Unlike the aforementioned Frankenstein this particular portrait project doesn’t require you to scour mortuaries or dig up body parts from the local cemetery. All the facial elements are coming from the same person, but once assembled will produce something as weird or wonderful (but mainly weird) as you like. There are different ways of capturing each feature, as well, but the basic plan is to take a head and shoulders shot with a portrait lens, or 50-100mm focal length lens. You can go with a wide aperture and completely throw the background out of focus, but also soften features in front of or further back from the focal point. Or, you can use an f/8 aperture and try to get the base image all in focus.

You then need to switch to a macro lens and shoot close up images of each facial element – eyes, nose, mouth, ears are the basics – but it’s worth including other parts like the forehead or chunks of neck. Don’t be afraid to get pretty close to fill the frame, because otherwise you’ll need to select and mask off parts of these close up images. You can go for detail, with a narrow aperture, or throw it wide open and just add the shallow depth of field to the sense of unreality. The trick is to shoot the close ups from different angles or with different expressions than the main image. Then it’s time to compose your creation.

How to create a bizarre portrait

1 Shoot the baseline portrait

The baseline image is the one onto which everything else will be added. Use a portrait lens to capture a head and shoulders portrait. Either go wide with an aperture such as f/1.8 or add more depth and detail with a narrower aperture such as f/8.

2 Capture the close-ups

Switch to a macro or close-focusing lens for close-up shots of individual features. Use a wide aperture to avoid having to increase the ISO if you're struggling for light. Ask your subject to exaggerate their expressions for a wilder aesthetic.

3 Start your composite

Load your base portrait into your chosen photo editing software then drop in the individual photos. Resize to fit, rotate some for effect and use masks to remove unwanted parts. Also, add a white border! Save the project so you can make variations and then flatten the layers and export your creation as a JPEG.

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Photoshop can now rename and organize layers, resize projects, or swap out a background with a simple text prompt. On June 18, Adobe launched an AI agent across several Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop and Premiere, allowing the long-standing editing programs to carry out multi-step processes with a text prompt.

The AI Assistant inside Photoshop and Premiere is rolling out beginning today, June 18, in public beta after Adobe previously teased that the feature was coming back in October during Adobe Max.

Photoshop’s AI Assistant was previously only available as a beta feature in Photoshop Web, the browser-based photo editor with a more limited number of tools. I tested the AI Assistant on Photoshop Web, and at times it felt like an overenthusiastic intern, but the experience left me with the impression that the AI assistant could perhaps one day handle the more boring photo editing tasks.

That’s exactly what Adobe is trying to do with the public beta rollout of AI Assistant across several Creative Cloud apps. Inside Photoshop, for example, the AI Assistant can carry out the process of resizing photos for different formats and platforms and even rename and organize layers.

In a demonstration, Adobe showed how the AI Assistant could also proofread graphic designs inside Photoshop, looking for more than spelling but factual inaccuracies as well.

Inside Premiere, the AI Assistant can help video editors organize assets into bins, batch rename clips based on their content, and add markers. Creators working with multiple camera angles of the same scene can also ask the AI to sync the time codes on those files and stack them inside the timeline.

When I tried the earlier beta version inside Photoshop Web, the potential to let the AI carry out more tedious, repetitive tasks felt like a modern AI take on Actions, the Photoshop tool that records your editing steps so that it can repeat them on another image – only the AI doesn’t need you to manually carry out the steps first.

But, the other feature that struck me about the Photoshop Web version of the AI Assistant is that it could also be used as a learning tool. When I asked the chatbot how to do something, it showed me the steps and where the tools were located – the AI Assistant doesn’t necessarily have to carry out the full edit for you.

When I tried that early AI Assistant back in March, the AI had some flaws and limitations. When I asked it for help editing flyaway hairs, for example, the chatbot removed the entire person – but at least apologized for doing so.

As a public beta, I suspect there are still some refinements left to do on Photoshop’s AI Assistant. But, one of my chief complaints was that using the AI bot was often slow – I’m hoping the rollout to the fully fledged Photoshop that isn’t 100 percent reliant on an internet connection will help create a faster experience.

Photo and video editors will be able to test out the AI Assistant as the feature rolls out on public beta.

The June 18 announcements also include news that Adobe is bringing its Creative Agent into Google Gemini. Like the tool already inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, the upcoming change will allow Gemini users to ask the AI to carry out a task using Adobe software, such as doing simple photo edits.

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If you've been scrolling social media lately, you've probably seen the 'pixel stretch trend' all over your feed. If you don't recognize it by name, this trend does exactly what it suggests: it stretches a slice of pixels from a photograph to create a dynamic sense of motion – and even leading lines.

This isn't the first time the pixel stretch trend has done the rounds on social media. It first surfaced back in 2008, then it appeared again about four years ago. Now it's back a third time, thanks to Gen Z, and if you want to get in on the trend all you need is a photo editor like Photoshop.

It helps to have an image where your subject – specifically its color palette – is distinct from the scenery, as the effect will be far more pronounced than if the subject blends into the background.

The pixel stretch trend works with everything from landscapes to street photography, provided there's a sizeable subject or object to work with. I'm going to use one of my portraits for this example, which I'll edit in Photoshop – but the principles are the same whichever app you're using.

How to do the pixel stretch trend

1) Separate your subject

Use whatever tool does the best job or that you're most comfortable using. Photoshop's Select subject button does a pretty good job, but feel free to go freehand, use the Magnetic Lasso Tool or anything else that gets the job done. Once you've selected your subject, hit Ctrl+J on a PC or Cmd+J to duplicate it as a new layer.

2) Create a pixel strip

On the background layer, use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to create a thin strip down the edge (or close to it, if the edge of your subject is uneven). Then hit Crtl/Cmd +J to duplicate it to a new layer, which should be sitting beneath the subject layer you created in step 1. If you want to, you can repeat this process on the same or different parts of your image.

3) Stretch your strip

Hit Ctrl/Cmd +T to activate Free Transform, which will give you a bounding box with transform points around the strip. Click and hold the middle point and simply drag it to the edge of the image to stretch it out. (You might need to hold the Shift key while you do this, if dragging this point stretches the subject in all directions.)

4) Switch to Warp

For some images – such as those with a flat or geometric subject – a simple, straight pixel stretch might be all you want. But to create dynamism, there's more to the process. While in Free Transform mode, click the icon indicated in the image above to switch into Warp mode. Alternatively, with your stretched pixel layer selected, go to Edit > Transform > Warp.

5) Warp 9, engage!

Now you can get creative! Using the anchor points you can drag, stretch and twist your stretched pixel strip. There are no hard and fast rules here; your shapes can be subtle or spectacular. The only thing to bear in mind is keeping colors or other characteristics in line with their source points on your subject, to support the illusion that its individual pixels are being stretched from their origins.

6) Complementary stretches

If you're adding more than one pixel stretch element, make sure that they complement one another – or, at the very least, that they don't clash. You can use them to create leading lines, to help guide the viewer's eyes around the image, and you can even use the Dodge and Burn Tools to lighten and darken the image to create more depth and dimension. Just experiment and see what works best. Have fun!

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Adobe’s Agentic AI – the AI that runs tasks for you – has only just arrived on scene, but Adobe is already bringing the ability to use apps like Photoshop and Premiere into Google’s AI. During Google I/O, the two companies announced that Adobe apps will soon connect to Gemini.

The move will allow Gemini users to describe what they want while the agentic AI moves through the steps inside Adobe apps, including photo, video, and design software. Adobe says that users will also be able to continue working on the project inside the Adobe app itself or with Adobe Firefly.

The Gemini-Adobe integration will arrive “in the coming weeks” and Adobe hasn’t spelled out details on exactly what the agentic AI can and cannot do yet. But a few examples of how the integration has been used in existing agentic options offers hints that using Gemini will allow photographers to edit images without the back-and-forth between Lightroom and Photoshop.

Photographers can already use Firefly AI Assistant to edit photos across both Lightroom and Photoshop without the constant switch between the apps. As Adobe explains, one photographer using Firefly AI Assistant “let the assistant work through it step by step, connecting the right Adobe tools, checking in for feedback, and moving forward only when he approved.”

The example of getting feedback at every step is an important one. I’ve tested the agentic AI inside the beta version of Photoshop Web, and it felt a bit like an overenthusiastic photo intern – I didn’t always get the results I had asked for.

I’ve also tried ChatGPT’s Photoshop integration and was surprised at how the chatbot leaned towards a learning experience rather than an easy fix – and I’m hopeful that the ucpming Adobe-Gemini could similarly be used to learn the steps of more complex edits.

Another important distinction is that while Agentic AI is built on generative AI, Agentic AI can be used without generating a new image. The AI assistant in the beta Photoshop Web, for example, walks through the same steps in Photoshop that I would manually adjust – it doesn’t generate new pixels unless using a generative tool like Generative Fill.

Gemini will soon join Adobe’s own Firefly AI Assistant and Claude as AIs that are capable of carrying out steps inside Adobe apps, including Premiere, Illustrator and Express as well as Photoshop.

Adobe says that “we’re just getting started" with agentic AI. “There’s tremendous momentum around agentic creativity and we have a great roadmap that we’re bringing creators,” Adobe’s Forest Key, Vice President for Agentic AI for Creativity & Productivity Business, wrote in a blog post. “But what excites us most is what creators are already doing with these tools. The workflows you’re inventing. The ideas you’re bringing to life that simply weren't feasible before.”

Adobe hasn’t yet shared the cost of the tool. However, it’s based on the existing connector that works with Claude, which includes around 40 tools free, with additional tools for creators with Adobe subscriptions.

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Who among us hasn't been bored at work? However, few people are bored enough to Photoshop their boss's face for a joke and run it by them to ask if it's okay to put it on the company website - before turning them into a meme.

However, that's what a guy called Lincoln McCoy just did in the US company he works for, VanDoIt (they build customised vans for everything from mobile clinics to SWAT teams).

He Photoshopped his coworkers' faces, giving them everything from huge foreheads to funny googly eyes and amusing eyebrows, occasionally also causing them to bald, using the Liquify tool.

He then sent them the photos, asking, "Hey, we're updating everyone's photo on the website. Good to go?"

There was definitely a gender split in the replies, with women caring far more about their appearance.

Chief Management Officer Brent Cline was positively thrilled with his forehead being, shall we say, embiggened, saying, "I'm absolutely good with that because it makes me look much better than normal."

CEO Jared McCauslin, whose forehead and ears had also been greatly enlarged, along with his shirt being opened to reveal a vast expanse of chest hair, mused, "Something is off with my forehead. Other than that I say good to go!!"

The COO, Daniel Crosby, whose eyes were closer and whose eyebrows had been knitted together into a unibrow, initially replied "Approved - thank you sir," before rowing back: "Wait... I just paid attention. Why do I look like a caveman???"

Director of Sales Kaylee Anderson's eyebrows were raised and her smile was extended. When asked, "You good with this photo of you?" she replied with multiple laughing emojis, "No, what happened to my eyebrows?" When Lincoln asked, "What do you mean?", she answered, "I look like the joker."

On seeing her distended face, CFO Sally Stefancik replied, "Who dat?"

Lincoln cheekily fibbed, "I searched your name online and found this as a headshot of you?"

Sally answered, "What in the world? Maybe my eyes, definitely not my mouth."

"That's odd..." Lincoln replied.

But it was Director of Operations Shayna Dieckmann who had the bluntest response to her eyes and teeth being enlarged: "Immediately no"!

Luckily Lincoln's colleagues all had a sense of humour and allowed him to turn their responses into a video, which was then uploaded to the company Instagram earlier this week, gaining over a million views. @AlphaFox popularised the video on X, captioning it "Editing coworkers' photos weirdly and asking them if it's okay to use [them] on the company website" with a crying emoji. At the time of writing, the post had over half a million views.

"I like how the men didn't really care," commented @sloopythesloop on X.

"Proof that women read what you’ve sent and men barely skim it," said @annemariemarcantel on Instagram.

Like I say, we've all shirked in the office, but risking getting fired by turning your Photoshopped CEO into a meme is wild. Looks like VanDoIt is a fun place to work.

I’ve lost track of the number of hours that I’ve spent in Photoshop tackling tedious, boring tasks like resizing images and editing out powerlines and trash cans. But Adobe is working on a fix: An AI chatbot integrated into Photoshop that can tackle edits for you.

I tried the new Photoshop AI Assistant, which launched only in Beta and only on Photoshop Web earlier this week. While the chatbot did carry out a few pleasant edits for me, I was largely left with the overwhelming feeling that I had just worked with an overenthusiastic photo editing intern, from the chatbot not quite doing what I asked to laughable corrections to lengthy waits.

In short, I didn’t get the impression that professional photo editors should be worried about their future career prospects, at least for now. The AI Assistant was, at least, a much more flexible tool than the Photoshop built into ChatGPT that I tried. But, there are a few key areas where I think a Photoshop chatbot could be rather helpful in future renditions.

First, the AI Assistant is only rolling out to Photoshop for Web for now, which isn’t exactly a full version of Photoshop, and it also has difficulty handling larger, high-resolution files. Many of the new tool’s limitations lie just in the fact that it’s only for the web right now.

One of those limitations is that the web-based Photoshop feels slower than the desktop version. There were a handful of edits that I thought I could have already finished while the AI Assistant was still doing its thing.

The Photoshop AI Assistant works in two ways. First, you can click on parts of the photo and type in a prompt to adjust a specific part of the image. Or, you can talk to the chatbot in the dedicated AI Assistant sidebar.

I started out editing a landscape photo that I took with a film-inspired preset, exaggerating the purples. The AI Assistant scanned the image, then made suggestions, so even if I come into the program without an idea, it sparks some based on what’s in the image. The AI Assistant is eager to use generative AI, and in a few minutes, it added more glowing city lights to the scene and even a full moon (though the craters didn’t feel quite accurate, never mind that it wasn’t a full moon on that day).

Then, I moved on to trying to edit a few portraits. I asked the AI to help clean up flyaway hair, and instead it removed the entire person…twice. At least the AI owned up to the mistake both times, telling me “Oops, looks like the stray hairs AND the whole subject got zapped!” complete with emojis. The bot told me, “It’s really tough for me (and even for Photoshop pros) to accurately select just the stray hair strands.”

The overly enthusiastic hair selection wasn’t the only time the selection was off. When I asked the bot to help make the eyes pop, it applied the effect to the face instead, overbrightening and adding saturation that brought out the skin’s redness.

Because of those whoopses that I had to go in and manually adjust – and the slower pace of a web-based software – I was left with the impression that I probably could have just done it myself faster (and without wasting as many resources).

But, while I won’t be trying the AI Assistant again anytime soon, I was left with an impression that there are a few areas where such a feature could be rather helpful. After all, the AI Assistant is only in beta, which means Adobe is collecting feedback and still making changes.

The feature that impressed me the most is that you can use the AI Assistant in two ways: First, by asking “do it for me” questions, and second, by using “show me how” prompts. The latter prompt I can see growing into a tool to help novices learn the program directly inside the app itself.

The chatbot walked me through the instructions for several common edits, such as adding more background blur and adjusting color casts. Hovering over the blue text in the chatbot’s response highlights where the tools are located, so I’m not searching through different menus and toolbars. (This would, admittedly, be more helpful if Photoshop for Web had more in common with the fully fledged Photoshop, as some tools are in different locations.)

When I asked the chatbot to carry out those edits for me, I could also see them being completed on the screen in real-time, so it actually shows me what’s happening and leaves me with the layers and tools to make tweaks to those AI-applied adjustments. Thanks to the Cloud, I could also open those files into the real Photoshop for further tweaks, directly from my recent files.

The other thing that I feel the Photoshop AI Assistant could actually be useful for – once it irons out the beta kinks – is as a sort of replacement to the software’s Actions panel. The Actions panel allows photo editors to edit one image and save the steps in order to apply those same changes to another image. I feel like if the AI could watch me carry out one edit, then apply it to other images, the results would feel more customized to my style.

The Photoshop AI Assistant is only in beta and, while I can see it becoming a learning tool and replacing some tedious tasks, the chatbot has a way to go before it feels more like an assistant and less like an intern.

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Look Up Tables (LUTs) are traditionally used to give a consistent look and feel to film projects or commercial photos but there’s no reason why you can’t use them to give your images a different look. They work by creating a table consisting of the original color values in an image and transposing them into different shades. Not only can you use the ones supplied with Photoshop, you can create your own to be used on new images. That’s what this tutorial is about. It’s also important to realise that if the image you apply the new LUT to doesn’t contain any of the shades that are in the table, then nothing will change! For that reason, it’s best to create the LUT from an image that either has a good range of colors, or a specific set and you name the LUT accordingly.

1 Find a suitable image

You can create LUTs for specific styles and types of starting image, but this one is for general purpose use as it has reds, greens and blues in it. The light is fairly flat as well, which makes it a good starting point. So, go to the Layers palette and click on the New fill or adjustment layer icon, then select Curves. It’s not quite an S-shape as the shadows are deep enough, but it brightens the highlights.

2 Color changes

Now add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and select the blue channel at the top. Use the dropper tool from this palette and click on the blue car to make it more accurate. Now change the Hue slider until it’s a red colour. It will also affect the sky. You can select other colors in this palette but you get more control if you create new adjustments for each color as you can adjust the opacity.

3 Change the grass

The big change for any landscape is the green/yellow component. Create another Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, select the green channel at the top and use the color dropper to click on the grass itself. Use the Hue slider to change this to a red color as well. A final adjustment comes by adding a Photo filter adjustment layer and selecting Warming Filter (85). Increase the Density to 50.

4 Save the LUT

Now, this is quite a radical color shift, to demonstrate how it works. In practice, you can create more subtle ones as well those that are themed to particular color shifts. Go to File> Export> Color Lookup Tables. In the dialog box give your LUT a meaningful description and select .Cube as the most commonly LUT type. Then click OK. Navigate to where you want to save it and name the file accordingly.

5 How to use your LUTs

To use this LUT and any others you create, load an image and go to the Layers palette. Select New adjustment layer again and select Color Lookup. In the Properties panel, click on Load 3D LUT and then Load 3D LUT again for the file browser. Find the one you created earlier, select it, and it will now be loaded as an adjustment layer that you can control.

Adobe has announced that three popular image adjustments (Clarity, Dehaze and Grain) are now available as proper adjustment layers in Photoshop. It's a workflow improvement that photo editors have been requesting for years.

Until now, these tools only existed in Camera Raw, either when opening RAW files or via the Camera Raw Filter. That meant working within a modal dialog box: make your changes, click OK, done.

Want to tweak your Dehaze setting tomorrow? Hope you used a Smart Object. Want to apply different amounts to different parts of the image? Prepare for layer duplication and complex masking workflows.

Adjustment layers change that completely. They're stackable, maskable and endlessly editable. You can apply different amounts of Clarity to different parts of an image using masks. You can adjust opacity to blend effects subtly. You can come back days later and modify your settings without degrading image quality.

This is how professional Photoshop users prefer to work and now these three tools finally support that workflow.

For example, you might want strong Dehaze on a distant mountain range but none on the foreground. Previously, this required duplicating layers, applying the Camera Raw Filter separately and masking carefully. Now you just add a Dehaze adjustment layer and paint your mask. Want to try a different strength? Adjust the slider. Want to blend it differently? Change the opacity or try a different blend mode. The flexibility is enormous.

AI improvements

Of course, it wouldn't be a modern Photoshop update without mention of those AI features that Adobe keeps telling me everybody loves. If that includes you, there's here's the skinny.

Generative Fill, Generative Expand and the Remove tool now output at 2K resolution with fewer artifacts and better prompt adherence. Reference Image with objects has been improved to better preserve object identity with geometry-aware adjustments for scale, rotation and perspective.

There's also Dynamic Text in beta, which wraps text along circular or arched paths with a click; ending the awkward workarounds required by traditional text-on-path tools.

For my money, though, it's the addition of these three adjustment layers that's most heartening. It feels like Adobe is actually listening to photographer feedback for a change, as opposed to content creators who just want quick content and aren't too bothered about the quality.

Sometimes the most valuable updates aren't the ones with the biggest marketing push, but those that remove friction from everyday work. These adjustment layers aren't flashy AI or cloud integrations; they're fundamental workflow improvements to tools photographers use daily. Here's what they can actually do:

Clarity enhances midtone contrast and structure, making images look crisper and more defined. It's particularly useful for bringing out texture in landscapes, architectural details, or any scene that needs more punch. The effect works by increasing contrast in the midtones without dramatically affecting highlights or shadows, which gives images that characteristic "pop" without looking overly processed. As an adjustment layer, you can now apply it selectively; adding clarity to eyes in a portrait while leaving skin smooth, for instance, or emphasizing texture in certain elements while keeping others soft.

Dehaze cuts through atmospheric haze and improves contrast in flat, washed-out scenes. It's invaluable for landscape photography but also works wonders on any image suffering from low contrast. Being able to mask it means you can target just the hazy areas without affecting the entire image.

