Adobe went quiet on the acquisition front after its aborted attempt to buy Figma. More recently, it's been focusing on integrating third-party products into its creative software through collaboration rather than acquisition, but now it seems it might be on shopping spree again.
Just a month after completing the acquisition of the brand visibility and SEO platform Semrush, Adobe's announced that it's buying Topaz Labs, the company behind several popular AI-powered tools for photo and video enhancement (see our Photo AI review and our guide to the best AI photo editing software).
What does that mean for Adobe and Topaz users? Here's what we know so far.
What is Topaz Labs?
Topaz offers AI-powered tools for photo and video enhancement: not text-to-image generation, but specialist solutions for specific tasks like restoring and upscaling images.
It has a trio of desktop apps: Topaz Photo, Video and Gigapixel. The first two offer a range of enhancement tools, such as face recovery, sharpening and denoising, while Gigapixel can upscale image resolution by up to 16x. The company also has corresponding web apps: Topaz Image Web, Astra for video and Bloom for upscaling.
Topaz's upscaling software is widely seen as best around, and it's far superior to Adobe's own solution in Photoshop. Many creatives rely on Topaz Gigapixel to upscale photos and digital art for large-format printing. The software's also popular with users of AI image generators, which typically produce images at low resolutions.
What does the Topaz acquisition mean for creatives?
For now at least, the acquisition shouldn't affect users of Topaz's products. Adobe says Topaz's tools will continue to be available as standalone products separate from its Creative Cloud suite of apps. Topaz subscribers won't be forced to get an Adobe subscription. Topaz Labs CEO Eric Yang will continue to lead the Topaz Labs team, and the products will continue to receive support and updates.
What the deal means for Adobe users is where things could get interesting. Select Topaz AI models have already been built directly Adobe's Photoshop and Premiere. Adobe will now save what it had to pay on a usage and API-consumption basis.
I wouldn't be surprised if the acquisition also speeds up Topaz integration in other Adobe apps – some people would like to see Topaz upscaling brought directly into Lightroom, for example.
According to Adobe's press release, the companies will expand Adobe's video and image model offerings with "state-of-the-art AI enhancement models" in Adobe Firefly, Firefly Services, and Creative Cloud apps. That should mean better upscaling and denoising for AI directly inside Adobe's software.
But Adobe's not only interested in Topaz's existing apps. The company's expertise in AI could allow it to be used as an internal research lab to explore the creation of more AI tools.
Topaz already has a proprietary technology called Neurostream that enables large, complex AI models to run locally on consumer devices. Access to this could allow Adobe to shift some AI workloads from the cloud to users' own devices, lowering infrastructure costs while delivering faster, more responsive previews and edits.
How good this will be for users will depend on how Adobe implements it. In Photoshop, there are already some local AI features like the Remove Tool that can be used offline, but tools like Generative Fill are cloud-based. They run on Adobe's servers and require an active internet connection to generate elements or expand images.
If Adobe can shift the most popular AI processes in Photoshop to users' devices, there's potential for greater privacy, more flexibility to work offline, and – dare I dream? – potentially the ability to pass savings on to users through reducing the expense of buying generative credits.
What creatives are saying
Unsurprisingly, the news of Adobe's Topaz acquisition is dividing opinion. Optimists see it a perfect match that bodes well for the creation of new AI tools. Some find it fitting that Adobe's now "buying the tool half of us use to fix what Adobe exports".
Others have concerns. While there's a promise that Topaz tools will remain standalone for now, some fear that they'll eventually require a Creative Cloud subscription. There are also fears that the deal will lead to a new spate of consolidation in the software space with Adobe and other giants snapping up more smal standalone tools.
"Topaz transitioning to a subscription model was already a rough pill for those of us who bought their stuff from the beginning, I'm not optimistic about what this will mean for us moving forward," one long-time Topaz user writes on X.
"I've only been using Topaz products from within Adobe Photoshop — Denoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel. My only concern here is that Gigapixel is my alternative to the Firefly upscaler when Adobe's egregiously bad censorship refuses to run on an image," someone else worries.
For those who try to avoid Adobe completely, they're now left searching for alternatives again (start with our guide to the best Photoshop alternatives).
If you use Adobe or Topaz products, how do you feel about the acquisition? Let me know in the comments section below?
