At Adobe Max London, it wasn’t all about Adobe Firefly, although news related to Adobe’s AI model certainly made headlines. Nevertheless, Adobe had a lot of other updates and news to deliver, including enhancements across its Creative Cloud applications, new AI tools in Express, agentic AI plans, mobile announcements, and more.

The Adobe Max London Creative Conference was held last week. There was significant buzz and focus around Adobe’s Firefly, including the introduction of an all-new Firefly application serving as a centralized hub for AI-powered creation and production; a new version of the Firefly Image Model, Model 4 and 4 Ultra; Firefly Boards (beta); Firefly Mobile; and new Firefly APIs. There were also updates to the company’s core flagship Creative Cloud applications, new tools in Express, new mobile apps, and the launch of the Adobe Content Authenticity app, as well as discussion of the company’s agentic AI plans. Collectively, there were two driving themes spanning the announcements: new mediums and modalities, and image quality and control improvements.

Creative Cloud

At the conference, Adobe announced over 100 new developments across its Creative Cloud applications, introducing new AI tools, faster performance, and precision enhancements to the software that users work in every day, all day. For instance, Photoshop and illustrator now deliver a combination of greater speed, smarter suggestions, and tools for working with precise details.

Specifically, Adobe has unveiled the following:

In Photoshop:

• Firefly-powered Composition Reference in Text to Image, which provides creative controls for ideating by generating assets with the same structure and visual arrangement as a reference image.
• Select Details, offering faster and more intuitive ways to select things like hair, facial features, and clothing.
• Adjust Colors, which simplifies the process of adjusting color hue, saturation, and lightness in images for seamless, instant color adjustments.
• Reimagined Actions panel (beta), which delivers smarter workflow suggestions.

In Premiere Pro:

• Firefly-powered Generative Extend, now generally available with support for 4K and vertical video.
• Media Intelligence, helping editors find relevant clips by searching terabytes of footage in seconds.
• Caption Translation, which instantly localizes captions in 27 languages.

In Lightroom:

• New AI-driven Select Landscape tool and Quick Actions for more efficient mobile editing. 

In Illustrator and InDesign:

• Firefly-powered Generative Shape Fill and Text to Pattern, helping designers jump-start their design process and customize concepts in their own style.
• Menu access, updated to now be more responsive.
• Math notation support.
• Speed increases, with Adobe contending that most popular effects are now 5x faster.

Agentic AI

According to Adobe, creative AI agents will become powerful tools to help creatives work faster and with greater ease, simplifying tasks while enabling creatives to retain full control. And Adobe is taking steps now toward this workflow. New agentic workflows introduced in Photoshop and Premiere Pro provide a future look at Adobe’s plans in terms of guided automation. Photoshop’s new reimagined Actions panel (beta) offers smart suggestions based on the creator’s own unique style, which can inspire the person to try out various creative directions and help the artist choose a series of multi-step edits. The Actions panel, says Adobe, is the foundation of what will become the app’s reactive AI agent.

Additionally, Adobe has laid the foundation for agentic professional video workflows in Premiere Pro with Media Intelligence, which understands the content clips, automatically recognizing objects and the visual composition of shots in every frame.

But the plan for agentic AI doesn’t stop there. Adobe says it plans to bring it into Express, transforming the app into a creative partner that helps users of all skill levels quickly and intuitively create standout visual content and ideate with greater ease.

Going Mobile

Adobe recently spent a good amount of time discussing its Web and mobile focus and why it is valuable to pros who prefer to work in the desktop apps but also like to do edits on the go or access their files on the go, via the Web or mobile options, but also to the next generation of creative professionals who are Web and mobile first in their preference. Several weeks ago, Adobe got this ball rolling by announcing Photoshop Mobile on the iPhone, with Android support to follow.

Actually, this move is not so surprising, and as Adobe reminded us, Express and Firefly were birthed from the start with the Web as part of its core DNA. In fact, Adobe said it plans to continue bringing its desktop applications into a multi-surface ecosystem, announcing Creative Cloud Web and Mobile, offering not just Photoshop on Mobile, but also Fresco on Web and Mobile, and Lightroom on Web and Mobile. This is in addition to the new Firefly mobile app, which will be available soon on both iOS and Android. 