Grain adds film-like texture to digital images. It's useful for black and white conversions, vintage effects, or simply making ultra-clean digital files feel more organic. The adjustment layer implementation means you can vary grain intensity across the image or blend it at reduced opacity.

The updates are available now in the main, desktop version of Photoshop, with AI improvements also coming to Photoshop on the web.

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop for more than 20 years, which feels like a lifetime in the world of digital photography. Over that time, it has become second nature - a constant in my workflow, evolving quietly in the background as my own shooting style changed.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use Photoshop anywhere near its full potential, but every update still manages to surprise me with a clever new tool or refinement that reminds me just how powerful it really is. And yet, despite all that history, I’ve found myself seriously questioning whether it still deserves its place at the centre of my editing life.

The reason is simple: the way I actually edit photos day to day is far more modest than the software suggests. I try to get things as right as I can in-camera, whether I’m shooting digital or film, which means my editing is usually light-touch. Exposure tweaks, a bit of contrast, gentle curve adjustments, the occasional spot or heal when dust sneaks onto the sensor, and a crop if the framing needs tightening. That’s about it. Increasingly, I’ve realised that this kind of workflow doesn’t demand a sprawling subscription ecosystem - it just needs solid, reliable tools that stay out of the way.

This is where Affinity enters the conversation. The latest Affinity photo editor offers a full suite of image-editing tools that comfortably covers everything I actually do, and then some. Exposure, curves, retouching, cropping, layers, masking – it’s all there, alongside graphic design features that blur the line between Photoshop and Illustrator. Crucially for me, it also supports DNG raw editing, which means it can handle my files properly without compromise. On paper, at least, it ticks every box I genuinely need ticked.

What makes this feel like more than idle curiosity is the growing sense that my reliance on Adobe is largely habitual. I’m paying for depth and complexity that I admire, but rarely exploit. Affinity, by contrast, feels leaner and more purposeful – built for photographers who know what they want to do and just want to get on with it. For someone whose editing philosophy is rooted in restraint rather than rescue, that’s an appealing proposition.

That said, there is a hesitation I can’t ignore. At the moment, Affinity doesn’t offer the same kind of seamless, native app workflow across iPad, iPhone, and Android that Adobe Lightroom does.

I use Lightroom almost exclusively to edit images taken on my phone, and I do a surprising amount of editing that way these days, even from files taken from my camera too. Going cold turkey from Adobe would mean shifting all of that work back to a desktop or laptop – something that won’t bother many readers, but for me would feel like a definite step backwards in convenience.

And yet, the numbers are hard to ignore. Walking away from Adobe would mean a saving of around $240 or £240 a year – money that could be far better spent elsewhere. In real terms, that’s personal breathing space, or even something tangible like film photography supplies, which would translate to roughly 500 feet of film. So am I mad for even considering it, or is this a quietly genius move? Right now, it feels like a genuine crossroads between comfort and clarity – and I’m not entirely sure which path I’ll take.

For years, I was a fully paid-up Adobe pro. Not “I dabble now and then” paid-up, but full-fat, all-you-can-eat access to the entire Adobe Creative Cloud Pro suite. Twenty-four apps. Every tool. The lot. And for a long time, I did what many of us do: I rode the wave of discounts, retention deals, and loyalty pricing, convincing myself that I was beating the system.

Then reality landed with a thud!

Come April, when my deal expired, my monthly bill was set to jump to a massive 66.49 a month. That’s 797.88 a year, and at that point, I refused. No software – no matter how industry-standard, clever, or entrenched – gets a free pass at nearly eight hundred a year just because it always has.

Now, I could have gone nuclear. I’ve already started seriously considering Affinity as a long-term alternative for photo editing, and frankly, the value proposition is very hard to ignore. I also briefly considered “acquiring” the software from a corner of the internet populated by people with parrots, eye patches, and questionable morals – but as tempting as that moment was, I do actually like some of the newer features Adobe has been rolling out, and I prefer my karma, and my files intact.

The bigger issue was continuity. I didn’t want to break years of Adobe workflows overnight, or risk mangling countless Photoshop and InDesign files I still rely on. So instead of burning the house down, I did something far more effective: I opened my account and actually looked at what I was paying for. That’s when the penny dropped!

Out of the 24 applications bundled into my Adobe Creative Cloud Pro plan, I was regularly using just three. Photoshop, every single day, across both my laptop and desktop. Lightroom, almost exclusively on my phone for image editing on the move. And InDesign for flyers, posters, birthday cards, and assorted print work – because once a journalist, always a journalist.

Everything else? Untouched. Forgotten. Digital dust. So I clicked “Change Plan,” fully expecting a minor saving. What I didn’t expect was daylight robbery – in my favour. I ditched the all-singing Pro bundle, opted for the Photography Plan (which neatly covers Photoshop and Lightroom), and then added InDesign as a standalone app. That was it.

No phone calls. No arguments. No “Are you sure?” guilt-tripping. And just like that, I’d slashed my Adobe bill by 503 a year – 24.53 a month. Yes, 41.96 a month for three apps is still a chunk of change, and if you want to go fully free or low-cost, there are absolutely other routes you can take. But for my workflow, this was the sweet spot.

The cherry on top? Because I made this change mid-billing cycle, Adobe actually refunded me 22 dollars. So effectively, I got InDesign for free for a month – something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

The lesson here isn’t “Ditch Adobe at all costs.” It’s this: stop paying for software out of habit. Subscription creep is real, and Adobe is banking – literally – on you not checking what you actually use. Cull the apps you don’t touch, downgrade without guilt, and take back control of your monthly outgoings.

If you’re looking for a sign to save some serious dosh, this is it. Go and look at your Adobe subscriptions. You might be shocked at just how much money you’re setting fire to every year!

Black-and-white photography is all about control – and one misstep in post-processing can completely limit your creative potential. Understanding how to handle grey tones properly is the key to impactful monochrome images – no matter what genre you're shooting.

One of the most common mistakes photographers make when editing black-and-white photos is converting files straight to greyscale. While it sounds logical, this instantly discards valuable color data – and with it, your ability to precisely control luminosity contrast and tonal separation.

For context, the color information is crucial to control luminosity, which heavily influences the visual outcome of black-and-white photographs. The result? Flat, lifeless black-and-white images.

Instead make use of the Black & White Adjustment Layer, which enables you to individually control the colors' grey shades via luminosity. In general, working with Adjustment Layers only is the way to go. This has the benefit of maximum control over the editing process, as you can always go back to the specific layer to reset or readjust settings.

Let's take a look at the powerful – and flexible – tools for optimizing your monochrome images. From simple adjustments to advanced conversions, these techniques will help you fine-tune your black-and-white work with intention, creativity and full control.

To demonstrate the effects, we're editing images by Mostafa Nodeh, an award-winning photographer known for his minimalistic black-and-white photography.

The top four

1. Control luminosity

Use the color information to visually set elements apart in mono. Add a Black & White Adjustment Layer and a window opens showing color tones from Red to Magenta. This adjustment works similarly to the in-camera color filters but, with access to specific sliders, you have maximum control over the luminosity levels.

2. S-Curve 

To enhance or decrease the contrast of your black-and-white shots, add a Curve Adjustment layer. Here, most frames benefit from a classic curve. Click on the anchor points and adjust these into an S-shape. However, it is worth experimenting with settings as each frame is different.

3. Dodge and Burn

To fine-tune specific image elements in contrast and luminosity, use Dodge and Burn tools. With these, you can target the tonality of subjects (Dodge) or add contrast (Burn) by painting in the frame. Don’t forget to specify the tonality range to either work on shadows, midtones or highlights.

4. Texture overlay

Adding some fine-grain noise or a pattern overlay is a clever technique to add a more classical analog touch to your monochrome shots. Texture filters are available, but you can also raise the texture slider in your RAW Editing Converter. Here, bear in mind that the latter can not be fine-tuned after the setting has been applied.

Toning effect

High key 

Add a Curve Adjustment Layer. Now raise the curve via the anchors to lighten the grey tones in your image. Keep an eye out so that you don’t lose any details in the highlights.

Sepia

First, add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Now set the Hue value to around 30, while dragging the Saturation slider to around a value of 25. Tick the Colorize box.

Cyanotype

Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Set the Hue value around 220 and Saturation to 35. Tick the Colorize box. Open the Curve Adjustment Layer and add contrast via an S-curve.

Split-tone

Use Split Tone panel or Gradient Map Adjustment Layer. Set shadows to one colour and highlights to another. Complementary color combinations such as red and blue work best.

Advanced conversions

Step 1: Create Gradient Map

Click on the half-white and half-black circle found at the bottom of the Layers panel. Now select the Gradient Map. Then a window will appear in the Properties panel.

2. Open dialog box

Simply click on the gradient shown and the Gradient Editor opens. Under Presets, you will find a Basics folder. Open it and select the third option shown named Black, White.

3. Add Level Adjustment Layer

To reduce the contrast, set the black output level to around 25. To enhance the contrast, set the white point to 10, mid-tones/brightness to 1, and the black point around 200.

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I’ve been using Photoshop for the better part of two decades – and there have been more than a few occasions where I realized I could have saved a lot of time using a newer tool instead of reaching for my habitual favorites. Sorry, Lasso and Healing Brush, but I think it may be time to go our separate ways.

I recently sat down with Stephen Nielsen, Adobe Photoshop’s Senior Director of Product Management, to talk about the longtime tools that are habitual favorites of longtime Photoshop users – but actually have a modern tool that will often get better results in less time.

Now, these tools do not necessarily need to be replaced 100 percent of the time, but there are a handful of tools inside Photoshop that tend to either get better results, faster edits, or both in a majority of scenarios. (And no, not all of these tools are AI either.)

Here are seven Photoshop tools that you may want to leave in the past.

Unsharp Mask

Try Smart Sharpen, or AI Sharpen instead

Unsharp Mask has been around about as long as Photoshop itself. The tool is actually based on a film developing technique where one image is intentionally blurred, then added to the original with a contrast mask to create a sharper image.

But, Neilson says that, in a majority of cases, Smart Sharpen is almost always better. (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen). Why? Smart Sharpen looks for the edges and only applies sharpening at those edges. That leads to fewer artifacts and better results, plus there are more sliders for editors to fine-tune the results.

An even more recent tool for sharpening is the AI Sharpen, which is a partner model from Topaz Labs. Photo editors can find this option by going to Filter > AI Sharpen. Unlike Smart Sharpen, though, AI Sharpen will use generative credits.

Magic Wand

Try Select Subject, Select Object or Select Sky instead

Magic Wand is still helpful when you want to select one solid color, but Nielson notes that in most other scenarios, Magic Wand is the long and drawn-out way to make a selection. If you want to select the subject, try the Select Subject by going to Select > Subject.

If the object that you want to select isn’t the subject (or is perhaps only part of the subject, and you don’t want the whole thing), try the Object Selection too – it’s located in the same toolbox as the Magic Wand. Select that tool, then draw a rough box around the object, and Photoshop will detect the edges for you.

Or, if you’re trying to mask out the sky, try Select > Sky instead.

The Lasso tool

Try the Selection Brush Tool instead

Is it time to say “so long, pardner” to the lasso tool? Perhaps, but not because there’s a tool that’s better. There’s a tool that works just like the lasso, but also works as a selection paintbrush: the Selection Brush Tool.

You can find the Selection Brush Tool in the same toolbox as the lasso tool. If you hover over a subject, it will turn pink, and you can click to select it. You can also paint over the area to select. And, you can also use this tool exactly like the lasso and click to outline the area to select – you don’t need to fill in the center, Photoshop will do that for you. So the Selection Brush Tool really has a lasso built in, but does a few other tricks too.

The Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, and Content-Aware Fill (Sometimes!)

Try the Remove Tool instead

There are still several very good use cases for the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush, particularly when working with high-resolution textures, and some uses for Content Aware Fill. These tools aren’t something you need to 100 percent retire, but if you want to remove something from the photo, the newer Remove Tool will work better (and often faster) in many cases.

The Remove Tool is in the same toolbox as the Healing Brush and Clone tool. Once you select it, just click and paint over whatever you want to remove.

If you are Anti-AI, you can still use the Remove Tool. With the tool selected, you’ll see a drop-down box at the top near the options for brush size. Using this drop-down menu, you can choose not to use Generative AI, which will use more traditional algorithms to remove the selected area from the photo.

Upscaling with Image Size

Try using Generative Upscaler

Photoshop’s Image Size tool is still irreplaceable for tasks like making an image more web-friendly, but when it comes to making an image larger, Nielson recommends trying the newer Generative Upscale tools.

These tools are located in Image > Generative Upscale. Here, you can choose from a few different models to add more resolution. The Firefly Upscaler is available to all users, while Topaz Gigapixel and Opaz Bloom are available for premium subscribers.

Bonus: Three more modern tools to try

If you want to tweak color, try the new Adjust Colors Workflow. This (non-AI) tool is located on the Contextual Task Bar. What this tool does is select the six most prominent colors in the image. Then, you can select which color to adjust and use quick-access sliders to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness.

If you are correcting a tilted image or building a panorama, consider using Generative Expand instead of the Content-Aware fill to fill in gaps. You can do this by using the traditional crop tool, but at the top, go to the drop-down box that says Fill and select Generative Fill.

If you aren’t a professional graphic designer, Dynamic Text is a helpful tool for tasks like creating a photo quote for social media and similar projects. Dynamic Text creates a squared-off box of text but automatically adjusts the letter placement and sizes as you drag the corners of the box to fit the space.

Wait, why do outdated tools still exist inside Photoshop?

If tools like Unsharp Mask and the Magic Wand are nearly as old as Photoshop itself and are no longer the best option, why do they still exist? Well, for starters, there can be a few use cases for the longstanding tools, but Nielsen explains that Adobe likes to leave tools in place until they‘ve either been completely replaced or usage is very low.

“Generally, we care a lot about preserving customer choice,” Nielsen said. “This is a huge theme in Photoshop's history, and it's one of the reasons that people turn to Photoshop because there are so many choices and options. We want to preserve customer choice as much as possible. We generally leave tools in place until usage is really low or we can replace it.”

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If you're a photographer or filmmaker who uses Adobe software, 2025 was the year that the company stopped pretending that you were the main character in its story. You became the supporting cast.

That's neither an insult to you, nor shade at Adobe. But it is an honest observation that explains everything Adobe announced this year, from the genuinely useful (AI culling in Lightroom) to the bewildering (50,000 generative credits per month on the Firefly Premium plan).

The common thread? Photography and filmmaking are no longer ends in themselves in Adobe's universe. They're inputs into something larger: an industrial-scale content production machine designed for brands, agencies and marketing departments drowning in demand.

Serving enterprise, not photographers

Back in 2023, Adobe's research showed that creative and marketing teams were facing an insatiable demand for content that was likely to outpace their resources.

This is the problem that Adobe has spent the time since then solving. Not how to make your images better (though plenty of features do that incidentally), but how to industrialize content creation at enterprise scale.

Of course, photographers and filmmakers happen to create the raw materials that this machine needs: compelling imagery, authentic moments, professional footage. But we're now one ingredient in a much larger recipe.

Consider GenStudio, Adobe's "end-to-end content supply chain solution". Never heard of it? Most photographers haven't, but believe me: it's been a cornerstone of the company's 2025 strategy.

For the uninitiated, GenStudio enables marketing teams to plan, create, manage, activate and measure content with integrations spanning Amazon Ads, Google Marketing Platform, LinkedIn and TikTok.

But if you're a solo photographer, it's not designed for you. It's designed for the people who license your work. Or increasingly, generate approximations of it using AI.

Useful tools

Don't misunderstand me: Adobe has still delivered some genuinely useful tools for photographers in 2025.

The assisted culling feature in Lightroom – which uses AI to identify sharp, well-composed images and flag technical failures – could save you hours on every shoot. Automatic dust spot removal has finally arrived. Distraction and reflection removal tools expanded from Camera Raw into Lightroom proper. Fantastic.

For Photoshop users, the headline features included Select Details for isolating hair and facial features with one click, and Harmonize, which automatically matches lighting and color when compositing elements from different sources.

Then came the big one. Adobe Max 2025 introduced agentic AI: conversational assistants that can understand complex, multi-step instructions and execute them autonomously.

To put that in plain language: in Photoshop, you can now tell the AI assistant to brighten everything except the subject, and it will create non-destructive adjustment layers to accomplish the task. You can ask it to review your design layout and suggest improvements.

You can even tell it to rename all your layers based on visual analysis of their contents, which earned genuine applause at the keynote demo.

Premiere Pro updates, meanwhile, included AI Object Mask in Premiere Pro, which tracks people and objects across moving footage without manual rotoscoping; potentially you saving days on complex projects.

Generative Extend, which fabricates additional frames at the beginning or end of clips, graduated from beta to support 4K and vertical formats. Media Intelligence brought natural-language search to vast footage libraries, enabling editors to find a scene just by typing something like "shot of person walking on beach at sunset".

Double-edged sword

These are all real improvements. They all address tedious bottlenecks. But they're also somewhat of a double-edged sword. Because broadly speaking, while AI is often a friend to photographers and video editors, it's often trained on our content and increasingly set to replace our skills.

In one sense, Adobe has long stood apart as the white knight here. Its generative AI engine, Firefly, famously only trains on properly licensed material – and that's to its credit. Its creation of Content Credentials to identify ownership of content also puts it on the side of the angels.

But the most revealing development in 2025 was the company's embrace of third-party generative platforms. After years of promoting Firefly, Adobe suddenly integrated models from Google, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, Runway, Topaz and others throughout its applications.

Models that, let's be honest, might well have been trained on your content without permission.

For anyone wanting to use these models, meanwhile, the main catch is the cost. While Firefly operations cost one generative credit, using partner models costs significantly more.

Gemini images cost 20 credits, ChatGPT images cost 60. For photographers on the basic Photography Plan with just 25 monthly credits, this pricing structure is almost comically punitive. But it makes perfect sense when you understand who Adobe is actually serving.

Enterprise clients with Firefly Pro or Premium plans, carrying 7,000 or 50,000 monthly credits respectively, barely notice these costs. They're investing in velocity and output quality at industrial scale.

To put it bluntly, individual photographers watching their monthly allocation evaporate after three or four generations are not the audience for these tools.

The Frame.io revolution 

To be fair to Adobe, it hasn't just been about AI this year. The most significant infrastructure development for working photographers and filmmakers was Frame.io's Camera to Cloud expansion.

Select professional cameras can now upload proxy files directly to Frame.io via network connection, allowing editors and clients to start working with footage before the shoot even wraps.

Fujifilm became the first brand to add still photography support for Frame.io Camera to Cloud, extending this capability beyond video. Photographers can make selections in Frame.io and instantly push files to Lightroom for real-time editing and retouching from any location.

This fundamentally changes production workflows but, again, notice whose problem it solves. It's brilliant for agencies coordinating distributed teams on tight deadlines. It's transformative for productions where clients need immediate feedback and approval. It accelerates the content supply chain.

For the solo photographer shooting a wedding or a portrait session? It's technological overkill addressing a problem you probably don't have.

A year of price hikes

Here's a problem that many solo photographers do have, though: paying for all this. At the start of 2025, Adobe hiked prices on Photography Plans for the first time in over a decade, with some plans increasing up to 50%.

The company justified this by pointing to hundreds of innovations delivered across Photoshop and Lightroom without previous price increases, plus the computational costs of running AI models. Fair enough.

But the timing crystallizes the tension. Adobe is charging solo photographers more for software that's increasingly optimized for workflows they don't actually use. They're embedded in an ecosystem designed for different priorities.

None of this means Adobe's software has become useless for photographers. Quite the opposite: Lightroom and Photoshop remain the industry standard, and many 2025 updates directly improve core photography workflows.

The dust removal tool alone may justify the subscription hike for anyone who's spent hours spotting clone-stamping sensor dust across a wedding shoot.

But 2025 clarified something that was already becoming apparent: Adobe isn't a photography company that happens to make software. It's a content production infrastructure company that counts photography among its many inputs.

Your images, whether captured through a lens or conjured from pixels, are raw material for a vastly larger economy built around feeding brands' bottomless need for content.

Conclusion

So what have we learned? I'm not saying we shouldn't continue using Adobe's tools – which remain excellent for what they do. But I do think we need to recognize our changing position in the ecosystem they're building.

Adobe spent 2025 building infrastructure for a world where content creation scales exponentially through AI augmentation, where brands generate thousands of variations from seed imagery, where marketing teams run content factories that would have required armies of creators just a few years ago.

Individual photographers and filmmakers aren't being eliminated from this ecosystem, but we're being redefined within it. Our role is increasingly to provide the authentic raw material – the real moments, the genuine human perspective, the original vision – that gets multiplied, modified and distributed through AI-powered content engines.

Whether that's progress or setback depends on your perspective. Either way, that's what Adobe's 2025 was actually about.

