Adobe’s End-Of-Year Updates Are All AI, and Sometimes Not Even Its Own AI

Adobe MAX kicks off this week and, historically, that has meant a large drop of updates across the company’s portfolio of apps. That is technically true this year too, but everything is revolving around AI — and sometimes, that doesn’t even mean Adobe’s own technology.

Adobe already opened the door to using AI models from competitors earlier this year, and that continues as now Generative Fill in Photoshop can swap from Adobe’s Firefly model to using Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Image or Black Forest Labs FLUX.1 Kontext. Further, Generative Upscale can swap over to using Topaz Labs’ AI upscale technology, too. Adobe is also bringing the beta Harmonize feature into full production, a tool that promises to blend and match light, color, and tone across disparate images to make them appear as though they were taken at the same time.

“We’re delivering several groundbreaking AI tools and models into creative professionals’ go-to apps, so they can harness the tremendous economic and creative opportunities presented by the rising global demand for creative content,” Deepa Subramaniam, vice president of product marketing, creative professionals, at Adobe, says. “With AI that gives creative professionals more power, precision, and control — and time-savings — Creative Cloud is truly the creative professional’s best friend.”

While the bulk of updates to Adobe’s creative apps appear to be centered around using other companies’ AI models, Adobe is also updating Firefly to Image 5 (beta), which it calls its “most advanced image generation and editing model yet.” Adobe says it can generate images in native 4 megapixel resolution without upscaling and also “excels” at creating photo-realistic details, such as lighting and fine-detail texture.

Adobe’s other first-party updates are all in beta. The company is testing an AI Object Mask in Premiere Pro, which it says can automatically identify and isolate people and objects in video frames so that they can be edited and tracked without manual rotoscoping. The video editor is also getting rectangle, ellipse, and pen masking tools (also in beta), which Adobe says can be used to isolate specific areas in a video frame so that they can be adjusted more directly. Premiere Pro is also getting a beta Vector Mask tool, which is a redesigned option that promises faster tracking.

Lightroom is getting a lone beta update in Assisted Culling, which Adobe describes as a customizable tool that helps quickly identify the best images in large photo collections, with the ability to filter for different levels of focus, angles, and sharpness.

The production features of Generative Fill and Generative Upscale with partner models, as well as Harmonize, are all available today. The other beta features launch into the public beta versions of Adobe’s apps today, too. Adobe is also giving Creative Cloud Pro and Firefly plan subscribers unlimited image generations with Firefly and partner models (including video generations) through December 1.

Image credits: Adobe