Adobe today launched a trio of powerful new AI features for Photoshop, aiming to automate tedious editing tasks and streamline creative workflows for professionals and creators. Announced July 29, the new Firefly-powered tools are now rolling out in beta across Photoshop on desktop, web, and mobile.
The update includes “Harmonize,” a feature that realistically blends objects into images by automatically matching color and lighting. It also introduces “Generative Upscale” for enhancing image resolution and an improved “Remove Tool” for cleaner object removal.
Adobe’s goal is to eliminate creative friction. Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe’s VP of Product Marketing for Creative Cloud, said “these new innovations come from our ongoing conversations with the creative community, where we hear how we can evolve tools in Photoshop to remove barriers.” Shambhavi Kadam, a senior product director, added that the tools will “help them save time, remove friction from their workflows, and take on some of the time-consuming tasks on their behalf.”
From Tech Preview to Seamless Composites: The New Harmonize Tool
The standout feature of this update is Harmonize, a tool that makes complex photo compositing shockingly simple. For years, realistically blending an object or person from one photo into another has been a hallmark of skilled photo editors. Harmonize aims to democratize this process.
It intelligently analyzes the context of a background image and automatically adjusts the color, lighting, shadows, and overall visual tone of any newly added element. This creates a seamless and cohesive final image in just a few clicks, saving what could have been hours of meticulous manual adjustments.
Powered by the Adobe Firefly Image Model, the tool handles the heavy lifting of post-production. For instance, when an object is placed on a surface, Harmonize can generate a realistic shadow that correctly interacts with the environment. It is also adept at handling difficult source material, such as photos with overexposure or harsh, colored lighting, correcting the subject to fit the new scene while preserving their core features.
The applications are broad, benefiting designers creating surreal composites, marketers building dynamic campaign visuals, or digital artists experimenting with whimsical scenes.
This technology evolved from a tool first demonstrated at the Adobe MAX conference in October 2024, which was codenamed “Project Perfect Blend.” During that preview, Photoshop researcher Mengwei Ren declared, “Let me present you Project Perfect Blend that makes compositing easy as a breeze.”
As Ren explained, the underlying mechanism works because “Our harmonization model in the back end will help us to automatically adjust the lighting and color,” a process that previously required significant technical skill and a trained eye. The Harmonize feature is now available in beta on desktop and web, and in Early Access on the Photoshop for iOS app.
Solving Common Headaches with Generative Upscale and a Smarter Remove Tool
Addressing one of the most persistent requests from its creative community, Adobe is introducing Generative Upscale. This new tool, now in beta for desktop and web users, allows creators to enhance an image’s resolution up to 8 megapixels. According to Adobe, it delivers sharper, more detailed results without sacrificing image clarity or introducing unwanted artifacts.
This is a significant quality-of-life improvement for photographers needing to restore old photos or prepare lower-resolution files for print, as well as for social media managers who must constantly adapt assets for various platforms.
Alongside upscaling, the Remove tool has been significantly improved with the latest Firefly Image Model. The upgraded algorithm offers more precision and quality than ever before, generating realistic content to fill gaps left by removed objects.
Previously, the tool would analyze the entire scene to fill a space, which could result in strange artifacts. As one report noted, an attempt to remove a small bowl of Pico de Gallo with the older tool resulted in a “green blob.” The new version, however, successfully removes the object and replaces it with the correct background.
This enhanced precision makes the tool more reliable for a range of common cleanup tasks, such as erasing stray power lines from a landscape, tidying up a portrait backdrop, or polishing a product photo. Adobe states that the new algorithm ensures edits blend more naturally into the background, producing cleaner, more professional results that are ready to share with minimal effort. It also better addresses user intent, focusing on pure removal rather than sometimes replacing an object when none was requested.
More Control and Wider Access in Adobe’s Multi-Platform AI Push
This release is a key part of Adobe’s broader strategy to embed its AI tools across the entire Creative Cloud ecosystem, transforming it into a single, cohesive platform for AI-assisted creativity. The company is not just adding features but also giving users more control over how they use them, a crucial step in appealing to discerning creative professionals who demand flexibility.
A prime example of this is the new “Gen AI Model Picker” debuting in the Photoshop desktop beta. This feature lets users choose between different Firefly models, such as Image 1 and Image 3, when using Generative Fill and Generative Expand. Each model possesses unique strengths and stylistic biases, so this choice allows creators to experiment and tailor outputs to their specific vision, whether they need photorealism or a more illustrative result. This move aligns with comments from Adobe’s CTO of Digital Media, Ely Greenfield, who previously stated, “We know that customers have preferences… We wanted to make sure that they had choice.”
Beyond creative tools, Adobe is also tackling workflow inefficiencies with the introduction of “Projects” in the desktop beta. This new feature is designed to help users and teams better organize and share creative assets in a central, collaborative space. According to Adobe, it directly addresses the pain point of managing files scattered across different drives and services, reducing versioning issues and smoothing out fragmented collaboration. It signals a focus on the entire creative process, not just the moment of creation.
This multi-platform approach is critical to Adobe’s vision. The new desktop features follow the recent beta launch of Photoshop for Android and the release of an all-in-one Firefly mobile app. By ensuring assets sync automatically to a user’s Creative Cloud account, Adobe is building a unified workflow where a project started on a phone can be seamlessly refined on a desktop, keeping users firmly within its ecosystem.
A Commitment to Safety and Transparency
As AI tools become more powerful, concerns over their potential for misuse have grown. Adobe is positioning its platform as a responsible choice for professionals by building in transparency features, a direct response to an industry grappling with legal and ethical challenges.
The company reiterated that all content generated or modified with these new AI tools will include digital Content Credentials. This system functions as a digital nutrition label, providing metadata about how an image was created and edited, including which AI models were used.
This focus on commercially safe and transparent AI, trained on licensed data like Adobe Stock, is a key differentiator from competitors like Midjourney, which face high-profile copyright lawsuits. Photoshop Product Manager Joel Baer stated that “adobe takes content safety seriously across all products, and has implemented safeguards such as Content Credentials, to protect users and combat harmful and misleading content.” This commitment is central to Adobe’s pitch to enterprise customers who are wary of the legal risks associated with generative AI.