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Adobe Firefly is behind a number of key Photoshop updates – but a key change for the photo editing giant in 2025 is the ability to choose third-party AI models. Photoshop now allows users to use Nano Bana Pro or Flux.2 AI image generators instead of its own Firefly for Generative Fill. But that, of course, begs the question – when should photo editors use a third-party AI model?

I directed exactly that question to not just a Photoshop expert but Adobe Photoshop’s Senior Director of Product Management, Stephen Nielsen. Here’s when (and why) photo editors may want to try a third-party AI.

Adobe Firefly

Best for: Commercially-safe AI

Adobe Firefly has a key feature for creators: it’s built on licensed content, not photos scraped from the internet. That makes Firefly safe for commercial use, Adobe says.

Firefly is the safer choice – and the more ethical option for creatives, as many generative AI platforms do not share where the training data comes from. There are a number of lawsuits and legal questions surrounding AI and what constitutes fair use for training data.

Photoshop’s third-party AI models are also considered a premium generative AI feature, whereas Firefly is considered a standard feature. That means that, depending on what subscription you have, you may have to purchase extra generative credits to use the third-party models, where some standard generative credits are included in some Adobe Photography plans.

Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro

Best for: Legible text and signs, understanding instructions

AI image generators are notoriously bad a generating text, but Google’s Nano Banana Pro shows significant improvement. For editors who need to generate text, Nano Banana may spit out the most usable options.

Nano Banana Pro is also able to understand instructions. Firefly wasn’t built to use instruction verbs like “change this to that” in the prompt, so using those types of prompts can introduce unintended errors. Editors using prompts with instruction verbs may want to experiment with Nano Banana inside Photoshop.

Flux.1 and Flux.2

Best for: Realism, maintaining image “identity,” understanding instructions

Black Forest Lab’s Flux AI models are known for realism, and that can extend into Photoshop’s Generative Fill. Editors may also want to experiment with the Flux models for maintaining “identity” or keeping more of the original intact and staying in line with the original image.

Like Nano Banana Pro, Flux models' training allows them to handle instruction verbs in the prompt better than Firefly at times.

Currently, third-party AI models are only available in Generative Fill inside Photoshop. Third-party models are available by using the drop-down menu next to the prompt text box in the Contextual Task Bar. Third-party AI model support was introduced in October 2026, and a software update is required for those running older versions of the software.

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As a pro photographer, I listened to Adobe’s announcement that Photoshop would be available free inside ChatGPT with a note of trepidation. But when I opened ChatGPT to try out the new integration for myself, the results weren’t at all what I expected – and that’s both good and bad.

This week, Adobe announced that some Photoshop tools would be available directly inside ChatGPT. Admittedly, I was expecting the chatbot to churn out a fully AI-generated image – but that’s not at all what’s happening here. ChatGPT is now able to help users apply select Photoshop effects, including colors and brightness, to photographs.

On the one hand, I took these photos in June and still haven’t found the time to edit them; I’m always looking for ways to speed up photo editing. But on the other hand, I’m a bit wary of AI. Here’s what I found when I tested Photoshop inside ChatGPT.

Photoshop inside ChatGPT is not generative AI

The Photoshop-ChatGPT collab is Agentic AI, where a chatbot does something for you, but it is not generative AI, where an AI creates something completely new. That means the resulting image applies edits, but does not generate new pixels. It also means that Adobe doesn’t apply Content Credentials to the image.

This is an important distinction. I don’t have an issue with AI that can help me quickly mask out a subject (provided that AI is trained on licensed content that pays the original creators). But I don’t want an AI to create for me – and that’s not what the ChatGPT Photoshop integration is doing.

Photoshop inside ChatGPT is meant to be a learning tool…

If a chatbot can handle all the editing for me, is there any reason to learn photo editing techniques? Admittedly, I was also expecting the Agentic AI to remove the learning process entirely, but I was relieved to see that that is not at all the case here.

When ChatGPT adjusted the colors of this photograph for me, the chatbot explained a bit of the difference between the saturation and vibrance sliders, for example.

I think this tool could potentially be a boost for new photographers learning the jargon of the photo editing industry, as the chatbot doesn’t just handle the edit without explanation and doesn’t entirely remove specific photographer terms either.

Another important distinction is that ChatGPT gives the user sliders to control how much (or how little) of the effect to apply.

… but ChatGPT can use the wrong terms

I got pretty excited when ChatGPT said it could apply a Kodachrome look to my photo. Imagine my disappointment, then, when ChatGPT instead delivered a slider for the tritone effect.

Kodachrome is a popular film stock; trione is an editing process that maps the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows to three different colors. The two things are not at all similar.

That, I think, is one of the downsides to trusting an agentic AI to teach the ins and outs of photography and photo editing: AI can be wrong, and mistakes aren’t exactly rare.

ChatGPT’s Photoshop is a very lite version of the photo editor

The initial launch inside ChatGPT contains only a few Photoshop features. Users can adjust color, brightness and contrast. It can apply a few special effects, like tritone and halftone dots, but that’s pretty much it, offering a very small taste of the longstanding pro photo editor.

The Photoshop ChatGPT app feels more like Photoshop Elements – and even that isn’t exactly correct, as Photoshop Elements can still do things like crop and retouch acne, while the ChatGPT collab cannot (at least not yet).

It's also important to note that while Photoshop is free, it's subject to the same limitations as the ChatGPT payment tiers. I don’t have a paid account, so I was only able to upload one image a day, and I ran out of thinking space towards the end.

Photo editing with ChatGPT wasn’t faster than doing it myself

Here’s my biggest sticking point: I tweaked the photo's colors in Lightroom far faster than ChatGPT edited the photo for me. Of course, as a pro photographer, I’m not the intended audience for this tool, but it’s a distinction worth noting.

It took some time to upload the image to ChatGPT, some time for the AI to think. And it probably took me a bit longer because there were a few things that I couldn’t figure out. I still haven’t, for example, found the ability to export a full-resolution file of the edit, though Adobe previously indicated that it was possible.

Part of this is that the feature still feels a bit glitchy. ChatGPT told me on a few occasions that the Photoshop tools were temporarily offline.

Will Agentic AI be part of the future of photo editing?

Many software brands have gone all-in on AI, but I think some AI is more ethical than others – and AI is better suited for some tasks over others.

After trying out the ChatGPT-Photoshop integration, where I see Agentic AI fitting in the industry the best is to carry out tedious, non-creative tasks. I feel like agentic AI could eventually replace things like Photoshop’s batch editing and Actions tools.

I also think Agentic AI could perhaps be an updated form of in-app help, though this is still subject to some AI inaccuracies.

Photoshop’s integration into ChatGPT isn’t going to replace pro editing – it’s not even close. But it could give new users a taste – and may indicate where future sedition automation and in-app learning may be headed. (And I’m so very glad that its not generative AI.)

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Learning Adobe Photoshop comes with an entire mini dictionary of photo-editing terms – but using Photoshop within ChatGPT requires knowing none of those. Photoshop now exists within ChatGPT, opening up natural language agentic photo editing, all without a Photoshop subscription.

On Wednesday, December 10, Adobe announced that Photoshop – alongside Adobe Express and Acrobat – are now available inside ChatGPT without a subscription. Importantly, those adjustments are "standard Photoshop edits and not generative edits," an Adobe spokesperson told Digital Camera World, which means the resulting image is AI edited, not AI generated.

The announcement rolls out first in the US, using ChatGPT on desktop, web, and iOS apps. Adobe indicates that the tool is expected to come to the UK and EU in the "near future," along with Android support coming soon.

The software giant already has plans for bringing additional programs into ChatGPT, adding that “this is just the beginning, we will continue to add new capabilities to our apps in ChatGPT in the coming weeks.”

The launch gives ChatGPT users the ability to ask for photo edits using natural language, such as “make this photo brighter” without knowing photography jargon like “exposure.” The Photoshop that’s integrated into the chatbot can tackle both edits to the entire picture and adjustments to only a small portion of the image.

The chatbot doesn’t stop at just making the requested adjustment though – the tool gives users sliders to tweak the results. Users also have the option to open the image in the web browser version of Photoshop for further adjustments.

ChatGPT users can call on the longstanding photo editor to edit their work by starting a prompt with “Adobe Photoshop” or by choosing Photoshop from the + icon dropdown menu.

The ChatGPT integration doesn't come with all of Photoshop's tools, but it is meant for those new to Photoshop and includes adjustments to contrast, brightness, and exposure, as well as adjustments to the background and applying creative effects. The integration also has a shortcut to continue editing inside Photoshop Web, or to open the image in the full-featured Photoshop.

I watched a demo of the tool ahead of the announcement. Adobe Principal Director Evangelist Paul Trani showed how users could ask for something specific, such as taking a photo of New York City and asking “give it a vintage look, except for the taxis.”

Trani also demonstrated how the AI could respond to less specific requests. When asked a simple “add special effects,” ChatGPT-Photoshop came up with a few different suggestions, showing a preview of the different ideas on the photo.

The ChatGPT partnership isn’t the first time Adobe has added agentic photo editing – an AI agent that edits photos for you – to Photoshop. In October, Adobe announced agentic photo editing for Photoshop, but the feature is still only a private beta and only in Photoshop Web. Integrating the longstanding editing software directly into ChatGPT brings agentic photo editing to the AI’s 800 million users.

"This builds on the foundational investments we've made in AI assistants across our own apps and allows us to meet customers where they already are as working with AI agents become the starting point for accomplishing everyday tasks. And for anyone who wants the full power of our tools it's seamless to move from ChatGPT into our native apps,” said Adobe Digital Media Chief Technology Officer Ely Greenfield.

Adobe says the feature "preserves the quality of the image." The company notes that ChatGPT performs Photoshop edits for the user, but it does not regenerate a new image. The original resolution of the image is also preserved, unlike some of the resolution limitations on some generative AI.

Because ChatGPT is applying Photoshop edits and not generating a new image, Adobe says that Content Credentials and other AI watermarking tools are not added to the image.

A perk for ChatGPT users may also be a point of contention among photographers, as Photoshop inside ChatGPT is free. Meanwhile, using generative AI inside Photoshop requires generative credits, which can drive up the cost of Photoshop (beyond the subscription alone) for heavy AI users.

Photoshop inside ChatGPT is rolling out on December 10 to the AI chatbot.

Editor's note: This post was updated with additional comments from Adobe.

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Subscriptions aren’t as attractive as perpetual licenses, but when you’re paying just £98.99 at Amazon UK for 365 days of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom (PC/Mac), I think that’ll give even the most ardent subscription naysayers pause for thought. That’s roughly £4 apiece per month for industry-standard photo editing software. And if you just want Lightroom, you can get an entire year for just £61.99 at Amazon UK, which is about £5 per month.

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There’s little to say about Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Lightroom Classic that hasn’t already been said. Heck, Photoshop is so popular it’s become a verb in its own right and is known across the world by people who haven’t ever edited a photograph in their life. It’s the OG, the industry standard by which all other photo-editing software is judged.

And while Adobe has drawn the ire of many a photographer over the years for what some have considered hefty prices and unwanted subscription models, Photoshop and Lightroom are still my go-to for editing my own images because the Creative Cloud ecosystem just works. And at £98.99 for Photoshop and Lightroom, and £61.99 for Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, you’re probably paying less than your Netflix subscription!

If you’re having trouble deciding which one to go for, it all comes down to how much you’re going to use Photoshop. If you’re new to Adobe software, you might think Photoshop is essential (it’s the grandaddy after all). But most photographers, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic have become the go-to. That’s because they’re designed for batch editing, that’s to say, you can edit lots of images simultaneously, in batches, whereas Photoshop’s layer-based workflow is largely designed for editing one image at a time.

Lightroom has also become more like Photoshop over the years. You can locally edit images using masking and even clone or heal to remove unwanted objects. Personally, I spend most of my time in Lightroom. I turn to Photoshop for things like focus stacking and to make the most of its layer-based workflow so I can make more intricate and involved edits.

Ultimately, if your editing workflow is extremely simple, adjusting a few sliders here and there, you can probably make do with Lightroom. If you anticipate doing heavy cloning, focus stacking, frequency separation, exposure blending, etc, then be sure to pick up the bundle with Photoshop.

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Hot on the heels of the Gemini 3 announcement, Google has lifted the veil on its latest AI image generator: Nano Banana Pro. The updated AI is already inside of Photoshop, and it brings updates like the ability to generate recognizeable group photos and the ability to control the “camera.”

When Gemini 2.5 Flash Image launched, the AI was better known but the code name Google had given it, Nano Banana. Now, Google appears to be embracing that viral name, dubbing the newest image generator Nano Banana Pro.

Nano Banana Pro brings a number of improvements to the previous model. Part of Nano Banana’s fame was the ability to generate images that still look like actual people. I tried it, and it was both impressive and terrifying at the same time. Nano Banana Pro takes that a step further – it’s now capable of generating group photos of up to five people while still “maintaining the consistency and resemblance,” Google says.

The updated AI also brings more advanced “camera” controls, though of course, as an AI, there is no actual camera. Google says that Nano Banana Pro can adjust the camera angle, change the focus, and adjust the scene’s lighting.

Resolution is often a key shortcoming of AI generators, but Nano Banana Pro will be able to create graphics up to 2K and 4K in resolution, along with the ability to change the aspect ratio. The Pro model is also capable of producing infographics, an interesting capability as early AI always struggled with creating text on images.

Nano Banana Pro will also be available in Adobe Photoshop and Firefly from the first day of the new platform’s launch. Photoshop previously added the ability to choose from different AI models, which gives creators the ability to choose the AI that generates the best results for different tasks.

Inside Photoshop, Nano Banana Pro will be available to choose as a partner model when using Generative Fill.

Inside Adobe Firefly, users can use up to six reference images when working with Nano Banana Pro.

Nano Bana Pro is beginning to roll out globally today to the Gemini App by selecting "Create Images" and "Thinking" from the drop-down model menu. Free Gemini users have limited Nano Banana Pro generations before it reverts back to the old model.

Using Nano Banana Pro inside Photoshop doesn't require a separate subscription beyond the Creative Cloud, but uses generative credits. Until December 1, Adobe is allowing Creative Cloud Pro and Firefly plan subscribers unlimited generations on Nano Banana Pro to test out the new capabilities.

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A lot of Leica shooters will have been triggered by the headline, I realize that, and I acknowledge your reaction. Prime lenses have long been associated with classic street photography, and users of systems such as the M-series from Leica have been producing masterpieces with fixed focal length optics for decades.

In fact, many devotees of street and reportage photography swear by them and won’t shoot with anything else. So, with such a pedigree for taking images that stand the test of time and that have achieved iconic status, why have I developed such a heretical opinion against primes?

Social media is to blame (isn’t it always?), at least in part. No doubt a consequence of the influential status of photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Steve McCurry, and others in that elite group, content creators across the Instaverse have spent years proclaiming their devotion to the prime focal lengths favored by the Masters.

If you look back about seven or eight years, it seemed every young person on the internet was shooting with a 24mm or 35mm lens. For everything. It’s like owning a prime became a symbol for being artsy and edgy.

I’m sure many of these photographers genuinely liked using a prime, but I do wonder how many of their most-liked shots were captured using a zoom they switched out before filming some B-roll video. I’ve just never believed in using any piece of kit purely because it’s in vogue. So what happened to change my mind?

I have always preferred zoom lenses for my paid photographic work because I enjoy the freedom to capture many different compositions in quick succession. This is especially true when I have limited time to shoot the images I need, which is almost all the time for editorial assignments. But more recently, I’ve had the unusual experience of shooting quite a lot of street photography for work, much of it with prime lenses.

Have you ever had a eureka moment, where something suddenly just makes sense and you wonder how you’ve been misunderstanding it for so long? Well, that’s where I am in my prime journey. Never before have I been specifically asked to capture images using primes, so I’ve never felt I had the freedom to miss shots because I had the ‘wrong’ lens mounted. Most paying clients don’t give a hoot what kit you shoot with, and won’t take the purity of vision as an excuse for delayed image delivery.

Working with the Zeiss Otus ML 85mm and Otus ML 50mm f/1.4 lenses forced me to be super precise with my focusing technique due to the shallow depth-of-field. Missing three backup shots in the pursuit of one beautifully sharp subject against a field of creamy bokeh was suddenly completely acceptable.

Meanwhile, the Leica Summilux-M 28mm f/1.4 ASPH, mounted on a Leica M-11 Monochrom body, meant I had to get much closer to my subject to fill the frame, requiring a slower approach to remain inconspicuous. It afforded me the luxury of chasing one frame in landscape orientation with no voice in my head saying, ‘but what if they want portrait format too?’.

All you prime-shooting street photographers out there may not think this is anything new, but it’s been eye-opening for me. The lesson? Look beyond the social media hype and forget why someone else might be using a piece of kit. Just using any prime because it will look good on TikTok isn’t the name of the game; using the right prime for you is paramount. It sounds obvious, but when the voices of influencers are so loud, it’s easy to forget you’re vulnerable to preconceptions.

I’ve never enjoyed street photography as much when using a zoom, where every shot felt like a mere record. Using a prime, you’ve hunted and caught a single special moment in time, which is an entirely different experience altogether.

And if that makes me sound pretentious, well…

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It’s been a huge few days for video and photo editing software, what with the annual Adobe Max having been brought to a close last week and then the bombshell announcement that, under new owners, Canva, Affinity Photo has been reborn as the free-for-everyone Affinity Studio. 

I’ve always been a fan of Affinity Photo 2. I still think it’s the best like-for-like alternative to the juggernaut that is Adobe Photoshop, but it was definitely time for an update.

With Affinity Studio situating all of the brand’s design programs under one roof, not to mention the promise of a fully customizable interface, and no payment plan, sort of (I’ll get to that in a minute), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of dropping Creative Cloud altogether and launching myself at Canva with open arms. But that thought didn’t last long, because my Creative Cloud account isn’t going anywhere for the time being, and the reasons are twofold.

Firstly, I’ve been using Adobe software for the past 15 years, and during that time, I’ve gotten extremely used to it. And while I moan about price increases, pricing structures, and bits and bobs that never seem to get fixed, I’ve got a soft spot for Adobe. I feel at home using Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, and if I’m entirely honest, I love the heritage. It might seem odd to talk about a modern software company’s heritage, while it might not be Rolex or Jaguar, it is the editing-software OG, and 1990 was millennia ago in the tech industry.

The second reason why I’m in no hurry to move on from Adobe is that it’s still the industry standard. And that means it’s unrivalled as a platform for plug-ins. If you buy into Photoshop or Lightroom, you’ve got the ability to access a plethora of plug-ins from the likes of DxO, Skylum, and more, whereby Adobe software acts like a hub for more specialist types of photo-editing software. And as the industry standard, you're more likely to come across Adobe users if you collaborate, too.

All that said, the next few years will be a testing time for Adobe. It’s enjoyed several decades, largely unrivalled, at the top of the image-editing food chain, but the rise of generative AI has presented the industry giant with its biggest challenge, arguably since its inception. It’s no longer vying for supremacy against other image-editing software, but Big AI, too. And as we know all too well, the AI industry moves fast, very fast. I’ve no doubt that the image-editing landscape will look very different in just a couple of years’ time. Heck, it’s already changing. Affinity Studio is a case in point.

It seems like it was just yesterday that Canva acquired Affinity, and now, all of a sudden, with the might of a multi-billion-dollar company behind it and an unusual free-for-all model, Affinity has emerged as one of Adobe’s biggest competitors. What a difference a day makes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Affinity’s free model, though, and while I think it’s great, I do see a way that Canva can introduce payment plans while saving face. You see, to access Canva’s AI models within Affinity Studio, you need a premium Canva account. With that in mind, I can only presume there’s nothing to stop the design-software company from adding more features by way of Canva that require a premium subscription to be accessed within Affinity Studio. Technically, Affinity would still remain completely free...

I digress. My point is, as things stand, there’s more than enough room in the industry for Adobe Creative Cloud and Affinity Studio. I dare say I’ll be using both. But in the words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changing, and it seems to me as if Affinity Studio is just the beginning.

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Sitting in the same auditorium where the Emmys are held each year, I just got a glimpse at what the future of Adobe Photoshop could look like. During Adobe Max 2025 in Los Angeles on October 29, the software giant showcased Sneaks, a look at the most promising projects that researchers and developers are working on behind the scenes.

The future Photoshop? It could include tools to re-light a photograph, swap out surfaces, and remove objects and their reflections without complex masking.

After watching the 2025 Adobe Sneaks in person, I’m excited for the tools that could be coming to programs like Photoshop. Some Sneaks never become part of actual products. But, sometimes one year’s Sneaks are the following year’s new features, which is what happened this year with Harmonize, a Photoshop tool for composites that was a 2024 Sneak. Others may become separate apps, not integrated into existing ones.

Here are the imaging tools that Adobe teased at the 2025 Sneaks.

Project Light Touch

Project Light Touch is a tool that uses AI to re-light a photo, moving the light source around, turning lamps on, and even altering the color and 3D placement.

