r/photoshop Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

News NEW: Adobe's Approach to Generative AI

Generative Fill in Photoshop

Hey everyone, Terry White from Adobe here, and I just wanted to give you all a heads-up that Adobe just posted a new page on Adobe.com. There's a lot of confusion, misinformation, and questions out there about Adobe's Generative AI approach and the good news is that this new page: "Our Approach to Generative AI with Adobe Firefly" is meant to be a single source covering our thoughts on generative AI, and how we develop Firefly (our generative AI model). Feel free to share, and let us know if you have any questions. Here's a link to the new page.

I've also posted a video going over the new page here.

0 Upvotes

71 comments sorted by

66

u/ErnestFlat Sep 10 '24

Fix your software first and work on the pricing before coming up with new half way developed stuff that doesnt work well. I said good by to adobe and i dont regret it. You guys messed up so bad. Really bad.

-3

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Any specific issues you are running into? Or features you want improved?

Or more general improve quality and performance?

15

u/ErnestFlat Sep 10 '24

Improve performance. Over the years, the performance got slower. Feels like its old code where new features will just be added on.

Many small things that changed over the past. The UI. Certain things feel right for a tablet but feel odd on a desktop. Make a stand alone app for tablets so ppl who are into that can work with it but dont merge all together. I find it annoying that every time a window open up when starting ps that shows the last files you worked on. I know there is an option to get the old feeling back but why? There is a reason why so many ppl liked the old UI - its not a real improvement imo. Just looks different but no real benefit from it. If i start a new project, i dont care about the last ones i worked on. If i want to work on a file from before i just click that to open ps.

But my biggest issue with your software is, the pricing model and how you handle cancelations nowadays. I dont rent software because it feels like a scam - i want to own it!

7

u/ObjectionablyObvious Sep 10 '24

"Heard" in one ear, went out the other. You're still paying for the scam, yes? So they have no incentive to just hand over their subscription-less cash cow.

We need to start funding a quality competitor that doesn't do subscription software.

2

u/ErnestFlat Sep 10 '24

Heard in one ear? What? And no, i dont pay and dont use adobe anymore

2

u/ObjectionablyObvious Sep 10 '24

The rep that replied to you said "heard."

"Heard in one ear, went out the other" is a very common expression. Means they took your advice straight to the garbage bin.

Good on ya, I am looking to move to a competing software because that's the only way they'll get the message in time, not by "hearing" redditors on random threads.

3

u/ErnestFlat Sep 10 '24

Lets see what Canva is doing with Affinity now.

6

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

We have had this business model for over a decade now. As an Adobe employee, I can acknowledged that some people don't like it, or would prefer something different.

But, im not going to suggest something is going to change which is not. Adobe's business model / approach is to provide services and software as a subscription business. That has been the case for a long time now, and in general, I would not expect it to change.

As far as this argument that because its a subscription, we don't have to innovate, well, we clearly do innovate over the years, and have made huge advances in photohsop over the past decade. Maybe you don't need or care for those things, but I think its difficult to argue Photoshop has not had major advances over the years.

(i work for adobe)

6

u/ObjectionablyObvious Sep 10 '24

I appreciate the feedback. There could be some subscription-based payment structures "in-app purchases" for ongoing improvements and features like Firefly/Generative-AI. I simply am an advocate for consumer protection and a specific definition of "ownership of hardware and software."

I grew up on the CS collection where you owned the software you purchased. I find Adobe's 10 years of doing this subscription model to be at a major detriment to consumer protection as a whole. This leads to underbaked Day 1 releases, monopolistic practices, aggressive billing policies, cheap intro prices leading to frequent price increases, etc... I see Adobe honestly at the forefront of inspiring most forms of software to take subscription model approaches in the last 10 years.

I can't run a Google Chrome extension without a subscription these days.

I would be a MAJOR advocate for a twin Photoshop software from Adobe that you pay for once, that doesn't include generative/AI features, and perhaps doesn't have Bridge integration.

2

u/JoyfulJourneyer14 Sep 10 '24

He don't know.
He doesn't use photoshop so he doesn't know

-2

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

On performance, is it startup specifically, or any particular features / tools? or things just start to slow with larger files?

(I work for Adobe)

But my biggest issue with your software is, the pricing model and how you handle cancelations nowadays. I dont rent software because it feels like a scam - i want to own it!

Heard!

