Just announced! Adobe upgrades Photoshop – here's all you need to know

Adobe MAX London is underway and that means Photoshop news. Each Photoshop update introduces new tools and workflow improvements, which is what's kept the software up there at the top of our list of the best photo editing software, of course.

Many recent updates have focused on AI, and today's is no exception. New generative AI tools powered by Adobe Firefly include composition reference, while it's now easier to select details and adjust colours. Let's dive in and see what's new.

Photoshop update: what's new

Composition Reference

First up, Composition Reference in Text-to-Image builds on Structure Reference for AI image generation with more compositional control.

It allows users to take the structure and visual arrangement from a reference image to apply to the AI-generated output, something we've seen in other AI image generators.

Select Details

We already had Select Subject and Select Object, now we have Select Details, which is intended to make it faster and more intuitive to select things like hair, facial features and clothing. It looks like should will help with the kinds of things that can often be hard to mask using traditional selection tools.

Adjust Colors

The new Adjust Colors tool sounds more like something Photoshop already has, but it makes the process easier. Until now, to adjust colours, you would go to layer adjustments. That took a few clicks, and it could get messy if you wanted to target a single layer in a complex composition.

Now there's an Adjust Colors option in that sometimes helpful, sometimes irritating Contextual Task Bar that hovers under your canvas. Click on that for a simpler way to adjust hue, saturation and lightness all in a panel on the main workspace. It automatically samples colours from the image you're working on to allow quick, targeted adjustments.

Actions Panel (beta)

Speaking of the Contextual Task Bar, the evolution of that concept is the reimagined Actions Panel. This provides more suggestions for the next steps you might want to take in your workflow.

In theory, this will provide faster access to regular actions since it seems that it learns from your own workflow. Adobe also suggests that it could even provide inspiration for creative directions to follow.

This is really just the start for this concept. As I wrote a few weeks ago when I suggested that Adobe wants to turn Photoshop into an AI chatbot, the software giant sees this as the foundation of its plan to create an AI creative agent in its apps, serving as a kind of assistant to the user. The idea is that the user will be able to put requests to the agent the way they would to a chatbot like GPT.

Stripes in Gradients

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Finally, this isn't being billed a headline update, but Adobe's principal director evangelist Paul Trani pointed it out in a demo, and it's a cool new feature that should appeal to more old-school Photoshop users who aren't so impressed with the AI stuff.

The Gradient Tool and Gradient Fill interpolation options now include stripes in addition to perceptual, linear, classic and smooth. It's a small feature, but It should make it much quicker and easier to add a striped background to compositions.

For more news from Adobe MAX London, see the announcements of the new Firefly Image Model 4 as well as third-party AI in Firefly.

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