Adobe’s Zhixin Shu demoed the tech on stage by first turning a lamp on, including lighting up the surrounding area. I’ve used masking to fake twinkle lights being on before, but not to the extent where the light is large enough to alter the rest of the scene.

Another demo fixed a common issue that I face as a portrait photographer – hats blocking the light and resulting in uneven lighting on the face. Adobe demoed how the software could relight a person’s face, even fixing the speckled light.

But if the crowd’s cheers are any indication, the most impressive part of Project Light Touch is the Spatial Lighting Mode. In this mode, editors have a 3D workspace, and they can drag a light around the space. Upload a photo, and then drag around the light in the 3D model to alter where the light is in the photo.

But it wouldn’t be an Adobe photo tool without a slider – and the demo included Point Controls that could also change the color of the light.

Project New Depths

Two of the demos during Sneaks could have a significant impact on how Photoshop users create composites – and one of them is called Project New Depths. In the demo, Adobe’s Élie Michel added a tree to a photo of a tractor in a field of wildflowers – only as the tree moved around the photo, the background changed too, placing the tree in the scene as if it were 3D and layering foreground and background elements as Michel moved the tree around.

How? The background image isn’t a single photo, but a series of photos taken at different angles. Those photos are fused together to create 3D elements in the photo, which allows for creating a composite with the depth data to realistically layer in the new elements.

That’s impressive on its own, but using AI, Project New Depths also changed the angle of the background photo itself. While being 3D, the image can still be edited, including making selections and changing colors.

Project New Depths looks more like a version of Photoshop for AR and VR imaging, rather than a tool inside of Photoshop. But, the concept is still impressive.

Project Turn Style

The other Sneak that could make a major impact on compositing in Photoshop is Project Turn Style. Adding a layer to a background image, Photoshop’s usual Contextual Task Bar showed a new button: 3D rotate.

Using AI, Turn Style is able to generate a 3D layer from a flat layer, allowing the user to turn and rotate the object and place it on the background photo.

What’s even more impressive is that Adobe demoed this by adding people to the background photo as well. Now, as the people were being generated, they had those squished faces that AI sometimes creates. But an up-resolution button adds detail, and after clicking that button, the faces in the 3D generated layer looked much more natural.

Project Trace Erase

Photoshop already has a Generative AI-based Remove tool, but Adobe just offered a glimpse at what the next generation of that tool may look like.

In the demo, Project Trace Erase didn’t require selecting the entire subject. Trace Erase removed the object, the shadows, and the reflections, even with just a quick swipe across the object to remove. That’s a neat update to a well-used tool and fixes the common mistake of not selecting the object’s shadows.

When working with reflections, the current tool will remove some of the puddle, but Trace Erase is designed to remove reflections while still keeping the water source intact.

Project Surface Swap

Project Surface Swap is a tool that does exactly what its name suggests – allows users to swap one surface for another. But the tool can also be used to select a surface, including reflective surfaces like a car.

The final photo demonstrated with Project Surface Swap looks the most useful – adding artwork to a photo of a textured wall and making it look like it belongs there. Graffiti, without breaking the law. Surface Swap was able to mask out the vines growing on the wall so the logo didn’t intersect the wall.

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It’s hard to keep up with all the major announcements at Adobe Max 2025, but something that’s caught my attention is Adobe’s partnership with Topaz Labs. The US-based Topaz Labs is known for its photo and video enhancement software, and now, some of its headline AI-tech is making its way into the Adobe ecosystem. Topaz Bloom and Topaz Gigapixel models will both be available in Adobe Photoshop, while Bloom will also be integrated into Adobe Firefly.

Topaz Labs’ AI will also be prevalent in Photoshop’s Generative Upscale, and is said to provide “instant resolution enhancements (...) to upscale small, cropped and other low-resolution images into 4K, with realistic detail.” A headline use for Generative Upscale is to upscale imagery created by AI models that are unable to produce high-resolution results.

I don’t know how much functionality Photoshop will retain in comparison with the dedicated Topaz Labs software, but this does sound like a very welcome inclusion for Photoshop users, especially considering that Topaz Bloom and Topaz Gigapixel subscriptions start at $19 (approx £14 / AU$29) and $12 (£9 / AU$18) per month, respectively.

One of the main reasons I’ve always used Adobe software is because it’s an unrivaled plug-in platform. If you’re a photo editing software company and you want to make your product available as a plug-in, you’re going to make an Adobe Photoshop and/or Adobe Lightroom Classic plug-in a priority. Adobe’s new strategy of embracing various partner AI models takes this ethos a step further.

Ultimately, add the AI partner models from the likes of Topaz Labs to the existing wealth of plug-ins, and Adobe Creative Cloud is increasingly becoming a creative hub for the industry’s best image-editing tech. And for a company that’s regularly lambasted for its payment models, I do think partner models are a big boost to the ecosystem’s perceived value.

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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Adobe has lifted the veil on Photoshop 2026 – and while features like Harmonize and integration with Nano Banana are making headlines, some of the photo editor’s best updates are smaller tools tucked into the menus.

Adobe unveiled the latest updates to Photoshop on the first day of Adobe Max, the annual creativity conference, held in Los Angeles, October 28-30. After the announcement, I sat down with Stephen Nielson, Senior Director of Product Management for Photoshop to walk through the new features for photographers inside Photoshop 2026.

Unsurprisingly, many of the updates use AI, but Adobe is trying to use AI in a way that saves creators time without taking away creative control. “In Photoshop, you don’t see ‘click here for art,’” Nielsen said. “You see a lot of tools. You, the human, are the creator, but there are tools that happen to use AI, which you can use creatively.”

While there are some big changes to Photoshop, there are a number of smaller tools, including some frequently requested by photographers. Here’s what’s new in Photoshop 2026 and what’s coming in beta testing.

AI Upscaling and Denoise with Topaz Gigapixel

Photoshop already has generative upscale that uses Firefly, but Photoshop 2026 gains an AI Upscaling using tech from Topaz Labs. The Topaz Gigapixel upscaling creates images that are up to 56MP while preserving detail.

Users can also select the Topaz Bloom, which upscales but is made to add in details rather than preserving the original.

Users can find the new upscaling by going to Image > Generative Upscale and choosing the model from the dropdown.

Like the upscaling, Photoshop is also gaining an AI-based denoise tool powered by AI from Topaz Labs.

Users don’t have to have a separate subscription to Topaz Labs, but the tool does require generative credits and is a premium feature.

A new color and vibrance adjustment layer

Not all new Photoshop features are AI-based. Added based on feedback from users, Photoshop has a new adjustment layer. The Color and Vibrance adjustment layer gives users the ability to adjust temp tint, vibrance, and saturation. The tool uses the same algorithm as those sliders in Adobe Camera RAW, so it will create the same results without having to go back and forth between the two programs.

Nielsen says the new adjustment layer was added because users have asked for sliders that match those found in Lightroom, adding that more adjustment layers are in the works for future updates.

Find this tool by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color and Vibrance.

Use AI to blend composites with Harmonize

The previously announced Haromize tool is now out of beta and in the full version of Photoshop. The tool uses AI to better blend images when building composites, using generative AI to match the colors, lighting, and shadows from the background image.

Harmonize is a one-click button and, like other Photoshop AI tools, generates three options on the first run so creators can choose the best result.

The Harmonize button is located in the Contextual Task Bar. (If you don’t see it, head to Window > Contextual Task Bar). The Harmonize button will appear only on that taskbar when working with layered composites – you’ll need to have the object layer selected, not the background, and it needs to be a layer with pixels (i.e. not an Adjustment Layer).

Partner models in Generative Fill

The Generative Fill tool inside Photoshop 2026 now supports models that aren’t Adobe Firefly. Previously in beta, the update allows creators to choose from different AI models, including Nano Banana and Flux.1.

To use a Partner Model for Generative Fill, select the area of the photo to fill in. Then, inside that Contextual Task bar again, click the dropdown menu (it says Firefly by default) to choose a different model to work with.

Beta: Agentic Photoshop AI (web only)

Perhaps the biggest tease is that Adobe is introducing Agentic AI to Photoshop, where users can ask a chatbot to carry out edits for them. But, this feature is in private beta and wasn’t available for demos. It’s also currently limited to Photoshop Web, not the desktop app.

Adobe says that the Agentic AI inside Photoshop Web can carry out repetitive tasks, complete and complete edits for you. But the chatbot can also make recommendations and offer tutorials to learn how to do a specific edit inside Photoshop.

The private beta means that users can only try it out by invitation only.

Beta: An upgraded Generative Fill

Nielson also said that Photoshop beta is gaining a new AI model that’s designed specifically for Generative Fill. By creating an AI model trained specifically for this task, Adobe says the model can offer better results over a model designed for a more general purpose.

Other tools: Dynamic text, Shared projects, Adobe Express templates, and more

Photographers and graphic designers will find a handful of other features inside Photoshop 2026, including:

• The share button in Photoshop can now take an image directly into Firefly
• Improved results with the Select Subject and Remove Background tool
• Shared Projects for collaborating with groups
• Browse and import images from Adobe Stock without leaving Photoshop

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Not a lot surprises me when it comes to AI-powered photo editing tools nowadays, because the technology has advanced so far, so quickly. But the same can’t be said for AI-powered video editing tools. That’s why I’m so intrigued by the announcement at Adobe Max 2025, today, that Adobe Premiere is getting Adobe Lightroom-style masking options, including one that uses artificial intelligence to select people and objects in video footage.

The Object Mask Tool allows you to instantly select your chosen person/object, which will then shroud them in a mask overlay that stays with them as they move about the frame. With the object selected, you’re then free to locally color grade, blur, and add effects to the background. You can see this in action via the video (above).

The reason why I’m so excited by the prospect of this tool is that – assuming it works as intended – it’ll be a huge time saver. The manual alternative is rotoscoping, an extremely time-consuming process that requires the video editor to select the object in question frame by frame.

I’ve never professed to be the biggest fan of generative AI in the world, but non-generative tools like this are where I can hop aboard the AI hype train. It’s a solution to a laborious process that does almost nothing to encroach on creative autonomy. It’s the video-editing equivalent of a paint sprayer – it’s designed to help out the creative and get the job done.

That’s not all, Adobe is also introducing the Ellipse Mask Tool, Rectangle Mask Tool, and Pen Mask Tool, so video creatives can target local adjustments, add effects, and make corrections more precisely. Finally, the Fast Vector Mask function is said to offer “faster tracking, bi-directional tracking and 3D perspective tracking.”

It can sometimes feel like Adobe is putting all of its artificial eggs into the Firefly basket. But as a creative, these are the types of advancements I want to see most: practical AI tools that solve laborious day-to-day editing processes in the company's flagship software suites.

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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Adobe has drawn plenty of ire for its commitment to generative AI, but as it launches a huge barrage of AI-powered tools at Adobe Max 2025, a small collective of stats suggests that generative artificial intelligence might not be as controversial among creatives as I might have otherwise assumed.

The photo editing software colossus recently performed a survey of 16,000 creatives on their use of creative generative AI, and Adobe’s conclusion is that AI “has become an essential part of their toolkit and a key competitive edge helping them stand out”. Backing up that statement is 86% of creators, globally, who admitted to using creative generative AI. In addition, a slightly smaller percentage said that AI “helps them create content they otherwise couldn’t have made”. While 76% used AI to help grow their business/personal brand.

These results certainly do suggest that more creators are embracing the power of AI, and 16,000 creators is certainly a respectable sample size. The way I see it, whether or not you like generative AI, it’s not surprising that Adobe has chosen to embrace this emerging technology. It’s the godfather of personal digital image editing – its entire ethos is about pushing the boundaries of creative tech. Let’s not forget the world in which Adobe launched Photoshop in 1990. Suddenly, anyone with a compatible Mac could digitally manipulate imagery. Let’s not pretend that the emergence of digital image editing wasn’t controversial.

But the AI route hasn’t always been an easy one for Adobe. Despite the company enjoying record-breaking profits, a report by The Street appears to suggest that Adobe still isn’t keeping up with other major players in the AI sphere. I fear that the dilemma for Adobe is that the aforementioned positive shift in creative attitudes toward AI, might be related to the reason why it’s falling short of the big dogs: commercially safe AI models.

Adobe has made a huge deal about its commitment to commercially safe Firefly models, which draw from licensed content from Adobe Stock and the public domain. These self-imposed constraints are more likely to appeal to Adobe’s creative audience but arguably restrict the models' scope and effectiveness in terms of generative AI.

It’s not surprising, then, that Adobe has announced yet more partner AI models and the ability to select which model is used. So, if you only want to live off the new and commercially safe Firefly Image Model 5, you can. If you want to take models from Google and OpenAI for a spin, you can do that too.

Adobe’s survey certainly seems to suggest that more creatives are warming to generative AI, which isn’t surprising since artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent day to day. But being so aligned to the creative industry means that Adobe has to tread carefully; it’s got to turn a profit, but it’s also got to appease its creative audience – even if that might be to the detriment of its proprietary AI models’ capabilities.

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As Adobe Max 2025 kicks off in Los Angeles, the photo editing software giant has launched a barrage of AI-infused features across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, and Adobe GenStudio. But it’s the company’s creative AI design tool, Adobe Firefly, that’s really caught my attention. As Adobe puts it: “Firefly now enables end-to-end video production with studio-quality audio and video tools,” such as Generate Soundtrack and Generate Speech (both in public beta), as well as Firefly video editor (private beta).

Generate Soundtrack enables users to generate music via the commercially safe Firefly Audio Model, providing fully licensed instrumental music that's said to “sync and time precisely with creators’ footage.” Generate Speech is a text-to-speech tool that's used to create voiceovers in multiple languages. The Firefly video editor is a web-based multitrack timeline editor, allowing users to generate, organize, trim, and sequence clips. That’s not all, Firefly’s new Prompt to Edit tool allows users to edit an image by simply describing the edit. And finally, Firefly Boards has been enhanced with greater control and flexibility, including the ability to convert 2D imagery into 3D imagery.

The key to unlocking all these impressive-sounding AI features is the AI models that power them. Adobe has not only teamed up with some of the industry’s top partner models from the likes of Google and OpenAI, but it’s also debuted its commercially safe proprietary Firefly Image Model 5, which is in public beta. Adobe says that this image generation and editing model is capable of native 4-MP resolution, without upscaling, and excels at photorealistic details and prompt-based editing.

It’s also launching Firefly Custom Models (private beta), allowing creators to personalize generated assets in their own personal style. What I like about Adobe’s implementation of AI models is that you can now choose which generative-AI models you want to work with. So, if you want to stick with the commercial safe Firefly models, you can.

Firefly is only one half of Adobe’s raft of announcements, with AI innovations being released across the Creative Cloud portfolio. Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill gets partner models such as Google Gemini 2.5 flash and Black Forest Labs FLUX.1 Kontext, which Adobe says will allow users to perform “precise, instructional edits to add, remove or modify content with simple prompts”. Adobe Premiere Pro gets AI Object Mask, in public beta.

This is designed to help video editors identify and isolate people and objects within their footage, which is said to make color grading, blurring, and adding special effects both quicker and easier. And finally, a big feature for Adobe Lightroom users is Assisted Culling. This is designed to help photographers sort through large batches of images, with options to filter out image-based elements such as focus, angles, and sharpness.

Adobe is also launching AI Assistants across applications, including Adobe Express, Firefly, and Photoshop. This agentic-powered artificial intelligence will allow users to “create using their own words and refine results using Adobe’s world-class tools”. The AI Assistant in Adobe Express (public beta) “lets anyone move from concept to creation in minutes”, while the AI Assistant in Photoshop (private beta) allows users to offload repetitive tasks to an agent, while maintaining creative control. In addition, Project Moonlight in Firefly (private beta) will be used to coordinate AI Assistants across the Adobe ecosystem, while drawing insights from a creator’s social channels to help brainstorm ideas and generate faster content.

And while generative AI remains to be a controversial topic within the creative industry, Adobe has backed up its commitment to artificial intelligence via a survey of 16,000 creators, of which 86% said they use generative AI. Beyond these functional software upgrades, Adobe is also announcing a partnership with YouTube, and more specifically, YouTube Shorts. This will include a new content creation space called Create for YouTube Shorts, which is coming soon to the recently released Adobe Premiere mobile app, and available directly via YouTube.

• See all the news direct from Adobe Max 2025

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Adobe often surprise launches updates to Photoshop and Lightroom throughout the year, but if there’s one time of year where creatives can expect something big is coming, it is Adobe Max. And with Adobe Max just around the corner, I’m predicting that Adobe’s biggest updates to Photoshop and Lightroom could be coming next week.

Adobe Max is a creativity conference that the software giant hosts once a year in the US (they also host a similar event in London annually). This year, Adobe Max is scheduled for October 28-30 in Los Angeles, California.

While Adobe Max is packed with workshops and vendors at the in-person events, Adobe typically also uses the event to announce some key software updates. The first keynote is happening at 9 AM PDT / 12 PM EST / 5 PM BST on October 28.

In past events, Adobe has unveiled a number of updates during the Adobe Max keynote. Last year, for example, Photoshop gained Distraction Removal and a generative workspace, all announced during Adobe Max.

Another key part of Adobe Max is Sneaks, which are the company’s teasers into what their developers are working on behind the scenes. Sneaks may not even end up making its way into actual software, but some features do. Last year, Adobe teased Project Perfect Blend, which wound up in a July 2025 update to Photoshop, although it changed the name to Harmonize.

This year, Adobe’s Sneaks are scheduled for October 29 at 5:30 PM PDT / 8:30 PM EST / 1:30 AM BST.

If the past events are any indication, creatives will likely see a number of new software features coming next week. Based on the company’s recent updates, I’m expecting AI to be a key buzzword during the 2025 Adobe Max announcements.

Adobe will stream several of its keynotes and sessions online for those who can’t make the trip to Los Angeles, and online registration is free. And we'll be there too – bringing you all the big announcements so you don't miss anything.

Along with the Keynotes and Sneaks, online attendees can still find more than 60 online sessions for learning tips and tricks across Adobe’s suite of creative software.

Online registration is open at the Adobe Max website.

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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While subscription models can split opinion, there’s no doubting the incredible value of this annual Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan for just £107.08 from Amazon UK. That’s Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, 1TB of cloud storage, and more, for over half off the RRP!

Currently, Adobe is charging £238.42 for a yearly subscription, which translates to roughly £19.87 per month, whereas Amazon’s price works out at about £8.92 per month. Even if you loathe subscription models, I think that’s an incredible deal for two industry-standard photo editing software suites. Plus, you get a few extra goodies in the form of Photoshop Express and Adobe Firefly with 25 monthly generative-AI credits to boot.

I don’t need to tell you that Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic are two of the most popular editing suites in the industry. The majority of photographers could use these two programs exclusively and never scratch the surface. Due to their popularity, they’re also fantastic plug-in platforms to boot.

Adobe Photoshop is the most well-known editing software in the world, so much so that ‘photoshopping’ has become part of the lexicon. It’s a traditional layer-based editing suite that can be used to create complicated composites, graphics, basic animations, and more. When paired with the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in, its layer-based workflow is simplified, making it a great way to edit photos.

Adobe Lightroom, on the other hand, is more photography-focused than Photoshop, and boasts a workflow that’s more suited to batch editing. Rather than working on a single canvas, images are displayed in a film-strip arrangement, where they can be easily rated, edited, and exported in unison. Lightroom also doubles as photo organization software, thanks to its proprietary filing system, where you can organize imagery into Catalogs and Collections.

Photoshop and Lightroom have been my go-to photo editing apps for years, but my favorite photo editor isn’t exactly known for being cheap. Amazon, however, has quietly dropped the price of a one-year subscription to both Photoshop and Lightroom by $100 in the US and more than £140 in the UK for Prime members.

Photoshop is the sort of photo editing software that needs no introduction. Around since 1990, Photoshop is so heavily used in the photography industry that the name also doubles as a verb as in, “Can you Photoshop this?” While it’s far from being the only photo editor, the software’s layers, masks, and advanced tools have long been a favorite for many photographers, myself included.

Lightroom is a name that’s a bit less known among non-photographers, but an essential part of my workflow. Lightroom is both a photo organizer and an editor. I’ve long used Lightroom for general edits like color, exposure, and cropping, but its healing and cloning tools are getting so good that I only need to open Photoshop for the more complex edits, like composites and removing a tricky object from a photo.

The Lightroom-Photoshop bundle typically costs about $240 / £249 a year. But Amazon has quietly knocked around $100 / £140 off that price for Prime members. The Prime Day Photoshop-Lightroom deal of $140 / £107 for a full year amounts to under $12 / £9 a month.

(Sorry, current subscribers, purchasing this plan will not extend existing licenses for the 20GB Photography Plan, which is no longer available for new subscribers.)

US Deal

UK Deal

The discount, however, is only available for the option that auto-renews, which means you’ll have to set some calendar reminders to cancel if you don’t want to automatically pay $240 / £249 for the software in one year’s time.

