Project Graph is Adobe's most important announcement of the year

Right at the end of the opening keynote of its annual MAX conference in LA last month came, in Adobe's words, possible the most important announcement of the day. The company revealed Project Graph, a powerful new system designed to give users real control over AI creation.

Project Graph is capable of turning complex workflows into user-friendly UIs (or 'capsules'), and can access tools from across the Creative Cloud suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro – making it a potentially game-changing tool for creative pros

But it isn't just Adobe's own tools that Project Graph is able to tap into. It also has access to the multitude of third party AI models Adobe recently announced partnerships with, including those made by Google, OpenAI and many more.

• Adobe Black Friday deals: Save 50% on Creative Cloud Pro

These tools can be used to build a node-based workflow, which can then be packaged into a streamlined tool with a deceptively simple interface.

James Ratliff, Venture Lead for Project Graph, explained to Creative Bloq that part of the impetus behind the project was to address the increasing reliance on prompting as AI rises in ubiquity. "You lose your tactile touch when you when you work this way," Ratliff said. Project Graph represents a "second generation" AI tool; a step "towards more professional and more controllable creative tooling," and away from the idea of "AI slop".

Project Graph was born out of the Adobe Incubator, a new program that empowers small, employee-led teams to operate like startups inside Adobe. "[Project Graph] was a couple of people in the design team seeing a need, making something on their own, and then it following this beautiful process to become a product," Eric Snowden, SVP of Design at Adobe, told Creative Bloq.

And Snowden agrees that Project Graph is one of Adobe's most exciting, and potentially important, recent announcements. "There's so much amazing Adobe technology that's currently locked up in our tools," he says. "Anyone who's used our software for any period of time will have experienced thinking, I wish I had these three features from Photoshop, this thing from Premiere, and this thing from Illustrator. With Project Graph, I can put those together and make the tool I actually want. I think for a creative pro, that's incredibly exciting."

"Whether you’re a motion designer creating brand variations, a video editor producing at scale, or a photographer managing client shoots, Project Graph gives you the freedom to build your own creative systems. You can explore ideas, fine-tune details, and turn your workflows into reusable tools that run anywhere in the Adobe ecosystem," Ratliff adds.

Project Graph is "coming soon" – as the tool moves towards public beta, users can sign up for updates via Adobe's website.