Adobe unveils Lightroom and Photoshop updates

Adobe has announced new additions to its Lightroom and Photoshop product suites, timed with the company's annual Adobe MAX conference in LA.

In Lightoom, the updates are headlined by new AI-powered masking and improved Adaptive Presets, while Photoshop sees “major” updates to Photoshop on desktop, iPad, and Photoshop for web.

Let's start by looking at the updates to Lightroom.

Selections

Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Camera Raw have all received updates to the selective adjustment tools first added in 2021. In addition to Select Sky and Select Subject, today’s update to the suite adds Select People, Select Objects, and a new one-click Select Background.

Select People automatically detects a person within a photograph, then creates masks that can be further filtered to their facial skin, body skin, eyebrow, sclera, iris/pupil, lips, teeth, mouth and hair.

Select Objects lets users select objects using a variety of different methods, including roughly scribbling on the photo to select an object, or dragging a selection box over the object. From there, Lightroom AI will automatically refine the selection.

Finally, while Lightroom previously required inverting a subject mask to select the background, now the AI-based Select Background feature can perform this task with one click. 

Adaptive presets

Adaptive Presets were first introduced in June last year, and they've been further refined in the latest update.

Acting like masks, Adaptive Presets are single-click enhancements unique to a photo that can, according to Adobe, quickly enhance an entire portrait, or target specific features with presets including eye enhancement, tooth whitening, eyebrow darkening, and more with a single click or tap.

The updated Adaptive Presets are available on desktop and mobile versions of the Lightroom Suite.

The mobile version of Lightroom also gains Sky and Subject Adaptive Presets, which allows for single-tap detection of subjects and quick mask selection based on the overall structure of the image.

Content-Aware Remove

Inherited from Photoshops's Content-Aware technology, the new Content Aware Remove feature in Lightroom 'supercharges' healing and makes powerful edits to images, such as removing a dog's leash. 

According to the company, the technology can easily remove blemishes and defects, make precise adjustments even faster, and complete single-click enhancements.

Adobe Camera Raw has also gained some minor enhancements, including the ability to adjust curves for local selections and has added the ability to mask and refine adjustments directly in ACR. These adjustments will be “coming to Lightroom in the near future.”

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop's standout new features include Share for Review (currently in beta), which enables collaboration on projects without leaving Photoshop.

In addition, new features to enhance editing images powered by Adobe Sensei AI, including selection improvements that enhance the accuracy and quality of selections, and a one-click Delete and Fill tool to remove and replace objects in images with a single action have been added to Photoshop.

“In a world where everyone can be a creator, Adobe is ensuring that Photoshop evolves to serve all creators across platforms and devices,” said Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president, Creative Cloud at Adobe.

“This year, we’ve made Photoshop smarter and more collaborative so you can easily get feedback and create spectacular images even faster.”

Share for review

The new version of Photoshop introduces Share for Review, enabling collaboration between creators and stakeholders: All feedback is managed and incorporated directly within the Photoshop app.

The new feature lets creatives share a preferred version of their work in the form of a web link, which collaborators can review and comment on in their browser, even without a Creative Cloud subscription. Share for Review syncs comments across devices.

AI features

Announcing that Photoshop and Lightroom AI image-editing features have been used over a whopping 1.3 billion times in the past year, Adobe has (perhaps unsurprisingly) confirmed a number of new AI features for PS, including:

• Selection improvements that enable users to hover over, detect and make detailed selections of complex objects with a single click, creating higher quality and more accurate selections of elements such as skies, foregrounds, subjects and hair, while preserving detailed edges.
  
  
• One-Click Delete and Fill selects and removes objects from images, filling the removed area using content-aware fill, in a single action in Photoshop on the web.
  
  
• Photo Restoration Neural Filter (beta), which can help bring old or damaged photos 'back to life', using machine learning to intelligently eliminate scratches and other minor imperfections on old photographs.
  
  
• Remove Background is now available in Photoshop on the web (beta), enabling one-click background removal.
  
  
• Masking and Brushing are also now available in Photoshop on the web (beta) and make precise adjustments faster and easier from a web browser.

Improved Multi-Surface experiences

In addition to upgrades to the desktop version of Photoshop, Photoshop on the iPad gains access to one-tap Content-Aware Fill and Remove Background features, along with selection improvements for more accurate selections of elements such as skies, foregrounds, subjects and hair.

The iPad version of PS also gains One-Click Delete and Fill, which selects and removes objects from images, filling the removed area using content-aware fill, in a single action.

And finally, iPad Remove Background isolates the main subjects from the background. Using Sensei, the most prominent subject in an image is selected in a single click, with the background removed. 

If you want to find out more about any of the enhancements in more detail, there's a ton of information over at the Adobe blog.