Which AI design tools are actually good?

AI design tools still sit on the periphery of my workflow, but there are an increasing number of them that are creeping into my toolset. In fact, being specific, I wonder how I ever lived without Topaz’s noise removal tools and upscaling functionality.

I’ve also made use of AI features within packages like Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Illustrator and have found the NVIDIA RTX cards deliver some of the best speed, quality and responsiveness.

I’ve collated four of my top AI tools and unpacked the features inside these which are transforming the way I design, create, produce, and refine art. Others that didn’t make this cut include NVIDIA Broadcast, DaVinci Resolve, and LTX Video.

1. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of my most-used image-editing tools, and in recent years I’ve made use of an increasing number of AI editing features, such as Generative Fill and Smart Selection. More recently I’ve discovered Neural Filters, which enable users to make smarter edits thanks to the power of AI and machine learning.

There are five different categories of neural filters which let you smooth skin, remove artefacts, change style, zoom in, and colorise. Each filter must be downloaded, but when it is, you can quickly add nondestructive edits and explore new creative ideas quickly. The fact that it's nondestructive means you can keep the original image intact.

My specific favourite neural filters allow you to change the expressions, facial age, lighting, and hair of a portrait. It’s effective, powerful, and fast. It also benefits significantly from GPU acceleration.

2. Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro has embraced a range of different AI video tools, with my absolute favourite being the Speech to Text tool, which generates captions, subtitles, and video transcripts. This is significantly quicker than transcribing a video manually, but that’s not the only benefit. The video transcription can also be used to edit footage so you’re not having to scrub through footage which is often boring and time-consuming.

Another AI tool that has made its home in Premiere Pro is the Enhance Speech tool, which removes unwanted noise and improves the quality of dialogue clips so they sound professionally recorded. This technology is also accelerated by NVIDIA RTX.

One fantastic example of a piece of work created using an NVIDIA RTX card is the short film Dive by NVIDIA Studio filmmaker James Matthews. The work was “created with an Adobe Premiere Pro-powered workflow supercharged by his ASUS ZenBook Pro NVIDIA Studio laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card". He shared, "Effects in Premiere Pro, along with the NVENC video encoders on the GPU, allowed me to unlock a seamless workflow and essentially get into my flow state faster.”

3. Topaz Labs

When I used Topaz Photo AI 3 back in May 2024, I was blown away by the unbelievable results. In particular, I couldn’t believe how good it was at removing noise and upscaling images. I’ve used it a number of times since and have found it to be one of the simplest and easy-to-use AI applications around. It might fulfil a simple set of actions, but it’s so good that you’ll never go back.

Alongside Photo AI, Topaz also produces Video AI, which contains a very similar feature set but this time for video rather than photos. It delivers fantastic, usable results pretty much every single time, and if you’ve got an NVIDIA RTX card, then those results will be delivered in an incredibly efficient manner.

4. Adobe After Effects

One of the best design tools to benefit from NVIDIA GPUs is Adobe After Effects. Popular effects, including sharpening, fractal noise, offset, and multiple blurs, use GPUs for fast rendering, while colour-correction effects like Lumetri Color, hue/saturation, and tint are faster with GPU acceleration.

All of this equates to faster processing and more efficient workflows so you can focus more of your time on creativity and expression. No one wants to wait ages for an image to sharpen or blur or for colour effects to be applied. With NVIDIA RTX GPUs, now you don't have to.

It’s worth giving them a go

If you already have access to Adobe Creative Cloud, then I would highly recommend trying out some of the specific tools I’ve mentioned above. Most of them are simple and straightforward to use and, more often than not, included in your subscription. Topaz and ComfyUI will require you to part with some cash, but you’ll save time in your workflow once you get properly up and running, and as we all know, time is money.