Adobe rolls out AI Agents and updates to Lightroom, Photoshop and more

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Adobe has used its annual MAX event in London, UK, to announce updates to many of its suite of Creative Cloud applications.

For photographers, the most interesting updates are to Lightroom and Photoshop, but almost all the company's applications have received updates, with more than 100 Creative Cloud innovations and productivity upgrades announced in total. 

The Lightroom upgrades improve tools for editing and sharing photos on both desktop and in the mobile app. An all-new Select Landscape tool in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic is designed to allow photographers to automatically detect and create masks for common landscape elements like water, plants, sky and more.

Additionally, Lightroom Mobile and Web are introducing new sharing capabilities. An upgrade to Quick Actions make it possible to retouch group photos with greater precision. 

Upgrades to Photoshop include improvements to speed, alongside smarter suggestions and tools for working with precise details. As you'd expect, many are powered by Adobe's Firefly, the company's AI engine.

Photoshop's Select Details tool also allows better control of colour, simplifying the process of adjusting color hue, saturation and lightness. Image: Adobe

The first is Composition Reference in Text to Image, which gives creative controls for ideating by generating assets with the same structure and visual arrangement as a reference image.

Photoshop's new Select tool. Image: Adobe

Next is Select Details, which make more intuitive to select things like hair, facial features and clothing; Adjust Colours, which simplifies the process of adjusting color hue, saturation and lightness in images for better colour adjustments; and a reimagined Actions panel (in beta), which delivers smarter workflow suggestions.

Photoshop's new Actions tool. Image: Adobe

Photoshop’s new reimagined Actions panel offers suggestions to creators to try out various creative directions and help users choose a series of multi-step edits to undertake.

The Actions panel then enacts these edits with a single click. It is the foundation of what will become Photoshop’s first creative 'AI agent.'

AI Agents, or Agentic AI, are the idea that AI Agents can assist creative professionals similar to how generative AI assists them today. 

An image created in Adobe Firefly. Image: Adobe

The company says it is planning to introduce tools that can use natural language to access more than 1,000 one-click actions in Photoshop, helping users learn new features and handle repetitive tasks with the creator "in control and in the driver’s seat."

Adobe is also planning to bring agentic AI to its more user-friendly Adobe Express programme, "transforming it into a creative partner that helps users of all skill levels quickly and intuitively create standout visual content and bring ideas to life with ease."

A cat on a cloud created with Adobe Firefly. Image: Adobe

Creative Apprenticeship Initiative

Adobe has also announced a new Creative Apprenticeship initiative, aimed at helping the next generation of creators establish themselves in their careers.

Adobe says it has recruited hundreds of mentors and employers to the initiative, which provides participants with hands-on learning opportunities, mentorship and real-world experience.

Content Authenticity App

Adobe also announced new 'protections' for creators to help ensure they receive credit for their work and to protect it from misuse and misrepresentation.

The launch of the Adobe Content Authenticity app, now in public beta, offers a free tool to let creators choose which information is attached to their work via Content Credentials.

It includes verified identity, which lets creators include a tag in their Content Credentials to state they don’t want generative AI models to train on their work.

Created in Adobe Firefly with the prompt 'A portrait of a child with porcelain skin, wearing a crown of oversized vivid flowers.' Image: Adobe

All-new Firefly app

Finally, Adobe also announced the all-new Firefly app, the company's all-in-one home for AI-assisted content ideation, creation and production.

Firefly includes all of Adobe’s commercially safe creative AI models, including a new Firefly Image Model 4 for lifelike images, the a Firefly Image Model 4 Ultra for "impeccable detail and complexity" and a new Firefly Video Model which generates footage from text prompts and images  – all of which are available now. 

You can find out more about all the new updates on Adobe's blog. 

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