Adobe offers a full refund if you decide you don’t like the software and cancel before one one-month is up. But Adobe also doesn’t offer any sort of refund after that first month if you decide you don’t want to use the full year. Adobe’s monthly paid plan can be cancelled early, but you have to pay 50 percent of the remaining months, so committing to a one-year plan from the start isn’t a bad idea.

While the combo with both Lightroom and Photoshop is the best deal for most photographers, Prime members who don’t need the advanced edits inside Photoshop can get Lightroom only for $85.49 / £65.12 for the first year. Creatives who also dabble in video may want to consider getting all of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps in the All Apps plan, which is discounted to $564.99 / £418.43 for Prime members, down from $779.88 / £774.

Both the Lightroom-only plan and the Lightroom-Photoshop combo also include 1 TB of cloud storage for one year.

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A majority of the recent updates to Adobe’s software from Lightroom and Photoshop to Premiere Pro have focused heavily on generative AI – but stock market analysts are saying Adobe’s push into the AI space isn’t enough.

Despite a string of recent SEC filings with record-breaking profits, Morgan Stanley has downgraded Adobe’s price target from overweight to equal weight. Analyst Keith Weiss wrote that Adobe’s growth in its Digital Media division has “directionality diverge[d] from the pace and quality of the innovation.”

Stock market analysts use the term overweight to recommend that a stock carry more weight in an investment portfolio, predicting positive performance. The equal rate ranking is a downgrade from overweight, which implies analysts expect average performance.

The analysis seems to suggest that analysts think Adobe isn’t keeping up with other AI giants.

Adobe, however, has been posting record-breaking profits. In its last report to investors, Adobe posted record third-quarter revenue, exceeding its original 2025 predictions and raising the end-of-the-year targets. The record-breaking $5.99 billion in the third quarter, however, represents “just” an 11 percent year-over-year growth.

In that report, Adobe indicated that Firefly had “millions of downloads” on the mobile app and that monthly active users on Firefly grew thirty percent from the previous quarter. The report, however, also indicated that the relatively new ability to use other AI models inside of Firefly is growing at a faster rate than Firefly, with consumption of Firefly growing at 32 percent and custom models growing at 68 percent, respectively, in quarter-over-quarter data.

Since that financial report, Adobe has integrated the ability to choose other AI models besides Firefly into the beta version of Photoshop. The move is the first time that Adobe has allowed creatives to use models besides Firefly in a Creative Cloud app, after bringing third-party AI model options to the Firefly app in April.

While Adobe’s business is booming, some analysts think growth in the AI space should be stronger. Google, for example, posted a 14 percent year-over-year increase in the second quarter of 2025, but a 32 percent increase in revenue for Google Cloud, which includes AI infrastructure and generative AI.

One of the key ways that Adobe’s AI differentiates itself is that Firefly is built on licensed content from Adobe Stock as well as public domain content. Adobe says that content generated from Firefly is safe to use commercially. While Adobe’s AI isn’t without its criticism, that’s likely a key distinction for a software giant that caters to many different types of artists, including photographers, videographers, and graphic designers.

As a photographer and Photoshop-Lightroom user, I don’t find a growth of “only” 11 percent concerning. But, I do wonder if stock market pressure could sway Adobe’s future decisions.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump claimed that paying copyright owners to use their content was “not doable” if the US wants to remain competitive. I both hope and suspect that Adobe will continue to follow the path of using licensed data to train its Firefly algorithms. Creators are already frustrated enough over Adobe’s subscription model and cancellation policies.

Offering both the commercially safe Firefly alongside other third-party AI models may be Adobe’s strategy for remaining competitive in the AI space without alienating its key user base. Adobe’s recent beta Photoshop update allows creators to choose from different AI models, including Google’s Nano Banana, which is known for its ability to generate images that still look like a specific person.

I watched a demo of the new Photoshop beta capabilities, and it mixes the strengths of different third-party models with longstanding Photoshop favorite tools, including masking and layers. The move appears to bring more control over the final results than generating content inside a chatbot or consumer-focused image editor like Google Photos.

Using the third-party AI capabilities inside Adobe Photoshop won’t require a second subscription to platforms like Gemini, but it is a premium feature that requires a Firefly subscription in addition to a Photoshop subscription, or a subscription to the All Apps plan, after an initial free trial period.

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The Nik Collection plug-ins are sold as a single unit. You can’t buy them separately, but you do use them separately. And although they are typically used as plug-ins for programs like Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, they also work as standalone programs and external editors for other programs, like Capture One. If you like to shoot raw, though, you will need a ‘host’ program to do your raw conversions before sending processed images to the Nik plug-ins for editing.

So even though Nik Collection is usually described as a plug-in suite, it actually offers a wide variety of workflows. This, and its huge creative range, make it one of the best photo-editing software applications for photographers.

Taking them alphabetically, Analog Efex is perhaps the most interesting for anyone trying to recreate the look of old cameras, primitive lenses, and lo-fi film stocks. It can create bokeh effects, light leaks, borders, dust and scratches, even ‘accidental’ multiple exposure effects, and multi-camera images where photos are chopped up into panels. It’s like a wild analog playground and a world apart from DxO’s rather more sober FilmPack film emulation software. It’s weird and sometimes over the top, but brilliant.

Color Efex is perhaps the central tool in the Nik lineup. It offers more than 50 filters, which can be used individually or in combination, each with powerful adjustments and masking tools. In Nik Collection 8, Color Efex gets preset effects for each filter, so there are even more ready-made starting points for your experiments. It’s aimed at more mainstream photographic effects than Analog Efex but has its own share of striking looks alongside regular tools like levels and curves.

Dfine is the Nik Collection’s noise-reduction plug-in, but it only works on JPEGs or images already converted from raw files, rather than directly on raw files, unlike more modern AI noise-reduction tools. It’s effective in an old-fashioned kind of way, with a good deal of control over noise reduction via ‘noise profiles’ and local enhancements, but these days it’s much more effective to tackle noise during the raw-processing phase. It would be great if DxO could find a way to bring its DeepPRIME AI noise reduction to Dfine, but it’s hard to see how it could fit into the editing workflow if your regular ‘host’ program is doing the raw conversion.

HDR Efex has had relatively little attention in recent Nik Collection updates but remains a very effective HDR tool that can be used to merge bracketed exposures or just to add HDR-style shadow and highlight adjustments to single files. Some of the preset effects are throwbacks to the worst excesses of the HDR craze, though it’s possible to produce strong-but-natural-looking results too.

Nik Sharpener comes in two forms: a ‘presharpener’ to crisp up soft-looking images and an ‘output’ sharpener to optimize sharpening for different output devices and print sizes. The screen sharpening is effective if you publish your images digitally, but for this and the print sharpening to be effective, you really need to resize your images for your output device before you send them to Sharpener. I suspect most photographers will just stick to the sharpening tools in their regular host software.

Silver Efex is one of the stars of the Nik Collection and is perhaps the best-known black-and-white software tool of all. It produces remarkable richness, depth, and tonal subtlety in monochrome images, with a powerful set of adjustment tools, preset effects, and local adjustments for ‘dodging and burning’. You can also produce striking black-and-white images in Analog Efex and Color Efex, but Silver Efex is probably the ultimate digital darkroom for monochrome work.

Viveza is harder to categorize. It’s designed for detailed color adjustments, via both global adjustments and local adjustments, but it does seem to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and three of its key adjustments are now incorporated into Color Efex. No doubt Viveza has its fans, but it does seem much more limited than the Nik Collection’s other creative plug-ins.

DxO Nik Collection 8 system requirements

DxO Nik Collection 8: price

DxO Nik Collection 8 sells for $169.99 / £144.99 (about AU$260) for new users, or for $99.99 / £79.99 (about AU$150) as an upgrade from Nik Collection 6 or 7. Note that DxO’s upgrade offer covers the last two versions, so although the Nik Collection is on an annual update cycle, you can afford to skip a version without losing your upgrade entitlement. If you already have Nik Collection 7, for example, and you don’t need the Photoshop workflow enhancements that feature so heavily in Nik Collection 8, you might want to hang on for next year’s Nik Collection 9 release.

Either way, while the Nik Collection is not exactly cheap, you do get an awful lot for your money. Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and perhaps even HDR Efex are easily good enough and different enough to be sold as standalone products, and here you’re getting all the plug-ins for a single price.

DxO Nik Collection 8: interface and usability

They have different jobs, but all the Nik creative plug-ins share the same basic design. The left sidebar displays preset effects and individual filters for building your own effects, while the right sidebar displays panels for each filter so that you can make further adjustments. This right sidebar can get a little busy once you start combining effects, but the panels can be collapsed to save space.

You can also apply a wide range of highly customizable local adjustment masks via DxO’s trademark Control Points, Control Lines, and – now – Polygon masks. These work in a unique way, targeting only specific tones and colors within the mask area, so they are highly selective. The Nik Collection does not offer AI object masking, but this system is equally effective in a different way.

If you want to, you can dive very deep indeed into the Nik Collection’s filters, masks, and controls to create some stunning effects. Or, if that’s just too much to take in initially, you can pick from a long list of excellent preset effects and work back from there.

Improved Photoshop integration is a key feature of this Nik Collection 8 update. It comes with a new-and-improved Nik Collection palette displayed directly within the Photoshop interface, including the ability to save interim edits in Nik plug-ins and return them to Photoshop as layers when you’re done.

Silver Efex gets some updates too, including a color reference image display, interface improvements and local adjustments for ClearView (a bit like Lightroom Dehaze) and Selective Tone adjustments. Also, each filter now comes with pre-defined presets.

Overall, the Nik Collection workflow has been refined to a point where it’s as quick and seamless to use as possible, and you can just click a preset if you don’t want to get bogged down in tools and settings. It also has special features and options for Photoshop users.

DxO Nik Collection 8: performance

The Nik Collection plug-ins offer such a huge variety of image-editing effects, tools, and inspiration that it’s hard to know where to start. If you like a lo-fi analog look, then Analog Efex does it spectacularly well. Color Efex is like a photo editor and effects generator rolled into one, and is like a giant box of filters with endless permutations. Silver Efex Pro is capable of wonderful black-and-white imagery with comparatively little effort – though you can dig as deep as you want with the adjustment and masking tools. HDR Efex does look a little dated in parts, but is still very good at creating classic HDR Effects.

Dfine is less impressive because it’s starting from images that have already been processed once. It can reduce noise very effectively, but you can easily lose detail at the same time, so it’s some way behind the latest AI noise-reduction tools. Sharpener is interesting but perhaps a little specialized for the average user – it’s handy if you want to optimize detail carefully for screen or print, perhaps. It’s also hard to warm to Viveza, as it doesn’t do much that programs like Lightroom or Photoshop can’t, though its masking tools are effective in a different way.

DxO Nik Collection 8: verdict

You probably won’t get equal value out of all the Nik Collection plug-ins, since Dfine is somewhat dated, Sharpener is quite specialized, and Viveza’s color adjustment capabilities are neither unique nor particularly valuable for Lightroom or Photoshop users.

So, does the Nik Collection still deserve a 5-star rating? I think so, because Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and HDR Efex offer such a rich and varied set of image effects that, in my opinion, they easily justify the cost of the Nik Collection on their own.

It’s not just a unique set of photo effects that you’re getting here, but a practically bottomless source of inspiration and ideas. If you’re getting stuck in a rut with your current photo editor – and we all do from time to time – the Nik Collection will bust you out of that rut in a big way. We all need fresh ideas now and again, and that’s exactly what the Nik Collection delivers.

Alternatives

Photoshop will soon gain in-app support for using third-party AI tools to create, design, and edit within the longstanding software. On Thursday, September 25, Adobe announced support for third-party AI models for Generative Fill inside Photoshop Beta, including Google Gemini 2.5 (better known as Nano Banana) and Black Forest Lab’s Flux.1 Kontex [pro].

Third-party AI model support has previously launched inside Adobe Firefly, but the move is the first time Adobe is bringing the option to select different AI models to a Creative Cloud app. The update gives users the ability to choose Nanao Banana or Flux along with Adobe’s Firefly AI models when using Generative Fill.

I sat down with Adobe’s Joel Baer, Director of Product Management for Adobe’s generative AI efforts, for a demo of the new capabilities ahead of the launch, just a few weeks after I tried out Nano Banana inside the Gemini chatbot. Mixing Photoshop with Nano Banana takes the AI out of the chatbot and gives it Photoshop tools.

The third-party AI support is coming only to Generative Fill, but the tool includes support for masking, layers, and localized edits. That brings more control and fine-tuning than what’s possible with using Nano Banana inside the Gemini chatbot or inside Google Photos.

For example, users can highlight the entire canvas to generate an entirely new image, or use a brush to select only part of an existing image to edit.

Nano Banana’s ability to remix multiple images and the updated capabilities to generate AI photos that look more like real people are intact inside Photoshop as well. During the demo, Adobe placed two different images on the canvas of a drum set and a woman, and the AI combined the two to place the woman playing behind the drum set.

Like with the existing Generative Fill tool, the AI generation becomes a new layer, not part of the existing image itself. That makes it easy to delete or edit the generative layer. Inside the Properties panel of the generative layer, users can also change the AI model to try the same prompt with a different model, allowing users to switch from Adobe Firefly to Nano Banana, Flux, and back. Previous results are saved, so editors can go back and choose the best result.

Generative AI isn’t without its surprises. For example, in one demo, Adobe asked the AI to change a photo’s lighting from day to night. It did a fairly decent job at tweaking the lighting, except it added a car. The car was properly lit and even had a light trail, but it was driving on a sidewalk about to hit a street sign. Adobe’s editing tools can be further used to take out those glitches, using tools like the remove brush or masking out part of the generative layer.

Different AI training models vary in strengths and weaknesses, allowing users to choose a model means creators can choose the model that produces the best results. Adobe recommends Nano Banana for stylized elements, graphic details, and scene additions. Adobe suggests trying Flux for its contextual accuracy, perspective, and environmental harmony.

Unlike Firefly models, third-party AI models may use content scraped from the web

Adobe's safe-for-commercial-use AI label, however, doesn’t extend to those third-party partner models. Adobe trained Firefly using licensed images and public domain works, and the company thus says that it’s safe to use for commercial projects. Adobe doesn’t make any such claims for third-party models, where the user is responsible for vetting the ethics and safe use cases.

Google Gemini is trained on “publicly available data,” according to the company. That includes videos from YouTube.

Black Forest Labs doesn’t disclose where training data for Flux comes from, but the company’s Flux was also previously used on X’s Grok, an AI with more lax rules, including the ability to generate images of political figures and licensed characters. Grok has since switched to its own Aurora image generation model. Black Forest Labs indicates that Flux’s training data set went through pre-screening to eliminate NSFW (not safe for work) images.

Adobe says using the partner models does not require a separate subscription to Gemini or Flux. However, using a third-party AI model is a Premium feature, which requires a specific subscription plan. Adobe’s Creative Cloud All Apps Pro plan includes premium generative credits, and Firefly plans also include third-party partner model support. The partner models are not part of the single app Photoshop plan or Lightroom-Photoshop plans without also adding a Firefly subscription.

However, Adobe is temporarily allowing all Photoshop users to try out the third-party model capabilities without a premium subscription and without deducting from generative credits. Standard plan subscribers can generate up to 100 times without a subscription during the trial period. Creative Cloud Pro subscribers are limited to 500 generations per day per model.

The support for non-Adobe AI models is coming first to Photoshop Beta, which is separate from the fully-fledged Photoshop and can be downloaded from the Creative Cloud desktop app. The update with third-party AI support is available beginning September 25.

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While Adobe Camera Raw [ACR] was originally intended to be used on RAW files being imported into Adobe Lightroom and, in this tutorial, Adobe Photoshop, it’s so useful that Adobe made it available as a filter that could be used inside the main host application and on files such as JPEGs.

So, if you have some old photos that you didn’t shoot in RAW format (naughty!) and want to see what you can make of them, this is the place to experiment.

Start by loading your image, duplicating your background layer and going to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. In the histogram on the top right, it’s worth clicking on the left and right tick boxes to turn shadow and highlight clipping warnings on.

1. Fix the exposure

This photo was underexposed to avoid losing the white highlights. To balance the exposure, go to the Light panel and move the Exposure slider until red clipping warning pixels start to appear on the image, then reduce the slider until they are gone. Move the Blacks slider to the right to about +90. Then use the Curves panel to pull up the mid-tones.

2. Colour and vibrance

Go to the Color panel. The White Balance and Temperature settings aren’t the same as on Raw files, so click on White Balance and select Auto. Again, keep an eye out for red clipping pixels and manually reduce the Temperature when you get them. Increase the Vibrance for weak colors and overall Saturation.

3. Clarity and texture

Next is the Effects panel. Increase the Clarity to make landscapes more distinct and if there’s any stonework in the photo, increase the Texture as well. Use the Vignette slider to either remove any vignetting or add it for effect. If you get red clipping pixels, either tweak one of the previous settings or reduce the Highlights slider in the Light panel.

4. Optics and noise

Go to the Detail panel and see whether the image needs any Sharpening and Noise Reduction, which JPEGs can introduce into areas like the sky. Zoom in to 100% and use the toggle button to check the before and after as these controls affect each other. So, it’s a balancing act between how much sharpening you need versus how smooth the sky is.

5. Get creative with color

The Color Mixer and the Color Grading panels offer the opportunity to give your images a different look and feel. The Color Grading wheels, which cover Shadows, Midtones and Highlights, offer a very visual way of seeing the effects. Click on a part of the color wheel to select it, then click and slide to adjust the Saturation.

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Adobe is adding one of the most-requested features to Photoshop. On Tuesday, July 29, Adobe announced a list of new features arriving on Photoshop, including the much-requested ability to upscale images using AI. The update also includes AI-generated tools to match lighting and colors in composites, along with an updated Generative Remove tool.

Adobe says the updates are designed to help eliminate some of the most time-consuming parts of photo editing so that users can focus on creativity. The company says the new tools were built in collaboration with the creative community.

The upscaling and composite tools are launching in beta, while the update includes a refinement of the existing Generative Remove tool. Generative Upscale and Harmonize will require available Generative Credits, while Generative Remove does not use up any of those credits.

Generative Upscale

Adobe says that the new Generative Upscale is one of the Photoshop community’s most requested features. The tool uses Adobe Firefly to add up to 8MP to any photograph, even scans from old vintage photos, and works on both the desktop and web versions of Photoshop.

As Generative Upscale increases the image’s file size, the tool also enhances sharpness and detail. During a demonstration of the latest version of Photoshop, I watched the Photoshop team upscale a vintage portrait. The tool added more sharpness and fine details, without seeming to change any of the details, including retaining flyaway hairs from the original image.

After updating to the latest version of the software, creatives can try out the feature by accessing Image > Generative Upscale from the top menu bar.

Along with upscaling photographs, the tool can also be used to add more resolution to AI-generated graphics.

Harmonize

Photoshop’s new Harmonize tool is designed for matching the lighting and colors when adding a new person or object to a composite on the desktop and web-based versions of Photoshop, with Early Access for some mobile users on iOS. If the tool sounds familiar, it’s because Adobe first teased this feature during Adobe Max 2024, when it was called Project Perfect Blend.

Harmanize is a new beta tool inside Photoshop that uses generative AI to help match added people and objects to the lighting in the background. The tool works when adding people to a group image or a landscape shot, but it’s also designed for compositing objects in product photography.

Adobe says that the tool is designed to help avoid time-consuming manual edits when working with a composite.

After updating to the latest version of Photoshop, composite artists can find the beta Harmonize tool inside the Contextual Task Bar. (That movable bar typically floats near the bottom of the image, but if you don’t see it, go to the Window menu and make sure that Contextual Task Bar is checked.)

After pasting the composited person or object onto the new layer, creatives simply need to click the Harmonize button on that taskbar. Like with other generative AI tools, Photoshop will create a few different variations to choose from.

Generative Remove

Adobe is also updating Generative Remove inside of Photoshop, updating the tool to use the latest version of Firefly. The tool is arriving for both the desktop version of Photoshop and the web version.

Adobe explains that, while Generative Fill is often used to remove objects, Generative Remove is less likely to fill in that blank space with an unwanted object. Instead, Generative Remove is designed to favor filling in that blank space with data to match the surrounding pixels.

Unlike many of Photoshop’s generative-AI-based tools, using the Generative Remove tool does not use up Generative Credits, Adobe says, so creators can use this tool without worrying about running out of credits before the end of the month.

Additional features coming to Photoshop

The newest version of Photoshop will also allow users to choose which Firefly model to use when using Generative Fill and Generative Expand on Desktop. This gives creators the ability to revert to an older version of the Firefly models. Adobe says this is because each generative model has its own strengths and styles, so creators may want to experiment with different models to find the best results.

Adobe is also introducing the beta version of Projects for Photoshop on desktop. Projects is a collaboration tool that allows users to share entire collections at once, rather than sharing each item individually among a creative team.

