Every year, Adobe shares a behind-the-scenes look at some of the tech that’s in the pipeline during Sneaks at Adobe Max. The teasers that get the best audience response tend to move to the top of the priority list – and if the standing ovation is any indication, Adobe might soon bring a tool that handles repetitive tasks without generative AI to Photoshop.
Adobe teased 10 Sneaks this year across Creative Cloud and Firefly, and as I sat in the audience, I lost track of the number of times I heard the term AI. Only one of those 10 sneaks doesn’t use generative AI, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s the Sneak that got the best response from creators in the audience.
Project Rinse Repeat, presented by Katelyn Chedraoui, is a tool that copies the way that a creator works in order to automate repetitive tasks. In the demonstration, Chedraoui showed how the tool could create drop shadows for multiple products in a composite, matching the shadow to the object.
But Rinse Repeat isn’t just for composite work. In a group photo, Chedraoui corrected the acne on one face, then Project Rinse Repeat corrected the blemishes on the rest of the people in the group photo.
What’s most important about Project Rinse Repeat, however, is that it doesn’t use generative AI. Remember, there’s an important distinction between plain old AI and generative AI. I believe there's AI at work to understand the context of the edit, just not the generative type.
The tech uses the same layers, masks, healing brush, and traditional Photoshop tools that the creator uses in the first edit, but then understands the context of those edits and applies those changes to more of the image.
One of the key changes that’s coming to Photoshop in the AI era is how creators handle repetitive tasks. In the latest beta version of Photoshop, Adobe has launched an AI Assistant that can carry out repetitive editing tasks. But Project Rinse Repeat copies the creator’s original edit and doesn’t generate any pixels.
Between Project Rinse Repeat and the beta AI Assistant, it feels like Adobe is building the next generation of Photoshop Actions. Actions are a long-standing tool that allows users to record steps in an edit and then repeat them on another image, helpful for tasks like batch resizing or adding overlays to multiple images.
But Actions doesn’t understand the context of an image, so it can’t, for example, be used to correct acne in multiple portraits. (Though of course, it’s worth mentioning that automatic blemish removal is a new feature in Lightroom 2027).
While this year’s Max updates to Lightroom had a decent balance between traditional photo editing tools and options that use generative AI, the new Photoshop launches felt heavy on GenAI. Creators who choose not to use GenAI will find things like a refreshed user interface and what Adobe is calling the most stable version of Photoshop yet, but the biggest updates are generative. (Ironically, the software's stability improvements stem from an AI crash reporting tool.)
In my own work, I have no problems using AI tools like select subject, but I choose to avoid GenAI that generates pixels not in the original photograph. I think the Sneak that got the best reaction from the crowd was the only Sneak that isn’t GenAI-based – and I think that’s a rather telling signal from the creator community.
Additional Sneaks that could become future Photoshop tools include an adaptive brush that mimics the photograph’s geometry, lighting, textures, and surfaces to add artwork to a wall, paint on light, or add a tattoo to a portrait. Called Project Deep Brush, the teaser looks like a game-changer for anyone who has ever tried to paint on a photograph and make it look realistic.
Another Sneak Photoshop demo is Project Sight Span by Yiwei Hu, which creates a 3D scene from a JPEG to allow the AI to generate a new image from a different camera angle.
Sneaks don’t always become real tools, but Adobe says that the projects that get the loudest reaction from the crowd tend to come out first. Based on the crowd response, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Project Rinse Repeat becoming part of Photoshop next year.
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Miss the latest Adobe announcements? Catch up with the Adobe Max recap or read what's new in Photoshop and what's new in Lightroom.
