PHOTOSHOP AI SECRETS FOR PROS

Generative AI isn't a gimmick any more-it can be used for real-world professional workflows. Barry Collins explains how

- Barry Collins

If you toyed with generative AI a year or so ago, you could be forgiven for dismissing it as a gimmicky toy that would never seep into professional art workflows. You can’t say that any more.

In the year or so since its beta release, Adobe’s Firefly AI model has improved to the point where the company is now happy to embed AI tools in flagship products such as Photoshop and Lightroom. Adobe executives claim these AI tools are now used more often than the crop tool. They swear that’s no exaggeration.

In this feature, I’m going to show how the Photoshop AI tools can be used for the types of jobs that professionals are asked to do every day: replacing backgrounds for product photography, adding “stock images” to websites, enhancing corporate headshots.

I’ll reveal how to get the best from these tools, offer tips and techniques on how to get the best results, and point out where Adobe’s AI engineers still have work to do. I’ll also reveal how you can combine AI tools to get the best possible results, delivered at super-high resolutions that Adobe’s own tools are currently unable to generate.

GENERATING IMAGES FROM SCRATCH

Until recently, it wasn’t possible to generate images from scratch from within Photoshop. There were workarounds to cheat it, but it wasn’t officially supported. Now, if you start with a blank canvas, you have the option to generatively fill the space.

A little expectation setting first. The resolution of generated images is still limited to around 1,500 x 1,500 pixels. It can generate images in other aspect ratios, to be clear, but if you’re hoping that you’re going to use Firefly to generate something that you can use at poster scale, think again, unless you’ve got a decent upscaling tool such as Topaz Gigapixel AI. Adobe says improving the resolution of images is high on its to-do list, but that of course comes at a compute cost.