Why all creatives should be watching Adobe MAX LA this week

For creatives in any field, Adobe MAX has long been the event to watch to learn what workflows could look like in the months to come. Attending the software giant’s annual conference can be like taking a hop forward in time to gain a glimpse of the next year in creativity and ideas about how to make the most of it. That’s even more the case now that tools are changing so fast thanks to AI.

With apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and now Firefly, Adobe provides many of the most used programs for everything from digital art and graphic design to video editing. Adobe MAX LA, which takes place in Los Angeles and online from 28 to 30 October, is where it makes new announcements, showcases tools and hosts expert sessions for inspiration and learning.

This year, the speakers will be as varied as DC Studios CEO James Gunn, illustrator Yuko Shimizu and designer Allan Peters. Dozens of sessions will cover all areas of digital creativity, including, for the first time, a new Creator track focusing on mobile-first content. Best of all, the conference is free to attend online!

Generative AI that works for creatives

A big focus of Adobe MAX LA 2025 is sure to be innovation in generative AI. The event will allow attendees to get up to speed with state of the art in a technology that’s been evolving at lightning pace, including Adobe’s dedicated AI tools.

Adobe Firefly has been expanding to become much more than an AI image generator. It’s now a fully fledged production studio. Adobe has been turning the possibilities of generative AI into practical tools that help creatives work smarter, all with Content Credentials to keep things verifiable. Firefly’s image capabilities now allow precise removal or modification of parts of a scene using natural language, and there’s the option to choose from third-party models for more flexibility and more likelihood of getting the perfect result.

For video, the Firefly Video Editor provides web-based multi-track editing based on transcripts, saving all that time scrubbing through footage to find the lines you want to cut. Integration with Adobe Express makes it easy to add effects and captions and to resize for different social platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and you can even Animate images using Firefly’s Image to Video feature.

For teams and agencies, the game-changing new app is Firefly Boards. First teased at Adobe MAX last year, it provides an infinite canvas for real-time collaborative moodboarding and ideation. Expect to see at Adobe MAX how you can generate and remix images to test out ideas and define the creative direction for shoots or brand campaigns.

Industry-standard tools keep their shine

Despite all this focus on newer apps like Firefly, Adobe’s kept its established industry-leading programs like Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro fully oiled and leading the pack through regular updates. Here too, AI is making things faster and easier, powering tools that take the hassle out of some of the most time-consuming and monotonous tasks.

Photoshop’s Generative Fill has revolutionised compositing, doing in seconds what used to take hours of finicky manual work. It now provides the flexibility for users to choose models such as Google’s Nano Banana and FLUX Kontext Pro, bringing some of the most advanced AI image generators directly into Photoshop.

To ensure objects convincingly integrate into backgrounds, the new Harmonise tool can match lighting and colours even when there are tricky shadows. Photoshop’s also added non-destructive temperature and tint adjustment layers for faster, more precise colour editing.

Select subject and remove background now work on-device for better performance and more precise results. And, in another third-party collaboration, Photoshop now has Topaz AI-powered Generative AI Upscale, which can save low-res images if you need to use them at a larger size.

Going mobile

Creative work used to require hunkering down with desktop software, but today’s creators often want to work on the go without the friction involved in firing up a laptop. Adobe’s been accompanying that shift, bringing more tools to mobile to cater to a new generation of creative talent.

The Firefly mobile app is a complete AI-driven ecosystem that allows content creators and marketers to go from prompt to post via integration with Adobe Express. There’s also now a Photoshop mobile app, and the new Premiere Mobile allows quick-and-easy video editing on the go integrated directly into YouTube.

Adobe MAX is the place to learn about how these tools and more can work for your creative workflow with new announcements, inspiring talks and luminary sessions on 3D, photography, illustration and drawing, video, social media and more. Make sure you’re a part of it by registering for Adobe MAX now.