The new beta features are rolling out today, July 29.

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Adobe Firefly is a generative AI platform that transforms simple text descriptions into visuals, videos and audio content. That might sound like it's trying to replace the work of photographers, but Adobe argues it won't. Instead, they say, it's all about helping you speed up your workflow, and offering you new creative possibilities.

Having said that, Firefly's not just aimed at photographers. It's designed to something for everyone; from completely free access for casual experimentation to comprehensive professional plans for studios and agencies.

But with multiple subscription tiers and integration options across Adobe's ecosystem, choosing the right path can feel overwhelming. You can use Firefly for free – but you will be restricted as to the number of Generative Credits you get - so you will run out of these quickly, and in some effects will be out of your reach. But if you are going to pay, you have to decide which plan suits you best. So in this article, I'll break down everything you need to know to make an informed decision.

First, though, Iet's consider why photographers and filmmakers might want to use Adobe Firefly in the first place.

What Firefly can do for photographers and filmmakers?

Adobe Firefly is both a standalone web application and a family of generative AI models that's been seamlessly integrated across Adobe's Creative Cloud suite. Like other platforms, including Midjourney, DALL-E and Runway, it allows you to generate images and video purely from text prompts.

By definition, photographers aren't generally interested in creating images from pixels alone. But Adobe argues that Firefly can also help you dramatically expand what's possible within your existing workflow.

For instance, imagine you're working on a commercial shoot and the client wants to see how their product would look in a completely different environment. Instead of organizing an entirely new shoot, you could use Firefly's Generative Fill feature to seamlessly place that product in any setting imaginable – so it helps with the ideas process.

The Generative Expand feature is also potentially useful for photographers. How many times have you captured the perfect moment, only to realize you needed more space in the frame? Generative Expand can extend your image boundaries, creating additional canvas that blends in with your original shot.

Professional photographers are also discovering Firefly's potential for creating compelling mood boards and concept presentations. Instead of spending hours searching through stock libraries or sketching rough ideas, you can quickly generate multiple visual concepts to share with clients. This not only speeds up the creative process but also helps ensure everyone's on the same page before the actual shoot begins.

Finally, the platform's video generation capabilities are opening up new revenue streams for photographers. You can now offer clients video content alongside your still photography, without needing to learn complex video editing software.

How to get Firefly - the options

Adobe offers several pathways to access Firefly, each designed for different types of users and usage patterns. It's all a bit complicated, but on the plus side it means you can either start small and scale up as your needs grow, or choose a comprehensive plan that covers all your requirements from day one. The most important thing to know is that you'll need Generative Credits for each request you make of Firefly.

Option 1: Creative Cloud

Want access to a wide range of Adobe apps, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Audition, After Effects, Premiere Pro and more, as well as Firefly? Then it's worth subscribing to the Creative Cloud.

Creative Cloud Pro, available in North America, includes 4,000 monthly Generative Credits for premium features, alongside unlimited access to standard generative features. This plan essentially gives you professional-level AI capabilities bundled with the complete Adobe application suite.

In the UK, Europe and Australasia the Creative Cloud All Apps plan provides 1,000 monthly Generative Credits, which is suitable for photographers who use AI generation moderately while benefiting from the full range of Adobe applications.

Option 2: Photography Plan

Don't need all the Adobe apps? Photography-specific plans cater specifically to photographers' needs. The Photography Plan with 1TB storage includes 100 monthly Generative Credits for new subscribers, perfect for photographers who primarily work within Lightroom and Photoshop with occasional AI assistance. The Lightroom Plan with 1TB of storage (which offers Lightroom alone, without Photoshop) offers new users 25 Generative Credits per month.

Option 3: Single app

Just want one Adobe app, along with Firefly? Adobe Individual Creative Cloud applications come with their own Generative Credit allocations. Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro subscriptions, for instance, include varying credit amounts depending on when you subscribed.

This approach works well for specialists who focus primarily on one application but want occasional access to AI features.

Option 4: Standalone plans - Get Firefly without paying for anything else

Want Firefly but don't need any other Adobe apps? Then these standalone Firefly plans are your best bet.

• Firefly Free gives you a taste of what's possible with a limited monthly allocation of Generative Credits. It's ideal if you want to experiment with AI generation, or occasionally enhance your work with generative features.
• Firefly Standard steps things up significantly, with 2,000 monthly Generative Credits for premium features and unlimited access to standard generative tools. This plan is good for photographers who regularly use AI generation but don't need the full Adobe ecosystem. You get serious creative power without the overhead of applications you might not use.
• Firefly Pro doubles down with 7,000 monthly Generative Credits for premium features, making it suitable for professional photographers and small studios with heavy AI generation needs. This tier provides the capacity for regular video generation, extensive image creation, and comprehensive audio work.
• Firefly Premium offers 50,000 monthly Generative Credits for premium features. This is enterprise-level capacity designed for big studios, agencies and production houses that integrate AI generation into their core workflows.

What is a Generative Credit?

So how do Generative Credits actually work? The credit system seems complex at first, but it's actually quite straightforward once you understand the logic.

Standard features consume just one credit per generation. This includes basic text-to-image generation, Generative Fill in Photoshop, and simple vector creation. These are the tools you'll likely use most frequently, and their low credit cost means you can experiment freely without worrying about rapidly depleting your allocation.

Premium features, though, require multiple credits because they demand significantly more computational power. For instance video generation consumes between 20 and 100 credits per second depending on the resolution and quality settings.

Audio translation, meanwhile, uses 5 credits per second, while advanced lip-sync features consume 10 to 15 credits per second.

Credits reset monthly on your billing date and don't carry over to the next month. This encourages regular use while preventing credit hoarding. If you find yourself running low on credits, you can either wait for the monthly reset or purchase additional Firefly plans to increase your capacity.

Plans that include unlimited access to standard features only deduct credits when you use premium capabilities. This means you can use Generative Fill, basic image generation and similar tools as much as you want, without worrying about your credit balance.

How to choose the right plan

The key to choosing the right Firefly plan lies in honestly assessing your current and anticipated usage patterns. Start by considering how often you currently find yourself wishing you could quickly generate visual content, enhance existing photos, or create multimedia materials. If these scenarios arise regularly in your work, investing in a more comprehensive plan will likely pay dividends.

Think about your client base and the types of projects you typically handle. Are you working with brands that need extensive visual content across multiple platforms? Do you find yourself turning down projects because they require capabilities you don't currently have? Firefly can help bridge these gaps and potentially open up new revenue streams.

Budget considerations are important, but remember that Firefly isn't just a cost; it's an investment in expanding your creative capabilities and potential income. The time savings alone from tools like Generative Fill and Expand may ultimately justify the subscription cost for many photographers.

Hello there! I’m a huge Star Wars fan, but I had no idea there was a link between George Lucas’ enduring space opera and Adobe Photoshop. Lucasfilm has a bit of a reputation for helping to kickstart major creative companies, including Pixar, THX, and of course, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). A conversation with Sr. Principal Designer at Adobe, Russell Preston Brown, and famed commercial photographer, Jeff Schewe, has highlighted the little-known link between Photoshop and Star Wars. This is a snippet from an episode of The Photoshop Archives (below), where the pair discuss Photoshop 1.0, what they think the secret of Photoshop is and more. It's a great watch! But back to Star Wars...

Adobe Photoshop was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Software engineer, Thomas, was studying for a PhD at the University of Michigan, while visual effects guru, John Knoll, was working for ILM (where he is now CCO) and would later work on the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition (1997) and the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

Several stories exist as to exactly how the brothers came to work on the project. As Jeff explains in the video; “John was trying to get proprietary image formats from one system to another system,” so he turned to his brother to help him out. According to History of Information, Thomas wrote the code so he could display greyscale images on his Apple Macintosh Plus’ monochrome screen, which impressed his brother and encouraged the pair to collaborate. In both instances, the program that Thomas created would become the genesis of Photoshop.

Dock tells the same story, but quotes a passage from CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference, which quotes John Knoll as stating; “As Tom showed me his work, it struck me how similar it was to the image-processing tools on the Pixar [a custom computer used at ILM].” So there’s the link. Had John not worked at ILM, he might not have seen the program’s potential. And without Star Wars, ILM wouldn’t exist. Clearly, Photoshop's very existence was the will of the force.

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It’s a bit niche, but if a Star Wars and Photoshop crossover is your match made in heaven, here’s how to add Lightsabers to toy shots! If that isn’t enough, I’ll show you how to create a jump to lightspeed effect in Photoshop. And here’s a bit of trivia to impress your photography friends: I had no idea Luke Skywalker's Lightsaber was made from a vintage camera flash.

After launching a free smartphone variant of Photoshop for iOS earlier this year, Adobe has now expanded the app’s reach to Android devices. On Tuesday, June 3, Adobe announced that the Adobe Photoshop mobile beta app is now available on Google Play for Android phones and tablets.

The free smartphone-ready Photoshop app isn’t as fully-fledged as Photoshop variants for desktop, but the new mobile Photoshop app offers far more similarities than earlier options like Photoshop Express. While the new app offers more similarities to the longstanding photo editor, like Photoshop Express, the mobile Photoshop app is free.

On the new Android Photoshop app, creatives can use longstanding Photoshop favorites like selections, layers, and masks to merge multiple images and graphic elements into one. The list of tools also includes the Healing Brush, Remove, and Clone Stamp tools to remove distractions from an image. The Tap Select, Object Select, and Magic Wand tools are also available on mobile to select a portion of the image rather than applying edits to the whole file.

Adobe Firefly, the brand’s AI, is also integrated into the app, including Generative Fill. The tool can add elements to a graphic or can be used to fill in gaps left by removing something from an image.

The Photoshop mobile app is still in beta on Android, but is now widely available to download. The app requires Android 11 or later and at least 6GB of RAM, although 8GB or more of RAM is recommended for the best performance.

Adobe says that, as a beta version, the Photoshop Android app offers all features for free. The iOS version, which is out of beta testing, is also a free app, but some premium features require a subscription.

The Android version of Photoshop is available from Google Play.

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I've created an Adobe Photoshop Action that will add punch to JPEG landscape photos.

While one of the most common landscape photography tips is to shoot in RAW, because there’s more image data than a JPEG, sometimes you run out of memory card space – on a long trip, for instance. Or, the ultimate horror, your main card might develop a fault while you’re out somewhere scenic without a camera shop for miles.

So, you switch to JPEG, and while it saves on storage space considerably, it’s at the expense of getting the best out of the captured image. That’s where this Photoshop Action comes in.

I've designed my Action to offer a boost to contrast, color, sharpness and impact. It uses a combination of blended layers and adjustment layers, which can then be tweaked. Follow the tutorial and create it yourself to be reused when needed, which also means you can add elements or tweak the existing ones.

What is a Photoshop Action?

Actions are one of the oldest methods in Photoshop of automating enhancements. And while Adjustment Presets, Neural Filters and now the possibilities offered by AI-driven Generative Fill have all offered new ways of doing things, there’s still a place for Actions.

To access the Actions palette, go to Window > Actions. To use an Action, simply click on it to select, then click on the Play icon at the bottom of the palette.

To make your own Action, it’s best to have it all planned out in advance so that you're simply following steps that you already know the settings for. After creating the Action, by following this tutorial, it will then be available in the Actions palette.

One click there will run it, or if you assigned a function key, simply pressing that will do the same.

1. Start a new Action

Load your image to work on and then open the Actions palette and click on the Create new set icon at the bottom. Photoshop can only save sets of Actions, so name it, then click on the plus symbol to create the actual Action.

Give your Action a name so you can recognize it later. If you want, assign it a Function Key, such as F10 here. Once happy, click on Record. The first thing to then do is duplicate the background layer.

2. Sharpen it up

Call the new layer ‘Sharpness’ then go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Enter values of Amount: 75%, Radius: 4.8px, Reduce Noise: 20% and Remove: Lens Blur. Click on OK to apply the sharpening.

These settings should be fine for the average, unsharpened landscape JPEG, so they can be used as-is. If an image is particularly soft or has lens shake, you can use different settings.

3. Adding impact

Duplicate the Sharpness layer and call it ‘Impact’. Then, with this layer selected, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. For images around 6MP, a Radius of 50px is fine, for 12MP-15MP, up this to 75px.

For images 20MP and over you might want to try a Radius of 100px. Click OK and then change the Blending Mode to Soft Light. Check the highlights and reduce the Opacity if required.

4. Mix in some Vibrance

At this point it should all be looking quite spicy. Add an extra touch by clicking on the Create New Fill or Adjustment layer icon and select Vibrance. Enter a value of 20-30% for a reasonable, generic boost to the image.

Click on the square symbol next to the red dot to stop recording the Action. Ensure ‘Landscape set’ is highlighted then click on the three horizontal lines and select Save Actions.

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Adobe has just told us that it is running a flash sale on Creative Cloud Single Apps for over the next 12 days. The discount allows you to buy your favorite Adobe application at just $13.79, rather than the usual $22.99, for the first six months of your annual subscription. The 50% saving is available in the US until May 12.

The Single App scheme is particularly attractive to those who just want one program - and who wouldn't benefit from Adobe's "all you can eat" All Apps plan which typically costs $59.99, but currently available for $35.99. That means for vloggers and filmmakers who want the industry-standard professional video editing software, you can just subscribe to getting Premiere Pro - without paying for apps that you just won't use.

See Adobe Premiere Pro CC review

Other single apps in this Adobe sale include Illustrator, After Effects, InDesign, and Photoshop.

Read more:

• The best photo editing software right now
• The best video editing software for vloggers and filmmakers
• The best Adobe Photography Plan deals for Photoshop CC and Lightroom
• How to download Photoshop and try it for free
• How to download Adobe Premiere Pro and try it for free 

In a world where your images travel far beyond your control, Adobe just handed photographers a gift that many have been waiting for. Just released in public beta and announced at Adobe Max 2025, Adobe Content Authenticity is a free app that allows creators to easily apply Content Credentials to their digital work.... even if it wasn't created with Adobe apps.

Content Credentials are basically a digital signature that stays attached to a photo forever, no matter where it travels online. Think of them as an ID card for your picture that contains information you choose to share, which may include your name, social media links and details about how the image was created. 

Once creators apply Content Credentials in the Content Authenticity app, or turn them on in Photoshop and Lightroom, it attaches an invisible watermark to your picture. Brilliantly, even if someone takes a photo of your photo, this digital signature remains intact, so no one will ever be able to pass it off as their own. 

ABOVE: Watch the What are Content Credentials? video

Applying Content Credentials is a simple matter of checking a box in Photoshop and Lightroom, or a few clicks in the Content Authenticity app. In return, it provides lasting protection by creating a permanent, verifiable link between you and your image that follows your content across the internet. By the same token, ignoring it could be one of the biggest professional mistakes you'll make.

Why it's important

Think about it: as photographers, we pour our hearts, technical expertise, and often significant investments into creating images that matter. Yet how many times have you found your work repurposed, uncredited, or worse – claimed by someone else?

The digital ecosystem has been a wild west of content ownership for too long, and finally there's a new system for protecting yourself.

Content Credentials are kind of like DNA for your image that can't be washed away, even through screenshots or other hacks. This isn't just abstract tech – it's practical protection for your livelihood.

ABOVE: Why you should "sign" your work

Verification through LinkedIn adds another layer of professionalism. In an industry where reputation is currency, having your identity verified alongside your work could help build trust with clients and publications. 

The batch processing feature, meanwhile, means it isn't even time-consuming to apply Content Credentials: you can do it to 50 images at once. In short, there's simply no excuse not to implement this.

Ignore the naysayers

Some photographers might argue that watermarks already serve this purpose. They don't. Watermarks can be cropped out or removed with increasing ease. Content Credentials, by contrast, are designed to persist, creating an unbreakable chain of attribution that follows your work wherever it goes.

Others might question how much this will actually protect you in reality. And it's a fair point. Our images are ripped off every day by small-time bloggers, low-rent businesses and outright criminals around the world – and few of us have the time, resources or energy to launch a legal fight.

But that's no reason to throw in the towel completely. Sometimes, copyright infringers will be scared off with a simple legal letter. Sometimes it'll be a genuine mistake or sheer ignorance of the law. In any case, being able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you own the image will help you enormously.

It will also be a strong defense if (and this really does happen) someone sues you for publishing your own work, claiming that it's actually theirs.

ABOVE: See how attribution can protect your work

What about AI scraping? Well, Content Credentials applied in the Adobe Content Authenticity app enable you to opt out of that as well. There's a box you can tick that says you don't want your image to be used by anyone to train an AI model. 

Here, though, the limitations of Content Credentials bump up against reality, as none of the big AI companies have yet said they'll actually honor that.

On the other hand, there are more 30 lawsuits going through the courts right now from angry copyright owners asserting their right not to have their content scraped. If just one of these succeeds, then you might well find AI companies changing tack.

The need for future-proofing

Yes, we live in a chaotic world. But as slowly, gradually, the legal frameworks catch up to digital realities, having a clear ownership trail will be crucial in any dispute. So you're not just protecting today's work; you're future-proofing your entire catalog.

In short, the content landscape has changed dramatically – and our tools must evolve with it. Five years ago, we worried about uncredited Pinterest shares; today, we're facing sophisticated AI systems training on our work and potentially making our skills obsolete. In that light, this small checkbox is one concrete step toward maintaining control of your creative legacy.

So the next time you export from Photoshop, take the extra few seconds to apply Content Credentials, and also use the Adobe Content Authenticity app as a final step to protect your work and secure attribution. Your future self – likely fighting some attribution battle we can't even imagine yet – will thank you.

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Adobe Photoshop will soon have an AI-powered Actions panel that allows photo editors to type in prompts to access thousands of potential edits in one click. On Wednesday, April 09, Adobe announced the development of AI agents for several programs, including Photoshop and Premiere Pro. The move will allow AI to handle repetitive tasks like resizing images for export, as well as one-click edits and in-app, content-aware tips for to learn the software.

Adobe says that it will debut the first “foundation for what will become our first creative agent in Photoshop” during Adobe Max London later this month. 

The new Actions panel will allow Firefly AI to analyze the image, recommend edits, and then make those edits in one click. Adobe says that the Actions panel will also allow editors to use natural language prompts to access more than 1,000 one-click actions in Photoshop.

Photoshop's new Actions panel will use AI to handle tasks automatically

The tool, Adobe says, will help handle repetitive tasks to speed up the editing process. But the new Actions panel can also be used as a learning tool, asking the AI for suggestions and then showing how to accomplish that with Photoshop’s different tools.

The announcement is more of a sneak peek than a full unveiling of the feature, which is expected to happen at Adobe Max London, scheduled for April 24. But Adobe calls the AI agent creator friendly. “The Photoshop agent will be able to help you learn the tool, share feedback and suggestions, and even handle repetitive tasks like preparing assets for export,” Ely Greenfield, Adobe’s Digital Media Business Chief Technology Officer, wrote in a blog post. “You stay in control in the creative driver’s seat, while your agent helps you out where you need / want it to. This is part of how we’re building the most creator-friendly approach to AI in the industry.”

Adobe Photoshop already has an Actions panel, but the photo editor’s current version is used to manually record repetitive tasks so that the software can then automatically repeat those steps on another image. Currently, the user presses record in the Actions panel, completes the edits, then saves that action. The action can then be repeated on another image by selecting the action and pressing the play button.

For example, I have a Photoshop Action to resize images to web size. I also have a Photoshop Action saved to reduce skin redness. The Action will create the different color adjustment layers for me, but then I will have to go in and manually brush over the skin so that the edit is only applied to the correct areas. With Adobe’s Agentic Actions teaser, I suspect that the new Actions panel could potentially even select the right areas to apply the effect to and even create new actions without having to record them in the first place.

Adobe stressed that it doesn’t consider the AI agent creative, but a way to free up more time for professionals and to teach beginners without starting from templates. Creators remain in control over how the AI agent helps, the company said.

“We’ve always believed that the single most powerful creative force in the world is the human imagination,” Greenfield wrote. “AI agents are not creative, but they can empower people – enabling individuals to unlock insights and create content that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to and enabling creative professionals to scale and amplify their impact more than ever. For people at all levels, agentic AI’s potential makes starting from templates feel stale and old-fashioned. For professionals, it offers a pathway to growing their careers by freeing up time to do more of the things only they can do.”

AI agents will also be coming to Premiere Pro

While the AI agent in Photoshop already has a name and a launch date, Adobe notes that it is working on AI agents for the video editor Premiere Pro as well. Last Week, Adobe launched Media Intelligence, a tool for searching for the right clip using AI text prompts. The company is working to build on that to develop an AI agent that can not only recognize clips but also take actions, including developing a rough cut.

What is an AI agent?

While Photoshop has several generative AI tools, an agent is a different sort of AI. Agentic AI is a smart software that is capable of making decisions and taking actions automatically based on its training data.

An AI agent often – but not always – takes on the form of a chatbot. But an agentic AI chatbot doesn’t just answer questions, it can carry out the task itself automatically. A non-agentic chatbot could tell you how to make the sky pop in Photoshop. An agentic AI could carry out those steps for you.

