Firefly Boards is fast becoming Adobe's most interesting app

Adobe clearly sees its AI-driven moodboarding tool as a big part of the future of its ecosystem of creative software. It's just expanded Firefly Boards again with two more video models and a trio of new tools, making the app a more interesting option for creatives looking for a collaborative space where they can test out ideas and create storyboards and mockups to pitch to clients.

The software giant's also making it easier to access with more flexible Firefly subscription options and ways to use generative credits. That all makes clear that this is one of the tools Adobe sees as pivotal for new creative workflows (also see our Adobe software list).

Launched in June, Firefly Boards is Adobe's AI-powered collaborative ideation tool. It lets users generate images, add their own assets, mix and remix them and organise them on an infinite canvas. It can be used for pooling inspirations, iterating on ideas and creating storyboards or moodboards for art, design, branding or content production.

Today's headline news is the addition of three new features designed to help creatives move faster in the web-based app. New presets allow users to generate images in a variety of styles, such as 'Product and Character', which can be used to visualise a models with a product, such as the cat with the cat scratch post above.

There's also 'Virtual Try On' for testing fashion ideas on models and 'Electric Party', which... er... puts subjects in a party with neon lights.

Firefly Boards has also added Generative Text Edit (beta). This allows users to swap or update text directly in visuals without having to leave Boards. It's a significant advance for an AI tool, making it easier to generate relevant text on mockups. Adobe reckons this is ideal for rapid iteration and on-the-fly adjustments.

There's also now Describe Image. With this, you can have Boards analyse an image and describe it in a text prompt that you can then use or edit and use to generate more variations.

New video AI models in Firefly Boards

With the release of Firefly Boards, Adobe made a major change in its strategy by adding third-party AI models in addition to its own Firefly image and video models, irrespective of whether they're commercially safe. Several models were already available on release, and Adobe added Luma AI’s Ray3 last week as a world-first integration, confirming third-party integrations a key selling point of Firefly. Now it's also added Runway Aleph and Moonvalley Marey generative video models.

It's given some examples of how it sees creatives using these tools. It says a filmmaker could use Runway Aleph to generate storyboards, using a reference video to guide composition, then refine those frames using conversational edits.

Or a design team working on a brand campaign could use Moonvalley Marey to generate dynamic motion clips using reference images for the first and last frames, combine those clips with brand assets and Firefly images in Boards, and create a visual narrative to pitch to a client.

Flexible new subscription options in Firefly

Firefly plans are changing yet again. There's now Firefly Standard, Pro, and Premium, starting at $9.99 per month and running all the way to $199.99 per month for Premium.

All three plans provide access to standard Firefly features, Firefly Boards and third-party models, but the Pro and Premium plans allow more video generations and sound effect generations plus access to Adobe Express Premium and full access to Adobe Photoshop on web and mobile.

Creative Cloud Pro members get the same access to premium generative AI as Firefly plans.