fit your purposes well, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more. You can get a premium account with Photopea at $5 per month, and it provides an ad-free experience, lets you hold up to 5GB of work, and gives you 3,000 AI credits per month. Pixelmator Pro has a video-editing feature, but like Photoshop, it isn’t a great video tool compared to video-specific software. Affinity Photo doesn’t offer many tools that aren’t directly related to photo and image manipulation.

Adobe unveils new Generative AI features for Illustrator and Photoshop

I’ve found that Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill can create a variety of convincing artwork styles, in addition to replacing elements and creating entirely new ones. This seems to work best when there’s a central subject, rather than an entire scene, so I’d suggest working with portraits and still-life images where the subject is isolated. Were it not for the recent AI innovations I use daily, I would be skeptical that this concept will ever reach my laptop. Others will use the technology in far more challenging and creative ways.

From playground to production: How to jump-start your content transformation with generative AI – the Adobe Blog

From playground to production: How to jump-start your content transformation with generative AI.

Posted: Thu, 20 Jun 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Next, use the Generative Fill feature by selecting an area of an image, clicking the Generative Fill button, and entering a text prompt to have the AI generate content that matches the selected area. Some of the ML features Pixelmator Pro offers are enhancement and resolution tools, color matching, denoise, quick selection tools, background removal, subject selection, and masking tools. These are all naturally found within the toolbox and don’t have specific AI or ML labels on the tools. Photopea is a web-based photo editing software that offers simple features for amateur users.

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Users can guide the output by entering a brief text description, with Photoshop automatically matching the lighting and perspective of the foreground objects in the content it generates. Further, PetaPixel argues that Adobe did not provide users with a satisfactory level of notification that these changes were taking place. Even if the company isn’t enforcing these limits yet, it didn’t tell users that it was tracking usage either. PetaPixel only became aware of Adobe’s changes this week despite the fact these new Credit rules were instituted in January. Also, despite taking part in a one-on-one detailed demonstration of the new Generative Remove tool in Lightroom last month, Adobe never once mentioned Generative Credits or that the new tool would require them. Adobe has some language included that appears to be a holdover from the initial launch of Firefly.

Similarly, if the background is an ugly shade of green because the shoot took place in a corporate office, I can’t always shift it to a neutral gray. In both of these instances, there is an edge on the subject that looks unnatural when paired with the modified background. It would be ideal if I could simply select the subject from the image and place them into any gray background of my choosing. When I attempt this, it is obvious that the image has been composited. A few seconds later, Photoshop generated three variations of my photo!

Canva can truly create almost any type of art project that you want. Pixelmator Pro has a Shape Tool, like Photoshop, but more vector support in comparison. You can use pre-made shapes or customize them yourself using Smart Shapes to create a whole host of vector graphics. You need an internet connection to use Photoshop’s generative AI features. Pixelmator Pro is an Apple-only software, made for Mac systems, with a parred-down iOS app version named Pixelmator.

Some of the capabilities are rolling out to the company’s video editing applications. The others will mostly become available in Adobe’s suite of image editing tools, including Photoshop. It includes text-to-image and generative fill, video templates, stock music, image and design assets, and quick-action editing tools to help you create content easily on the go. Once you have created content, you can plan, preview, and publish it to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest without leaving the app. For the majority of users who wish to heavily edit photos and images, Adobe Photoshop’s main desktop software would be the better choice.

I don’t agree with using AI tools just because they’re present, as sometimes they cause more frustration than they fix. Many AI tools do not fix current or common problems, but the five listed above are helpful in many ways. Making selections and removing or replacing objects is a daily part of a Photoshop user’s workflow, as is font identification. That’s why I believe the above tools are the most worthwhile to use. Fitting stock imagery to Etsy’s store image proportions, while keeping the model in the center. Adding some new background space above people’s heads so I could crop the photo into a heart shape and use it for crafting at home.

If you’ve already used tools like Pages, Preview, Notes, or Photos, you’ll feel some familiarity with Pixelmator Pro. Affinity’s interface is similar to Photoshop’s—layers on the right, toolbar on the left. It has optional windows, like Photoshop, which all open within the right-hand panel. This means you have to manually switch between which tools to view, rather than being able to view some all at once. Many of Photoshop’s extra tools open as small windows, allowing you to open more than one at once if working on complex projects or often switching between tools.

I’ll admit that I’ve been too hard on Stable Diffusion in this article, but the truth is that it’s not good enough if you’re looking for a suitable Photoshop replacement for generative fill. If you’re concerned about your privacy, it might be a good idea to move away from Adobe’s product suite, especially after the company’s numerous anti-consumer actions. Although the Adobe Creative Cloud lets you install Photoshop locally on your system, the generative fill facility runs on the company’s servers. As such, it can only be accessed when you’re connected to the Internet. On paper, this may sound like a drawback, but since none of the processing is handled by your PC, you can run generative fill on low-end systems.

Overall, its versatility and powerful editing tools make Photoshop an essential resource for content creators looking to elevate their visual storytelling and connect with their audience more effectively. With Photoshop, content creators can manipulate images, apply filters, and create custom layouts that stand out in crowded feeds. Working with layers and masks provides flexibility in designing complex compositions and creative experimentation.

