Adobe Answers Your Questions on AI, Controversies, and Photography

Over the past few weeks, we’ve compiled the questions you want Adobe to answer related to its push into AI, recent controversies, and the state of photography in general. We had a chance to sit down with Maria Yap, Adobe’s Vice President of Digital Imaging, to give the company a chance to respond.

For over an hour, Chris Niccolls, Jordan Drake, and I chatted with Yap and presented her with a range of inquiries including the “skip the photoshoot” debacle, pricing and subscription strategy, Lightroom performance, and more. While Yap answers many of those in the podcast, she also wanted to be sure to give detailed answers in text form to a few that stood out as needing more context.

So as promised in the podcast, below are those questions and Yap’s additional context. Adobe was also given several questions related to video, which is not Yap’s specialty, so they’ll be addressed at a later date. For everything else (and there is a lot more), please listen or watch this week’s podcast episode.

@Photoandcargeek on YouTube: When are we going to get proper multi-core and graphic card acceleration on PC (and maybe Mac but I don’t know Mac)? It is already obvious that the software isn’t fully optimized but with AI already there and going to get exponentially more and more powerful, using 100% of hardware resources is going to be crucial.

Yapp: Over the last several years we have made significant investment in our architecture to take better advantage of the performance gains from GPU acceleration. These efforts are expensive but we believe they will help unlock further gains. Some filters have now moved from CPU to GPU processing and there is more underway here.

We absolutely strive to take advantage of everything the platform and operating systems provide. Products like Photoshop are used as benchmarks. While we can’t go into the nitty-gritty details on which features use CPU, GPU, and even NPUs, it’s a constant journey to improve performance and give customers the best experience with our products. For example, more cores don’t always help the application — you have to break down a task into separate jobs, put them on each core and reassemble the results faster than just doing the job on a single core.

For Lightroom, we take advantage of multi-core CPUs, GPU for graphic processing, and more recently device NPU for ML inferencing. Multi-core CPU for ACR and Lightroom is used for faster export times and for batch processing workflows.

For Adobe Camera Raw GPU, that is detailed here. GPU acceleration happens automatically on compatible systems for all ML-based features like Enhanced Details, Masking, and Lens Blur, and isn’t controlled by Camera Raw Preferences. For displays, “Optimize how Camera Raw” sends information to your display. This makes Camera Raw more responsive and enables features like animated zoom (scrubby zoom).

For image processing while you edit, when using Process Version 5, most adjustments are GPU accelerated. For example, acceleration can improve how fast you view results as you move the Texture slider. Using the GPU also helps Camera Raw keep up with the demands of 4K, 5K, and larger displays. GPU-accelerated image processing was added in the August 2019 (version 11.4) release.

During Open and Save, Camera Raw uses your GPU to accelerate rendering photos to image files when you save one or more photos. When you open or close the Camera Raw filter dialog, Camera Raw can use your GPU to render the image it sends to Photoshop. The April 2022 (version 14.4) release added GPU-accelerated Open and Save.

From @mytravellinfo on YouTube: It almost took me over an hour to find how to cancel my subscription and later I had to get to a support staff to get it done. Please ask them to make a simple cancel subscription link rather GoDaddy’s grandpa-like infinity loop.

Yap: “The subscription model allows us to continuously deliver innovation and services that are convenient, flexible and cost effective to allow users to choose the plan that best fits their needs, timeline and budget. Our priority is to always ensure our customers have a positive experience.”

Editor’s Note: Adobe is currently the subject of an active FTC investigation regarding this matter, which limits what it can say publicly.

From @mytravellinfo on YouTube: Please make some improvement for the Lightroom Classic collection system. Switching from one collection to another is like turning off and turning on, why cant it be switching while the software in view? Also the collection version update is like insane!

Yap: This seems more like a request for performance improvement versus a specific question. Factors that can impact the opening and closing of collections include a user’s system capabilities and the number of photos in their collections. For example, systems with newer hardware will open and close collections more quickly. We have made some optimizations in performance over the past few years in this area and will continue explore additional opportunities in upcoming versions.

From @adrianranfft5057 on YouTube: “Will there be a Windows for ARM version of Lightroom Classic?”

Yap: Today, Lightroom Classic can run in an emulation mode (non-native) on Windows Arm when installed from the Creative Cloud Desktop application. In addition, we provide native support for Windows Arm using Lightroom (also known as Lightroom CC).

From @mytravellinfo on YouTube: Please make Photoshop support SVG and HEIF naively while trying to open a raw file by right clicking opening up LRC. Please ask if I would want to open a new collection or let me chose which collection I would want this image to open with .. not just the last opened collection.

Yap: Photoshop does support HEIF and SVG natively, both of them open directly in the product. We have recently added support for several new formats and have more coming soon. The default experience is for these formats to open directly in Photoshop as a new document.

From @MrKayFisher on YouTube: Why can’t you fully support HEIF HEIC files. Perhaps you should try and hire some of the stare engineers from Affinity or Pixelmator! JPEG is so third world!

Yap: Today in Photoshop desktop, you can open either of these files. Windows customers do need to have a codec installed from the Microsoft store, and on Mac these formats are natively supported.

Before we sat down with Yap, we also spent a few hours talking to some of the product leads on Photoshop and Lightroom — the people Adobe has not put front and center in public relations for the last several years. We saw some real emotions there, especially during conversations regarding the recent marketing blunders and blowback related to updated terms and conditions.

These people, the ones making the software, are only one part of a massive company. Adobe’s San Jose location, where Chris, Jordan, and I were this week, is just one of two in the Bay Area it operates and it is massive. It spans two towers that are joined by a sky bridge. Thousands of people work there and it was pretty easy to see how messaging could have easily gone out without involving the people who actually make the products.

One manager we spoke to said that seeing what Adobe put out there and how users responded “hurt,” and we could see real pain in his eyes. It’s going to take a lot more than our experiences and their words to earn back the trust Adobe had years ago of course, but they legitimately do want to do that. The company has expressed it wants to be more directly connected to users and intends to work more closely with PetaPixel in the future as one way to facilitate that.

All we can say is, we’ll see.

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In This Episode

• 00:00 – Intro
• 03:28 – Meet Maria Yap, Adobe’s Vice President of Digital Imaging
• 06:20 – Discussing the “skip the photoshoot” ad
• 11:04 – Can Adobe use AI to make metadata tagging easier?
• 13:27 – Does Adobe plan to update its TOS to allow boudoir photographers to use AI tools, or are they out of luck?
• 16:37 – Is Adobe going to leverage NPUs better so sending AI requests to the cloud is not necessary?
• 21:13 – When are we going to get proper multi-core and graphics card acceleration?
• 28:05 – Will Lightroom on iPad ever have feature parity to Lightroom on desktop?
• 46:34 – When is Lightroom Classic tethering support coming to Apple Silicon? Are you working to improve the stability of tethering on Windows?
• 47:17 – Why hasn’t there been any significant improvement or revision to the Lightroom import process?
• 48:35 – Could there be a Photoshop or Lightroom “lite”?
• 51:43 – Would Adobe consider a “build your own” or a la carte bundle plan of apps?
• 53:41 – How does Adobe ensure that its decision-making remains independent and user-centric?
• 55:14 – How does Adobe plan to improve communication and transparency with its users?
• 59:43 – How does Adobe ensure that customer value remains central to its business strategy?
• 1:03:19 – The broken promise of Lightroom as perpetual software forever.
• 1:06:12 – Adobe’s stance on AI, imagery, and what is a photo?