At its Max conference this week, Adobe announced a plethora of improvements and enhancements—many based on its generative AI Firefly models—across its product lines, including Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Express, and GenStudio.
At Adobe Max this week, the company continued down the road to innovation, adding a plethora of new features across its Creative Cloud and Express offerings to advance the work of creators, teams, and marketers. In all, Adobe announced more than 100 new Creative Cloud features across Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, including some powered by Adobe Firefly AI that enable users to create, collaborate, and conceptualize ideas while working more productively. In addition, Adobe announced an all-new Frame.io as well as significant updates to Adobe Express.
Adobe Firefly continued to generate a buzz at Max. Not only did the company extend its generative AI models with the introduction of Adobe Firefly Video Model (in beta), but also announced the latest evolution of Firefly Image 3 Model, which the company says generates images four times faster. Meanwhile, updates to the Vector Model give Illustrator users more creative control. And, enterprise users are able to take advantage of the speedups and scaling abilities in Firefly Services and Custom Models.
Adobe likes to keep track of the number of images generated with Firefly, introduced in September 2022 at Max and released into public beta in March 2023. At this time, that number has reached more than 13 billion, a number the company is seemingly proud of, and rightly so.
Premiere Pro
While the introduction of Adobe Video Model (beta) was big news for Premiere Pro users, the announcements for the product did not end there. Rather, they were a continuation of a glimpse Adobe gave users last month prior to NAB at some new tools in beta for Premiere Pro.
Those recent Premiere Pro upgrades include:
- Premiere color management (beta), an entirely new color system that enables higher fidelity and more consistent color than ever before, automatically transforming log footage from nearly every camera into HDR and SDR, so editors can get started faster with quality footage (perfect skin tones, more vibrant color, and improved dynamic range).
- New context-aware properties panels that surface the most needed tools in a single convenient panel.
- Speedier performance, including ProRes exports, which are now up to 3´ faster, plus more hardware acceleration for faster playback.
- Expanded support for even more Canon, Sony, ARRI, and RED cameras that enables customers to import native files and start editing right away.
- A fresh, new design that’s modern and more consistent.
Photoshop and Illustrator
Elsewhere within the Adobe Creative Cloud sphere, Photoshop and Illustrator received a boost with capabilities providing more power, speed, and control.
In Photoshop, this includes:
- A new Distraction Removal smart technology to help remove people, wires, poles, and other distractions from images.
- Generative Workspace (beta) that helps designers ideate, brainstorm, and iterate concepts simultaneously.
- A new Substance 3D Viewer (beta) that offers new ways for graphic designers to view and edit 3D objects while working with 2D designs in Photoshop.
- The general availability of features like Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Similar, and Generate Background powered by Firefly’s Image 3 Model.
In Illustrator, this includes:
- Objects on Path, which lets users quickly attach, arrange, and move an object along any path of their art board.
- Enhanced Image Trace makes it easier and faster to convert images to vectors.
- Generative Shape Fill (beta), powered by the Firefly Vector Model, saves designers time while quickly adding detailed vectors to shapes to create unique designs.
Adobe also announced a beta of Project Neo, a Web app first previewed at last year’s Max that helps designers seamlessly create and edit 3D designs.
Frame.io
Announced at Max is the all-new Frame.io V4, which has been completely redesigned to be faster, provide better performance, and be more intuitive to use. V4 lets users organize media, manage work, share for review, collaborate, exchange, and deliver assets, all on one platform. The update features a brand-new metadata model, enabling creatives and their teams to easily organize and manage assets, while designing custom workflows that boost productivity. It includes new features for asset and workflow management, while enhancements to review-and-approval improve the overall collaboration experience.
Express and GenStudio
Adobe Express also received various enhancements that enable marketers and business users to up their game with more professional-looking content, create and get campaigns into market faster, and help ensure brand consistency. New integrations with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Lightroom will enable Creative Cloud users to work and share seamlessly across applications, teams, and external stakeholders.
Also for enterprises, Adobe announced the general availability of GenStudio for Performance Marketing, the latest application within Adobe GenStudio. The end-to-end content supply chain solution optimizes the process of planning, creating, managing, activating, and measuring content for marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences.
“We’re giving the creative community a powerful new brush to paint the world by putting unprecedented power, precision, and creative control in their hands,” said David Wadhwani, president of digital media at Adobe. “With the demand for content projected to grow exponentially, we’re empowering creators to scale the use of their content across marketing, HR and sales teams.”