Photoshop just got another huge upgrade thanks to enhanced Firefly AI integration

Each year Adobe – the maker of Photoshop and other image creation, editing and design Creative Suite applications – hosts its 'MAX' conference. For 2024 the announcements are significant, especially if you're a Photoshop user with a love of generative AI features. 

While Photoshop has already integrated some Gen AI features from Adobe's standalone Firefly application, the latest beta app will integrate the latest Image Model 3 version of Firefly, and enable two key things: in-app AI image generation, and a 'reference image' addition to Generative Fill to prompt and guide results to be closer to your intention.

The work behind the scenes has seen Adobe level up Firefly's previous Image Model 2 engine to uprated Image Model 3, which is a more capable image-generation system. The company has enhanced focus in two specific areas of improvement: in rendering straight lines with higher accuracy; and rendering higher-resolution structures and details with greater accuracy. The results are more authentic, while human renders are also portrayed across a wider range of emotions. 

While the best phones of today offer some great AI tools, such as Google's Magic Editor, and Adobe also offers an iPad version of Photoshop, this latest beta version of Photoshop is full-fat application – and the better your best MacBook (or, indeed, best laptop) is the quicker it'll be able to leverage these power-intensive generative tools.

The message from Adobe is that its products will offer "more quality, more control, and more consistency" when using its Gen AI tools. Being able to prompt a text to image starting point is a massive addition to Photoshop's tools. It can even now be used to create vector art. 

Generative Fill, too, gains additional new features: Generate Background, Generate Similar, and Enhance Detail. Ultimately more controls at your fingertips to push creations further all from within Photoshop, in separate layers, non-destructively. 

As ever, the idea of artificial intelligence will raise red flags for some, but Adobe claims it is committed to ethical creation and that all AI-created and AI-assisted edits will mark-up files accordingly. Whichever side of the fence you're on, it's clear AI is advancing quickly, and Image Model 3 is an impressive integration into Adobe's software.