In-person tickets to Adobe Max London are currently sold out, but the event will also be accessible online on April 24.

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Adobe has tried to compress some of the features of the long-standing editing standard Photoshop into smartphone apps before, but apps like Photoshop Express never really felt like the real thing. But that changed when Adobe launched Photoshop for iPhone, along with sharing that an Android version is in the works. Even more intriguing is that the pricey editing app comes with a free version on mobile. But, of course Adobe’s announcement begs a few key questions. Is the Photoshop iPhone app any good? What does the desktop Photoshop have that the mobile app doesn’t? Can you really get Photoshop for free?

I’ve been using Photoshop for around 20 years now, so I decided to try out the new Photoshop for iPhone and see how the mobile app compares to the real thing. The new Photoshop mobile app feels far closer to the real thing than earlier attempts like Photoshop Express. But, mobile photographers should note some key features that are missing from the mobile app, and others that are available but require a subscription.

Here’s what features remain intact on the free Photoshop for iPhone, the features you need to pay for, and the reasons many will still stick to the desktop version.

What's free on the Photoshop iPhone app?

The number of features inside the Photoshop iPhone app is impressive compared to other mobile editors, despite having a significant gap between the desktop version. These are the Photoshop-y things that you can still do on an iPhone.

• Work with Layers. Layers are a key feature of the full version of Photoshop. Many of the layer-based features remain intact on the mobile app. This includes non-desctructive adjustment layers as well as empty layers, fill layers, type layers, and image layers. However, this does not include most of the layer blend modes. Only the normal, screen and multiple blend modes are intact on the free version, the other options remain locked behind that subscription.
• Making selections to edit a specific part of the image. Photoshop for iPhone allows mobile users to adjust only a specific part of the image by selecting only part of the image. Free app features include tap to select, a quick select brush, a lasso, and a rectangular and ellipse shape tools.
• Limited retouching. The free version of the Photoshop mobile app is limited in retouching tools. Spot healing, which can be used to do things like remove acne or a distracting garbage can from the background, is temporarily free as a teaser and all other retouching tools require a paid subscription.
• Painting. Most of the tools for painting or hand drawing on an image appear to be intact without requiring a paid plan. You can doodle on the app, including adjusting the brush. The free version also includes the eyedropper, which allows you to match the color of your paintbrush to another color in the image.
• Crop and rotate. The crop and rotate tools are free, including the ability to choose an aspect ratio or even choose a social network so you can choose the right ratio for where the image is headed.
• Generative expand and generate image. Surprisingly, some AI is included. Generative Expand is part of the free version of Photoshop for iPhone. This tool essentially “uncrops” the photo, using AI to fill in the blanks and get a wider shot. However, the free version only includes 10 generative credits per month, which means you can use that Generative Expand only ten times a month. (And yes, regenerating when the first attempt didn’t look right counts against those credits too).
• A mobile Camera RAW. The desktop Photoshop uses an accompanying software called Adobe Camera RAW to process RAW images. But, I used the RAW photography mode on my iPhone 15 Pro and I was still able to open it on the mobile Photoshop app, including the sliders and tools that I expect from Adobe Camera RAW.
• 5 GB of cloud storage. While limited, this space allows you to save your works in progress in the cloud.
• Quick export as a PNG. The free version of Photoshop for iPhone only supports the PNG file type. For more formats, a subscription is required.

What do you get with a Photoshop mobile subscription?

Several features on the mobile Photoshop app require a subscription. Naturally, subscribers gain access to some of the biggest features, which includes:

• Layer blend modes. The free version only includes three blend modes, which customizes how your layers blend together and are a necessary tool for many types of composites. A subscription will unlock the dissolve, darken, color burn, linear burn, darker color, lighten, color dodge, linear dodge, lighter color, overlay, soft light, hard light, vivid light, linear light, pin light, hard mix, difference, exclusion, subtract, divide, hue, saturation, color, and luminosity blend modes.
• Some selection tools. While the free version allows users to make selections, the object select tool and magic wand both require the subscription.
• Retouching. If you were hoping to retouch a photo with the free version, you’ll probably be disappointed. The retouching tools to tackle tasks like zapping zits or cleaning up distractions largely require the subscription. The spot heal tool is free temporarily to give users a taste of what it can do. But longstanding desktop tool favorites like the clone stamp needs a subscription. Light and dark is included in mobile for subscribers (although on the desktop version, it’s actually called dodge and burn).
• More than 10 generative AI tasks. Using anything that involves generative AI requires what Adobe calls generative credits. With the free version, you can only use the AI tools ten times in one month. With a subscription, that limit is upped to 100 per month with the Photoshop Mobile subscription, or 500 with the Creative Cloud Photography 1TB plan.
• Cloud storage. The free version only includes 5 GB of cloud storage. The paid storage increases far beyond that, but this depends on what plan you choose. For example, Photography Plan subscribers, which includes the desktop version of Photoshop as well as the mobile, get 1TB while the Creative Cloud All Apps plan includes 100GB.
• Auto save and exporting multiple file types. The free version only exports PNG files, so if you want more file options, you’ll need a subscription to save JPEG, PSD, and TIFF files, as well as choosing the file size. Subscribers also get a save now button.

What features are exclusive to the desktop version of Photoshop?

If you don’t see the feature you are looking for listed above, the odds are that it’s not part of the mobile app at launch. Adobe is working with a much smaller screen and more limited hardware to bring the longstanding desktop tool to an iPhone screen and longtime desktop users will likely be miffed by more than just the tiny screen size.

Listing everything that’s in the real Photoshop would be a nearly impossible task, so I will list a few of my personal favorite tools that I can’t find in the app with the warning that this isn’t a complete list of what’s missing.

• Content Aware. Content Aware is a tool that fills in spaces based on the pixels around it. It’s an excellent tool for removing something from a photo. Content Aware technology winds up in a few desktop tools, including Content Aware Move and Content Aware Fill.
• Filters. The mobile Photoshop app doesn’t have that toolbar at the top, which is where many of the missing features are. That means the mobile Photoshop doesn’t have that filters menu, which includes tools like neural filters, blur, sharpen, and more.
• Liquify. Another victim of the lacking filters menu is Liquify, the Photoshop tool that can be used to change the shape of something in an image, including fixing clothing wrinkles and double chins.
• Most of those side workspaces, like history and histogram. On that small screen, there’s no space for the side workspaces that have long been standard in the desktop Photoshop. That means that, while there’s an undo and redo button, there’s no history panel. A layer panel is included, but it’s one of the few of these extra workspaces that are part of the mobile app.
• Features like Select Subject and Select Sky. The mobile Photoshop app actually has a number of impressive selection tools, but while you can select objects automatically with features like tap select, there’s no option like Select Sky or Select and Mask.
• Many graphic design tools. I’m a photographer, not a graphic designer, so I’m not the best person to point out the design tools missing from the mobile app. But the list includes things like the pen and path selection tools, and the CMYK Color Mode.
• Working with many different file types. Even the paid version of Photoshop mobile only has JPEG, PNG, PSD and TIFF. If you want the long list of different graphic files, you'll need the desktop version.

Is the Photoshop for iPhone app worth it?

I have to admit, while you won’t pry my laptop out of my fingers anytime soon, I was a bit impressed with everything that Adobe managed to fit onto my tiny iPhone screen. Am I dropping my subscription for the free iPhone app? No way. But I could see myself using the app while away from home when I have some time to kill, like in a waiting room.

I can also see the iPhone Photoshop app being the so-called “gateway drug” to the real Photoshop. It’s a hearty mobile editing app. But editing on a tiny screen is limited – not to mention probably poor for posture – so I can see new users falling in love with it and migrating to the desktop app, or at least the iPad version.

The most annoying aspect of the Photoshop mobile app for me personally is that, if I sit my phone down for a moment, I’m back to the start screen of Photoshop when I reopen the app. The app’s cloud nature also means that there may be delays when working in an area with slower connectivity speeds.

Either way, the Photoshop for iPhone is the only way to legally get Photoshop for free outside of Adobe’s week-long free trial.

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Adobe Photoshop’s newest beta feature is a tool designed to allow teams to work on the same project simultaneously. On January 14, Adobe announced the beta of Live Co-Editing, a tool that will allow multiple people to work on the same photograph or design at once.

While Photoshop’s cloud-based structure previously allowed users to share a project with a team, the new Live Co-Editing allows multiple team members to work on a file at the same time. That allows multiple designers to split tasks but still tackle them at the same time, the company says.

Another potential use of the feature is for education and tutorials – Adobe notes that teachers can use the tool to showcase live tutorials. Teachers can also use the tool to offer feedback on student projects.

The feature also supports comments, allowing creators to get feedback right from the file. Adobe says that creatives can ask for input and then address any feedback from the same file.

Those comments and live edits feel a bit like the collaboration tools that are becoming standard in cloud-based software like Google Workspace. The move could be an effort for Adobe to highlight the Creative Cloud structure beyond subscriptions. The beta tool announcement – which came with a refresher list on some of Photoshop’s latest new tools – comes one day before the previously announced price increase for Adobe’s Photography Plan that, for new subscribers, effectively doubles the price of Photoshop.

The feature is initially being launched as a public beta tool, but users will need to sign up and register before gaining early access to the feature. Adobe says users will be able to start inviting collaborators once the registration screener is completed.

I remember in 2010 hosting my first workshop. It was in a small London studio, showing how to make a ‘levitation’ photo. Essentially, for £99 I’d show you how to take two photos on a tripod and Photoshop out the supporting chair of a girl laying like a corpse upon it.

Ok, it was more than that, it was about trying to show the magic that goes into making a fine-art photo, and the participants got at least a peephole, At other times, turning my artmaking into a ‘step by step’ was a bit like being watched while making love and failing to climax unless the onlookers turned the other way.

But how thrilling to make wonga from anything photography-related after the recession of 2008, after all, I’d only just graduated from my English degree two years earlier. Every photographer and his dog were doing workshops, even I who was just getting to grips with the functions of a camera after having used Auto settings for most of my self-portraits that catapulted me to hyped fame through flickr.

I was ardent from the start that I wanted to be an artist, not a teacher, but brave is the photographer who shuns the workshop market completely, especially in this even worse, silent recession of 2025 where any real work available threatens to be ousted by AI. But from the start of doing workshops, my partner Matt and I had the notion that the participants might be bored by the paparazzi format, and want more than to worship at the shrine of the hosting artist.

So in 2011 we tried something different. We hired a large venue and styled a model for each of five sets that participants would rotate around without any teaching. A shoot-out, essentially, where the locations and team required warranted a much higher ticket price, but beckoned a surprisingly long queue of both amateur and pro shooters who didn’t want their hands held.

We went on to do six years of them in New York, LA, France, Lanzarote, and Iceland. Our last one was a week of six naked models in Tuscany, our last phwoaring-hurrah before Covid happened and we assumed we’d never be able to do stints like that again.

Logistically, the shoots needed months of organization, and the ticket price often limited our clientele to white-collar professionals with a high disposable income (a young amateur might only make it thanks to a generous uncle or windfall) but what the participant got from it, testimonial after testimonial attested, was better than any workshop they’d been to. They were real cameraderies (see what I did there? My English degree wasn’t wasted!) They were exhausting, they were all-consuming, and we’d usually splurge most of the budget on production I could make my own body of work from, Surreal Fashion.

We spent the next eight years having two daughters, watching the £5 sandwich-at-a-service-station post-covid world pretend to be normal again, and wondering whether anyone is still switching on a camera – in the face of the AI app even I have on my phone – till one day Matt logged into Facebook, after nearly a decade of deactivation, and found our clients up for the idea of another event.

We fancy dusting off our camera, taking to the skies again and maybe even making a few quid for the gas bill, but the main thing we miss is the buzz. The social gathering. The kind of stuff I think people will need more than ever in a post-socially distanced, money-cautious, virtual meta world.

Like I said about a scene I shot underwater in the Cayman Islands as the base for CGI piece, "Such an effort could be created easily by AI these days – without the nauseous bobbing on a boat at dawn, buying expensive underwater camera housing, or worrying your model will be decimated by a jellyfish – but the breakfast afterwards really wouldn't taste as good, would it?"

So, after a 2024 of personal and professional woes, watching people I never knew even had tear ducts crying with anxiety, counting the blessings of everything we’ve been lucky to experience in our career… we’re diving back into the deep end of hurrying the lipstick on five models at Captain Barnes’ House in New York in April.

We’re coming back to our Fashion Shoot Experience, feeling grateful in 2025 that I can call myself a photographer, teacher or businesswoman at all. We’re also taking on a workshop in a Swiss castle where I will be quite happy to divulge in every intimate stroke to my artmaking if it means preserving something of that old world. And thus is our New Year Resolution for 2025: Let’s Get Physical... Again. Well, in the school holidays at least.

I can still vividly remember the sticker shock when I first looked up the cost of Photoshop. I was a college student that had fallen in love with the program on school-owned devices. In 2011, I finally managed to scrape up enough to pay the nearly $600 cost for Photoshop, bundled with other programs like InDesign, in my last year of college – before I lost eligibility for the student discount and the cost jumped to $1,900 / £1509. With that pain fresh on my mind, I was probably one of the few who didn’t mind when, in 2013, Photoshop became a subscription program that, at the time, started at $9.99 / £9.98 /AU$14.29 a month.

Adobe recently discontinued its most affordable photography plan on January 15, 2025. Plans with Photoshop now start at about $20 / £20 / AU$29 a month, moving up from there based on the plan that you choose. Adobe's most affordable Photography Plan option now only includes Lightroom, not Photoshop, at $11.99 / £11.99 / AU$18.99 per month. But, Adobe also launched Photoshop for iPhone, which can be used for free in limited capacity, with a $9.99 / £9.99 subscription unlocking more capabilities but not at the same level as the original desktop software.

But Adobe’s software subscriptions are known for being confusing – in fact, after an FTC complaint alleging that the company didn’t make its early cancellation fees clear enough, the company changed the wording on how the different subscription plans work. The recent price hike and addition of Photoshop for iPhone can make the cost of Photoshop even more confusing. Here’s what photographers, designers and graphic artists need to know about the different Photoshop subscription costs and options.

How much is Photoshop in 2025? Explaining the different subscription options

Photoshop is a subscription-based software. Adobe does not currently offer a way to pay a one-time cost for a lifetime license. Even though Adobe offers monthly payment plans, Photoshop is an annual subscription. That means that, while you can choose to pay monthly, you will incur cancellation fees if you cancel before one year is up.

After January 15, 2025, Adobe will offer three different ways to get the full version of Photoshop, plus the iPad-only option (which isn’t yet the full version). Those three subscription plans include the photography plan, single app Plan, or all app plan.

The best Photoshop plan for most: The photography plan

Adobe’s photography plan bundles Photoshop and Lightroom along with 1 TB of cloud storage for $19.99 / £19.97 / AU$28.59 a month. (Subscribers can also choose to pay one year at a time, but the price isn’t discounted for paying annually.) It’s the most affordable way to get the full version of Photoshop after Adobe discontinued their photography plan that only had 20GB of storage on January 15. (If you only have an iPad Pro, there is a cheaper option, though it isn’t quite the full version as the desktop software.)

The subscription is bundled with Lightroom, a digital asset management software that allows photographers to organize and edit their files. Lightroom and Photoshop work hand-in-hand, with Lightroom handling organization, RAW processing and light retouching while Photoshop handles the heavy photo editing as well as graphic arts outside of photography.

This plan also includes Photoshop for iPad, as well as the full desktop version of the photo editor.

Even if you don’t need Lightroom, you may want to choose the photography plan simply because it's the most affordable way to get Photoshop. However, if you’re looking for a bit more, there are two more ways to get Photoshop: the single app plan or the Creative Cloud all apps plan.

The best Photoshop plan for mobile: Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan

Photoshop now has an iPhone version, with an Android app in the works. And with the new iOS app comes a new plan for Photoshop – and even a way to access some features free. The Photoshop for Mobile and Web plan includes access to the app on iPhone, iPad and the web browser version of Photoshop.

Photoshop for iPhone is a free app, but some of the more advanced tools require a monthly subscription. The full version is a $79.99 / £78.99 a year subscription, or $9.99 / £9.99 a month.

That is one of the cheapest ways to get Photoshop – but is Photoshop for iPhone really the true Photoshop? Not exactly. Photoshop for iPhone has some of the desktop app's most-used tools. On the mobile app, you can crop, work with layers, use generative AI, and use some healing brushes.

Power users will still want the desktop version, although they could now use the new mobile version to edit on the go. But if you don't even have a desktop computer, the cheaper iPhone and iPad plan is an obvious choice.

The best Photoshop plan for artists: The Single App Plan

The single app subscription plan offers Photoshop for $22.99 / £21.98 / AU$32.99 a month (an annual plan that is paid monthly). Subscribers can also choose to pay for a full year, though there are currently no discounts for doing so.

The single app plan includes both the full desktop version of Photoshop and the iPhone and iPad version. But why pay $3 more than the photography plan? The photography plan is the better option for most because it also includes Lightroom and 1 TB of cloud storage.

With Photoshop as part of a cheaper plan, is there even a reason to get the single app version of Photoshop? For most users, no. The photography plan is the better deal because, even if you don’t want Lightroom, it includes the same exact Photoshop for less.

However, there are a small group of users that may prefer to use the single app plan version of Photoshop. Why? It includes expanded capabilities on Adobe Fresco. Fresco is a software designed for digital artists drawing on an iPad. Fresco itself is free, however, the single app Photoshop plan also includes 100 GB of storage and more fonts and extras within Fresco. Digital artists that love the free version of the Fresco app may want to choose the single app plan for that reason.

The single app plan also offers another option: The option to choose a monthly commitment, rather than an annual plan. The monthly plan allows users to cancel anytime without fees but costs more at $34.49 / £32.98 / AU$49.49 a month.

The best Photoshop plan for multimedia artists: The Creative Cloud All Apps Plan

The final way to access Photoshop is through the Creative Cloud All Apps plan. This plan is $59.99 / £56.98 / AU$87.99 for the annual plan paid monthly, or $659.88 / £656.21 / AU$959.90 once a year. If you pay monthly and cancel early, early termination fees will apply. Adobe also offers a plan that allows users to cancel anytime without cancellation fees for $89.99 / £85.48 / AU$131.99 a month.

The All Apps plan is the best option for multimedia artists that are eyeing more than one Adobe product. If you shoot both photos and video, for example, you may want both Photoshop and Premiere Pro. You can get both with the All Apps plan, as well as Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and more.

Does Photoshop have a student discount?

Adobe doesn’t currently have a student discount for the photography plan or single app plan, however, students and teachers can get the All Apps plan discounted. For the first year, new student or teacher subscribers can get the All Apps plan for $19.99 / £16.24 / AU$21.99 a month. After that first year, the price goes up to $34.99 / £28.99 / AU$50.99 a month.

That doesn’t make Photoshop any cheaper in the US, as the Photoshop-only plan starts at $19.99 as well. The £21.98 / AU$32.99 price however is a bit cheaper than Photoshop-only plan in those regions. However, if you want more than just Photoshop, the student discount is a big 66% off the All Apps plan for the first year.

Why is Photoshop so expensive?

Adobe says the January 2025 price increase to Photoshop and Lightroom is to “to better reflect the value that the apps deliver.” The company cited recent additions to the software, including time-saving generative AI tools.

But, Photoshop has always been expensive. The very first version of Photoshop cost $895 in 1980 in the US. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than $3,500 in 2025 equivalent. Photoshop CS6, the last version of Photoshop available without the subscription, cost $699 for the standard version, or $2,599 / £2,223 to get the full Adobe Suite of Apps.

Why has Photoshop always been expensive? The first version of Photoshop was really the first of its kind, a rather groundbreaking technology to display then manipulate graphics. While there are now many Photoshop alternatives, there are key differences that still keep many opting for the longstanding photo editor.

Can you just buy Photoshop permanently?

Adobe has switched to a subscription model and no longer sells lifetime licenses of Photoshop, which means you can’t buy Photoshop permanently. While you can’t buy Photoshop once and have it for life, you can opt to pay annually to avoid the recurring monthly cost.

How can I get Photoshop for free legally?

The only legal way to get the full version of Photoshop for free is to use the free version of the iPhone or iPad app, which has a much smaller set of features than the paid desktop app. Or, desktop users can sign up for the free trial, which only offers access to the software for seven days.

Depending on what you want to accomplish with the photo editor, you may be able to get away with a free photo editing app. GIMP is an open-source software that mimics some of Photoshop’s features. Because it is a free program, it typically doesn’t have the big updates that Photoshop does. But, you can still work with layers and several Photoshop-like tools. Or, browse our list of other Photoshop alternatives.

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For more, browse our recommendations for the best photo editing software or our list of Photoshop tips and tutorials.