The Express lane

Express is a companion app, which integrates with Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and more, making it seamless to create in more mediums and for more channels. Launched in December 2021, Express found a large following.  According to Adobe, there has been a 50% quarter-to-quarter growth in Adobe Express business customers  and an 85% year-over-year growth in student premium adoption. Meanwhile,  Express continues to mature,  with Adobe introducing new AI-powered creativity tools the app for intuitive and accessible content creation.

These new video, animation, and brand tools let users create compelling, on-brand content faster. The new tools include:

• Clip Maker,which automatically turns long-form content, including podcasts, interviews, and demos, into shareable clips with captions and highlights. 
• Generate Video, which creates custom background footage from text and image prompts to generate custom, commercially safe B-roll or background footage, using the Firefly Video Model. 
• Enhance Speech removes distracting background noise for polished, professional-quality sound with just a tap.
• Dynamic Animation adds physics-based movement to multiple elements in flat images with new presents like Wobble or Wind with one click.
• Generate Similar quickly produces cohesive branded content collections from a single asset in seconds. 
• New filters, 30-plus and powered by Photoshop’s imaging technology, help users get the look they want without having to exit Express.
• Direct integrations with Slack, Miro, HubSpot, and ChatGPT extend Express into everyday workflows. 

Content Authenticity

Adobe has prided itself on its initiatives to protect creators and their content from misuse and misrepresentation. With the commercial use of generative AI-produced images in its apps, the company began adding generative AI credentials, metadata automatically applied to content created with GenAI. Described as a digital nutrition label, the credentials reveal information including an asset’s name, creation date, tools used for creation, any edits made, and so on. This data increases the transparency around the origin and history of the asset it is applied to, protecting not just the artists, but consumers as well, Adobe said at the time it was introduced. Powered by free, open-source technology from the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), Content Credentials remains associated with content wherever it is used, published, or stored, enabling proper attribution and helping consumers make informed decisions about digital content, Adobe noted. 

Now, Adobe has taken this initiative even further with the public beta launch of the free Adobe Content Authenticity app. The app not only applies Content Credentials to users’ work, but also offers greater control over what information is attached and how their digital work is identified, shared, and protected via Content Credentials. Developed in close collaboration with the creative community, this app, explains Adobe, allows creators to attach important information about themselves to their own digital work; this includes verifying their identity and their social media accounts. It also enables creators to attach a generative AI training and usage preference, signaling to other generative AI models that they don’t want their content used for training, helping to lay the foundation for creator choice.

According to Adobe, Content Credentials are the most comprehensive provenance solution available today, combining cryptographically secure metadata, invisible watermarking, and digital fingerprinting.

Also, Adobe has included in Fresco, its pro painting and drawing app, the ability to include a Content Credential that indicates that artwork was created by hand, without the use of AI.

Apprenticeships

Adobe is providing creatives of all levels with a wide range of tools that enable them to explore their creativity, whether for work or for play. For the aspiring-artist crowd, whether designers, photographers, or video professionals, Adobe is offering more than just tools; they are offering training, guidance, and opportunity through the new Adobe Creative Apprenticeship.

The Adobe Creative Apprenticeship is a group of programs that combines learning, mentorship, hands-on experience, and real-world job opportunities with select creative employers, all accessible on Behance via the new Career Resource Center and included as part of the person’s Creative Cloud membership. There are free career guides, mentorship opportunities, portfolio reviews, commission projects, and apprenticeship opportunities. The Career Resource Center is available worldwide, but currently, commission projects and apprenticeship opportunities are only available in the US, Canada, and UK.

Additionally, through Adobe’s partnership with LinkedIn, some Creative Cloud members now get three months of free LinkedIn Premium Career to assist in finding the right job, standing out to hiring managers, networking with recruiters, and building skills to advance a person’s career with over 24,000 LinkedIn Learning courses.

“Our goal is to empower ambitious jobseekers with the soft skills they need, connect them with others who can guide them, and, ultimately, give them the opportunity to show what they can do,” Adobe states.

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