Adobe Firefly’s online tool also serves as a preview of beta features that could be coming to future versions of Photoshop. Adobe claims its latest version of Generative Fill makes it easier to add or remove content from your images using simple text prompts right inside Photoshop. ‘Imagery is automatically generated with the appropriate shadows, reflections, lighting, and perspective, enabling realistic results in just a few simple steps,’ said the company. Unlike Stable Diffusion, Photoshop is built to process raster images.

A few seconds after you select it, Adobe’s AI will process your RAW image and show you what it looks like with reflections removed. A slider also lets you adjust the strength of the reflection removal process. Adobe says the AI model has been trained on “thousands” of photographs. “We train the model by gathering thousands of photographs of varying subjects that contain no reflections.” Adobe said in a press release. “We then add pairs of them together to form millions of simulated photographs that appear to be polluted by reflections.”

The background masking tool works incredibly accurately, even on complex areas like afro-textured hair. It doesn’t offer obvious generative AI features, but they may be to come. Pixelmator Pro doesn’t currently offer any type of animation or tools, but it has a very basic video editor built-in. “The success rate has dropped to maybe 5-10% (or less!),” the photographer says. “Before the update, it was more like 90-95%.” Even when they add a prompt to improve the results, they say they get “absurd” results. Skylum Luminar Neo is lauded for its interface and the wide range of tools for editing are at your disposal.

Tired of advertisements, data costs, and recurring subscription fees? Seek refuge with one of these old-school offline music players for Android. Get the latest information about companies, products, careers, and funding in the technology industry across emerging markets globally. Here’s how to quickly open the Apps & Features windows on Windows 11. This info-stealer malware campaign uses fake Reddit and WeTransfer pages to trick unsuspecting users. Despite the fact you can animate GIFs in Photoshop, I was pleasantly surprised to find a small animated elements library in Photoshop Elements.

Generative Fill is another new feature that helps artists create new content quickly. It lets them mix AI-generated elements into their work while keeping their unique style consistent. There are also options for custom brushes, textures, and blending modes for various creative choices.

These include Distraction Removal, which uses AI to eliminate unwanted elements from images, and Generative Workspace, a tool for simultaneous ideation and concept development. In a blog post by Photoshop product manager Pam Clark, the company detailed more features for the graphics editing platform, which use Adobe’s generative AI model, Firefly. Highlights include a “Distraction Removal” tool within the existing “Remove” tool added last year, which lets you circle objects or people in the background to get rid of them. Text-to-image has been inside Photoshop for a while now as a beta feature, but it’s finally available as a complete, public tool. With a fresh name, “Generate Image,” users can type a specific prompt and get AI-generated images in seconds.

I want to make one additional note before concluding this series and that has to do with the ethics of generative AI. This concern goes beyond Adobe Firefly specifically – as it could be argued that Firefly is the least problematic and most ethical implementation of generative AI that is available today. Depending upon the resources and capabilities of your computer… this might become burdensome as everything becomes more and more complex. You can always flatten your layers to a single pixel layer if this occurs to free up additional resources. With a selection established, click Generative Fill within the contextual toolbar.

• If you want to sign up for a Canva subscription, it’s cheaper than Photoshop at $120 per year for Canva Pro.
• Pixelmator Pro’s Mac-based development makes it feel like a native Apple tool with a sleek and minimalist interface.
• Cyberlink PhotoDirector is for those that want to play with the powers of AI.
• Additionally, the Enhance Detail feature for Generative Fill has been improved to provide greater sharpness and detail for large images.

Adobe has also made it easier to select objects – now when the Detect Objects option is enabled, you can simply circle the distractions you want to remove in addition to brushing over them. By default, most Stable Diffusion clients aren’t equipped with image editors. So, your only choices are to look into integrations that let you connect Stable Diffusion to a photo editing tool, or import the pictures to a Photoshop alternative after running the generative fill extension.

These motion graphics add a little pizzazz to your photos with basic editing features. My favorite of the four is the Zoom In-Out tool; applied to a waterscape image, it makes the water appear to move. There are selection tools, color edits, AI features, layer palettes, and much more. And the 2025 update brings some great new features to complement the existing tools.

Once installed, open Photoshop and look for the Generative Fill option in the toolbar or under the Edit menu to start using AI-powered tools. To turn on Generative Fill in Photoshop, you must install the latest version (Photoshop version 25 or later, released in September 2023). Once updated, open an image in Photoshop and make a selection using a tool like the lasso or rectangle tool. You should see the Generative Fill button appear in the contextual bar.

The multiform presets and batch processing make it great for heavy use. The features are built around AI, and many of them rely on it entirely. It can adjust the lighting of the entire photo by estimating what it could look like naturally. You can also zap unwanted objects out of the photo and keep the background of the photo looking like it naturally did as you took the picture. Cyberlink PhotoDirector is for those that want to play with the powers of AI. It offers a full menu of generative AI capabilities, allowing you to run wild with manipulating photos.

But as long as AI is here, I will embrace it, just as I did when we went from analog to digital photography decades ago. Imagine a scenario where you had taken a family portrait on a beach in sunset light, but a family member was missing. The family then supplied you with a photograph of that person and asked you to add it to the family portrait.