If you're visiting Digital Camera World on a dark autumn night and you come across this terrifying tutorial, you might just feel a creeping sense of foreboding. After all, it's the spookiest time of the year. But perhaps what you're mistaking for unease is a burning desire to do some Halloween-themed photography. This seasonal project is sure to get those creative pumpkin juices flowing. All you need is the best standard zoom lens or the best 50mm lens, a volunteer and layer-based image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop CC or Affinity Photo 2.

The shoot itself is frightfully simple. Frame your image on a tripod, direct a light source onto your subject to create a shadow and fire the shutter. Then capture an identically framed and lit image, without the subject. Post-production is where the magic happens. You create a spooky shadow, which you then project onto the wall, using Photoshop to contort it into a believable position. A few layer masks, a bit of blur and an opacity change later and you've got a horrifying specter shadow troubling your hapless subject.

Read on to find out more, if you're brave enough...

1. Set up your spine-chilling scene

You don't have to position your subject on a set of stairs, but you must set up somewhere near a large, bare wall so you have a blank canvas in which to 'project' your shadowy spirit. The room doesn't have to be pitch black, we shot our image in the middle of the day, but close any doors to minimize light. A tripod will allow you to capture two identical frames: one with your subject and one where they're absent. I shot wide open and boosted my ISO to 2500 so I could reach 1/60 sec, enough to freeze any slight movements from the subject.

2. Cast a creepy shadow

Depending on your location and composition, you could set the shadow behind, to the side or in front of your subject, but whatever you choose, you'll need the shadow from your subject to behave the same. You can control your subject's shadow by directing a flash or continuous light source onto them. I placed a Lume Cube Panel behind and to my subject's left, to cast a shadow in front of them. Use Single-point AF to focus on your subject and take the shot. When you take the second shot, don't change your lighting setup.

3. Create your spooky specter

The shadow is a transparent layer painted with a black brush. I used an image from Pixabay (search for 1296154) as a base. Open it in Photoshop and, on a new layer, use a black brush to trace around and fill it. Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal will flip the silhouette. Select Edit > Transform > Warp to contort your image into a hunched position. Go to Filter > Liquify and use the Forward Warp tool to tease out the fingers to make them look gnarled. Finally, add a layer mask and use a black brush to create the eyes and mouth.

4. Make a monstrous layer mask

Select your two images (with and without the subject) in Adobe Bridge and perform any necessary tonal edits or profile corrections in Camera Raw, ensuring both images are selected so the edits are identical. Hit Done, select the images again in Bridge and select Tools > Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers. Select both layers in Photoshop and select Edit > Auto Align Layers. Apply a layer mask to the top (subject) layer and use a soft black brush to reveal the layer below, shaping the shadow as pictured.

5. Add bloodcurdling blur

Import your shadow layer into the same document as the two images. Make sure it's the top layer and position it accordingly using as many of the Transform tools as required. We used Scale to enlarge it slightly, Rotate to angle it accordingly and Warp to make it hunch over the subject more. The bottom will need to overlap with the existing shadow on the wall. Reduce the opacity of the layer to match the same shadow (I used 63%). Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and boost the Radius so the blur matches the shadow on the wall.

6. Tweak the terrifying tones

Add a layer mask to the spooky shadow and use a black brush to tidy where it meets the existing shadow in the image (refer to the 'top tip' below to learn more ). Hold Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+E to make a flattened copy of all visible layers. You may notice that where the two shadows intersect, there's a dark patch due to the opacity of the spooky shadow allowing the other shadow to show through. This can be blended with a bit of dodging and burning. Finish by selecting Filter > Camera Raw Filter and making your preferred tonal edits.

Top tip: Level up your shadow

Pay attention to how the real shadow in your image looks. Mine has a secondary lighter shadow, a bit like a drop shadow, and the further away it gets from the subject, the lighter it becomes. I replicated this by duplicating the shadow layer (Ctrl/Cmd+J), reducing the opacity to 21% and using the Move tool to offset it.

The drop-off was then created by merging the two shadow layers together and applying a layer mask. Select the Gradient tool, click on the gradient color box and in the Gradient Editor window set the color to black (left) and white (right). You can then draw a Linear Gradient across your shadow to simulate drop-off.

If you're interested in spooky portraits you might be interested in the best lens for portraits or the best LED light panels.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 is the latest version of a long-running Photoshop alternative that’s designed more for beginners and amateurs and comes with no subscription, just a one-off license fee (though with a fixed 3-year term). You can get it on its or bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements which, as the name suggests, is a similarly beginner friendly version of the Adobe Premiere Pro video editing software.

On price alone, Photoshop Elements 2025 deserves to be considered alongside the best photo editing software. If you want to save even more money, take a look at the best free photo editing software too – though Elements 2025 is not expensive. 

There’s an additional program in this little family – the Elements 2025 Organizer. This is a powerful little cataloguing applications that supports albums and search tools, and acts as a kind of central hub for both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements.

Photoshop Elements offers many of the tools you’ll find in Photoshop, but presented in a very different way. There’s a Quick Fix mode where you choose variations in color or exposure to try to get your images looking your best, but you’re likely to learn a lot more from the Guided Edit mode.

This is quite clever. It offers a whole catalog of common fixes and effects you might want to carry out – there are 59 different Guided Edits in this version – and then walks you through each process. Along the way you’ll find out how different editing tools work so that if you want to sidestep any of these processes and get straight to hands-on editing, you can switch to the Advanced mode with a good grounding in what many of these tools do.

It’s pretty clear where Elements’ focus lies, however – and it’s fun projects you can create with your photos rather than photography itself. It can carry out a range of regular photo enhancements and effects, but it’s no Photoshop (or Lightroom).

In fact it’s worth pointing out that although Lightroom might be considered a rather more advanced alternative, it is potentially  both simpler to use and to understand that the multitude of options in Elements, while for those interested in memes, flashy social graphics and multimedia clips, then the web-based Adobe Express might be a better option.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: What’s new?

For anyone tempted to upgrade from an older version to Photoshop Elements 2025, there is a lot that’s new. The new features are more to do with jazzy effects and easier enhancements than any fundamental changes, but they’re still worth a closer look.

For example, Elements 2025 now has AI object removal, so that you can paint over any unwanted object and the AI will cover it convincingly using surrounding image details. There’s a new Guided Edit to walk you through the process.

Elements 2025 also gets the depth of field blur previously introduced in Lightroom. Again, this uses AI to separate subjects from their backgrounds, and it works rather well. Confusingly, this is a filter in the Advanced mode. There is a Depth of Field Guided Edit which sounds like it should be it but isn’t – this uses a tilt shift effect or a very crude kind of subject selection.

You can now use the automatic selection tools to change the color of any object, though the blending isn’t always realistic and it relies on old-school selection tools which can be slow and painstaking to use – this would work so much better with the AI subject selection tools common in other software.

We are also supposed now to be able to “seamlessly” combine multiple backgrounds, objects and other elements, though this seems to simply stack them in layers and present you with basic foreground and background selection tools.

There are four new Quick Actions, including one to create cinematograph-like animations of objects and areas within a still image, and this is quite neat, though with no preview option you have to export it to find out what it looks like.

Adobe has also released a web companion and a mobile app to go with Elements 2025, though so far these are only beta versions.

There is a lot that’s new in Elements 2025, but it’s built on top of an interface and a workflow that’s definitely showing its age.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Price and availability

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 is available now direct from the Adobe website and costs $99.99 / £86.99, AU$145.99, while the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 & Premiere Elements 2025 bundle costs $149.99 / £130.49 / AU$219.99. However, note the following in Adobe's license agreement: "Photoshop Elements 2025 is now sold as a full 3-year term license with no monthly or annual recurring subscription" So it's not on a subscription, but it's not a perpetual license either. That's a real sting in the tail. It’s still less than the Adobe Photography Plan over a three-year period, but then you are getting rather less for your money.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Interface and usability

There’s a strong push these days towards non-destructive editing, where you can go back at any time to change what you did to an image, and where you can browse and edit raw files and JPEGs side by side. Non-destructive editors can’t create all the effects that Photoshop Elements can, but if you’re principally interested in photography rather than projects, then they are quicker and better.

Photoshop Elements is very old-school, and not always in a good way. The Organizer is effective but a separate application, so that if you want to edit a photo it’s transferred to the Elements application and a solid bar runs through it in the Organizer to show it’s being edited. When you’ve finished your editing, a new file (or a modified version of the existing one) appears in the Organizer.

I had some issues with raw files. The Organizer wouldn’t import them. It took some googling and a helpful YouTuber to reveal that you need to download and install Adobe Camera Raw (free) to do this. It’s not part of the standard Elements installation and it’s not even mentioned. That’s bad.

Another thing that’s bad is that the version of Adobe Camera Raw you get with Photoshop Elements is severely cut back. You can fix exposure and colors, but that’s about it. Compared to Lightroom, using Elements for raw files is like returning to the stone age.

Photoshop Elements’ friendly approach does disguise some complexity. Some processes can be found in Guided Edits and manually in the Advanced mode, while others are only in the Advanced mode in the Image, Enhance or Filter menus. There are a lot of things to explore in Elements 2025, but a few too many places to look for them.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Performance

I tested Elements 2025 on a Mac Studio with 32GB RAM, a machine which normally rips through editing processes pretty quickly. Elements 2025 was mostly pretty speedy, but some processes felt slow, such as editing text in the Meme Maker Guided Edit. There were some menu and window display glitches on my machine, but hopefully future updates will iron out any bugs.

The results you get from Elements 2025 are pretty good, given that its raw processing is basic and the Elements editor lacks some features (curves, for example) that you might be used to in other editors. It doesn’t support 16-bit images in Guided Edits and for a number of other processes, so if you’re working with converted raw files you’ll have to let Elements convert them to 8-bit instead.

You perhaps shouldn’t expect too much finesse from the Guided Edits, either. Elements does have many new AI features to bring it up to speed with other photo editors today, but many effects still rely on crude and old-fashioned selection techniques. 

Tools like the Meme Maker, Puzzle Effect, Peek Through Overlay, Partial Sketch and more offer a lot of creative fun for families and school-age children – to be fair to Elements 2025, this is where it’s strongest – but are unlikely to appeal to designers and photographers.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Verdict

I can see the appeal of a program like Photoshop Elements 2025 and I have nothing against simple, beginner-friendly photo editing software. The problem I have with Elements 2025 is that it’s not simple. It has the appearance of beginner friendliness, but so many different routes to fixing up your photos that it becomes hard to figure out where you are and where you ought to be. Should you use a Quick Fix, a Guided Edit or The Advanced mode? Where’s this new Depth of Field feature? (There’s a depth blur guided edit, but that’s not it.) And while the guided edits do teach new users how editing tools work by walking you through them, the results often lack finesse and – sorry, Adobe – reflect the things we were doing in Photoshop 10 years ago.

Elements 2025 is great for fun projects and graphics. It’s not really for photographers, especially if you shoot raw. It can open raw files via a cut-down Adobe Camera Raw extra, but this is basic in the extreme. It doesn’t offer the seamless raw editing workflow that Lightroom does. This is raw processing in its most basic, old-school form.

Elements 2025 would be great for anyone who shoots JPEGs, though, either with a camera or with a smartphone, and wants to use their photographs for fun projects. It’s hard to recommend it solely for photography, since that’s only a part of what it does, and not an especially strong part.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025: Alternatives

Once again, AI editing tools headline Adobe's annual Elements releases, with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 boasting a nifty AI-powered Remove tool and Depth Blur filter. Adobe Premiere Elements 2025 gets an AI boost, too, with Auto Reframe. This clever tech automatically centers the frame on the subject, when you turn a landscape-orientation video into a vertical, social-media-friendly aspect ratio. But artificial intelligence isn’t the be-all and end-all. Both suites still boast plenty of standard upgrades as well.  

If you're unfamiliar with the best photo editing software packages on the market, Adobe Elements provides more streamlined and user-friendly versions of the editing behemoth's flagship image- and video-editing suites. It also provides an alternative for hobbyists and creatives who don't want to commit to a monthly Creative Cloud subscription. That said, Elements 2025 marks the first time Adobe has implemented a "non-renewing" three-year license, so the package won't be yours to keep indefinitely.

Picking up either Adobe Photoshop or Premiere Elements 2025 as a standalone package will cost $99.99 / £86.99 or $79.99 / £70.99 for those purchasing an upgrade. As usual, the best value deal is to buy both Photoshop and Premiere in the same bundle for $149.99 / £130.49.

But before I dive into the new editing features in more detail. The Elements 2025 package features M3 silicon chip support. An important addition for anyone looking to get the most out of their brand new Apple iMac M3 or Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M3.

Here's what to expect in Adobe Elements 2025... 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025 upgrades 

Leave it to AI to deliver the most exciting upgrades to this year's Photoshop offering. You can now take advantage of the Remove tool and Object Removal Guided Edit, which Adobe says will: "Make anything disappear in seconds". Another AI-powered function is the Depth Blur filter, which allows you to control the depth of field within your images. But the upgrades don't stop with AI, you get a raft of standard upgrades, too. 

Change Object Color allows you to change the color of a selected area. Combine Photos simplifies the art of creating composites. Quick Actions allow you to add motion effects to images. And you can add a range of textured photo backgrounds and fun graphics to creations to boot. If all of that sounds a little too much to handle, you'll also find 59 step-by-step Guided Edits to help bring your editing skills up to speed. 

The Adobe Elements mobile app (currently in Beta) is also receiving additional functionality, allowing you to use one-click Quick Actions, automatically change backgrounds, add moving overlays and more. 

Adobe Premiere Elements 2025 upgrades 

Whether you're a budding videographer or intend to take advantage of the great-value Photoshop and Premiere Elements bundle, the latter has received its fair share of upgrades since Adobe Premiere Elements 2024. The AI-powered Auto Reframe's ability to track the subject of horizontal footage that's been converted into a vertical aspect ratio isn’t the only standout new feature. 

Adobe also promises "dynamic titles", thanks to more control over text as well as new templates, including a range of free Adobe Stock title templates. Color grading options have been boosted thanks to new White Balance and color correction Curves tools, as well as LUT presets that can color grade footage in one click. 

The Timeline has been tweaked for simplified functionality, including quick-access editing tools via the Quick Tools menu and the ability to lock individual tracks from accidental edits. 

For more editing-related content, check out the best photo editing software and the best video editing software.

The Brenizer method is the brainchild of renowned US wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer. It's sometimes referred to as the 'bokeh panorama' or 'bokeh-rama', owing to the panoramic stitching technique used to achieve it and the super-shallow depth of field that's produced. 

'Bokeh panoramas' boast shallower depths of field than are otherwise achievable with a wide-angle lens and give APS-C and full-frame users the ability to produce portraits with a large-format aesthetic. 

The key to this striking technique is to use a telephoto lens, ideally a fast one such as the best lens for portraits. You then shoot your portrait in small sections - in a tile-like grid that you will then stitch together in Photoshop. For each shot you use constant camera settings that won't change between frames, so you can create a seamless blend.

Once you've settled on a white balance preset, and locked your exposure in Manual, you used AF to focus on your subject and then switch to manual focus so as not to change your point of focus as you begin to shoot your panoramic sequence. Exactly how many photos you take is down to personal preference, but we strongly recommend overlaying each image by around 30% to ensure you don't leave any gaps.

Adobe Photoshop CC makes it easy to blend your sequence by automatically merging your images. You then simply need to check the blend for any inconsistencies and crop it as desired. If you like the idea of creating a wide portrait with a super-shallow depth of field, here's how to shoot and edit your own 'bokeh panorama'.

The Brenizer method

1. Select a fast lens 

A fast medium telephoto is handy for maximizing the shallow depth of field. However, if you don't have a pro porttrait lens any telephoto zoom will do. The great thing about this trick is you end up with a wide-angle view with much less depth of field than your existing lenses will allow.

In this instance, we used the Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.4G, but the classic 50mm f/1.8 could also work well, especially when providing an equivalent focal length of 75mm on an APS-C camera. 

Depending on your system, the Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM, Sony FE 85mm F1.4 G Master, and Fujifilm XF 56mm F1.2 R WR would work well, too. Thankfully, you're not limited to just prime lenses though. A fast telephoto zoom, like a 70-200mm f/2.8, will still produce a suitably blurry background for this effect.

2. Set a consistent white balance  

As you'll be merging photos, each image needs to be as consistent as possible. To prevent the white balance from changing mid-sequence, head to menu and set the color temperature manually. We'd suggest shooting in Raw so you can tweak the color temperature of you batch of images later.

3. Frame your image 

You'll have plenty of room to crop your large panorama in post, but you should still consider your composition. Visualize your final image and position yourself accordingly before you start shooting. Still leave enough space to crop, though, as your blended image will be an irregular shape.

4. Camera settings 

Select Aperture Priority mode and choose a wide aperture. We'd recommend f/2.8 or wider. Adjust the ISO value until you get a shutter speed of 1/200 sec (or higher). Select Manual mode and input the same settings to lock your exposure. Just like the white balance, consistent exposure is vital.

5. Switch to manual focus 

Your focus needs to be consistent throughout your sequence. If you're using back-button focus you can simply release the back button after you've focused on your subject. If not, focus on your subject using AF and then switch to manual focus. Your focus will then remain locked as you proceed to capture your bokeh panorama.

6. Capture a 'bokeh panorama'

We framed and captured our subject, and then shot three frames to the left and three frames to the right. This process was repeated just above the model's head and below her feet. There's no hard and fast rule for how many or how few images you should capture. Just make sure you overlay each image by around 30% to prevent any gaps between frames.

Blend a 'bokeh panorama'

7. Open your sequence in Camera Raw 

Highlight your sequence in Adobe Bridge (select the first image, hold Shift and select the last image). Right-click and select Open in Camera Raw. Hold Shift and select the last image in the left panel to highlight the sequence. Edits will now affect all of the images.

8. Set the color temperature

Once you've selected Remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections in the Lens Corrections tab, check the exposure and color temperature of each image. Ensure you fix any inconsistencies before blending your panorama and select Done.

9. Import your sequence into Adobe Photoshop

With the images still selected, click Tools>Photoshop>Photomerge. Make sure Auto and Blend Images Together are selected when the Photomerge window opens and click Browse to select the images from your sequence. Hit OK to start the merging process.

10. Blend your 'bokeh panorama'

You'll now have a large medium-format style image that's spliced into multiple layers. Photoshop generally does a good job of blending images together, but it's worth looking for any obvious inconsistencies, which you can rectify with the Clone or Patch tools.

11. Crop your blended image 

Your image is likely a rather irregular shape; fix this using the Crop tool. It's worth remembering that your photograph is a blend of multiple pictures, so you have plenty of room to play with if you opt for a tighter composition.

6. Flatten and finish 

Make a flattened copy of your image by selecting the topmost layer and pressing  Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E (Cmd+Alt+Shift+E on a Mac). You can then proceed with your normal tonal editing regime to finish it off.

You may also be interested in how to use Photoshop's High Pass Filter to selectively sharpen your photos, or to learn other great Photoshop tips

There are a multitude of ways to sharpen images in Adobe Photoshop – one of the best photo editing software suites on the market. But by applying the High Pass Filter in Photoshop CC, you can selectively paint a sharpening effect onto your images. This means you can choose where to sharpen your image, likely your focal point. 

The advantages of this include the ability to direct your viewer's gaze, since they'll be naturally drawn to the sharpest area of the image, while also limiting the sharpening effect to where it's needed. This is particularly helpful if you're working with a shallow depth of field or motion blur, since you're unlikely to want to sharpen these ethereal areas of the frame. Sharpening can also accentuate noise, so the ability to apply it sparingly in low-light shots is invaluable. 

Another plus of sharpening in an indestructive manner on layer-based editing software is that you can change the Blending Mode and opacity of your sharpening layer right up until you decide to export your image. So, if you want to selectively sharpen a set of images? Here's how to do it… 

1. Add the High Pass Filter

Open your chosen image in Adobe Photoshop CC. Duplicate the background layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and select Filter>Other>High Pass. Move the Radius Slider until your subject's outline is barely visible on the gray overlay – I usually find around 1.8-2.0px works well – and hit OK.

2. Change the Blending Mode 

Change the Blending Mode to Vivid Light. This will remove the gray overlay, but increase the contrast of any edges to sharpen the image. You can lessen the intensity of the sharpening effect by reducing the layer opacity or changing the Blending Mode to Hard Light, Overlay or Soft Light. If you're unsure, Overlay represents a good middle ground.

3. Apply a layer mask

Select the 'Add layer mask' icon and invert the mask (Cmd/Ctrl+I). Paint over and 'sharpen' your subject with a soft, white brush. The red overlay (\) indicates what you have sharpened – switch to a black brush if you want to remove parts of the mask.

That's all there is to it. Add a High Pass Filter, change the Blending Mode and apply an inverted layer mask to selectively paint the sharpening effect, only onto the areas of the image you want sharpened.

You may also be interested in switching seamlessly between Lightroom and Photoshop, or the best free photo editing software that's available.