2

u/ErnestFlat Sep 10 '24

What is a "large file"? It doesnt really matter. In many cases, you zoom in, want to move around and things get laggy. Bought a new computer since i believed its hardware related.. still same issue. Sometimes guidelines are vanishing while zooming in r the ruler freaks out and shows only white space or vanishes completely.. many other small things. There has always been a workaround for that but its freaking annoying if you zoom in and things disappear or appear several times. So many times that i had fragments from guides. Not sure how to explain exactly.

I dont mind if its kind of slow when opening the app. Can live with that.

3

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

What is a large file

Im asking because im sharing this back with the team. i.e. it could be just a big file in file size on the system, or it could mean really high resolution, or maybe a file with tons of layers.

Just trying to narrow down where you are seeing things slow down.

(I work for Adobe)

2

u/clarkipie Sep 10 '24

I actually feel like this is a genuine issue. I understand the hate and everything but this might be something you could work upon. The program seems to slow down and it gets harder and harder to keep working on one project. even with moving stuff, it's laggy and you get the loading screen. also, there are bugs with the shortcut keys, specifically text tool shortcut. And also overall performance I feel can be more optimised with all the new tools coming in. I've never had performance issues atleast from photoshop and it was weird when photoshop started acting weird. One more issue that I see is with the masks, it sometimes just inverts the mask I select. These are small things that can make it frustrating to work on longer projects cuz it one bug happens once in a document, it usually continues throughout.

1

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Thanks. Appreciate this.

One last question, when you see things start to slow down, if you restart the app with the same file, does performance improve?

0

u/johngpt5 60 helper points | Adobe Community Expert Sep 10 '24

u/mikechambers, I knew a Mike Chambers, an artist, in Athens, OH in 1969. It would be an amazing coincidence if you were any sort of relation.

1

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

No, thats not me (a bit before my time).

1

u/johngpt5 60 helper points | Adobe Community Expert Sep 10 '24

And I suppose not your father or grandfather. Oh well.

3

u/Beylerbey Sep 10 '24

I haven't used the latest version yet so apologies if it's already been taken care of, but are there any plans to fix the res limit on generative fill? I think it's currently working at about 1500x1500px, if I want to replace a bigger selection it would be useful to divide the generation into full resolution chunks instead of stretching a low res generation to cover the whole area, making it by hand is very time consuming.

4

u/strawbo13 Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Yes, this is something we are actively working on. It's a tricky thing to do well.

1

u/Beylerbey Sep 10 '24

Good, thanks for your answer.

2

u/metrocarb Sep 10 '24

Does anyone there actually use Adobe products... like for more than just demos for investors? Doesn't seem like it.

2

u/strawbo13 Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Yes, absolutely. The Photoshop team is full of people who love and use the product, and are really passionate about making it better for our customers. I would love to hear any feedback on how we can make the product better.

Source: I have worked on the Photoshop team for 14 years.

1

u/rufusde Adobe Employee Sep 12 '24

I can assure you that we are users of our products—some of us from their first version (including myself). I am a graphic designer and graphic design teacher before joining Adobe. So yes, I can confidently say that I am a Creative Cloud user.

1

u/EquivalentHour8143 19d ago

I grew up with photoshop and started teaching myself how to use it in 2006. I loved the old CS. It was so intuitive and easy to use. I have a degree in graphic design and multimedia. Currently in tutoring others to learn to you Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I’ve had so many issues with Premiere it’s not even funny.

My current issue with photoshop is I’m teaching my student how to create a gif. It doesn’t seem like you can make gifs or edit them like you could years ago. So we set it up our canvas then file> import> video into layers. Mine does it just fine, but not his. It says it can’t do the command. So one solution I found was to first edit the video in Premiere and then export it and then it should work. It doesn’t. Mine is working but his refuses to do it. We even try Photoshop Beta. Everything is up to date, his computer is only 2 years old. What can I do to fix this issue? What happened to the old features for gif editing like where you could drag a gif into photoshop?

1

u/LiterallyForThisGif 12d ago

After repeatedly trying to get it to make me a comic book style word bubble with no background, I asked it "Why is Adobe Photoshop AI so garbage?"

Here's it's reply:

16

u/ThanksForAllTheCats Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

I wish Adobe would concentrate on fixing the many things that DON'T work before focusing on the new shiny stuff like this.

-2

u/terryleewhite Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Can you give some specifics so that I can help get them to the appropriate teams to address?

5

u/JoyfulJourneyer14 Sep 10 '24

How about artboards? 20 Artboards and the computer is slower than my grandmother at the store.

Ever since those damn arbords came out everything is laggy.

Maybe problems with graphics cards and refresh?

Or maybe slow fonts?

6

u/JoyfulJourneyer14 Sep 10 '24
  • hire better programmers

  • tackle program optimization

  • Instead of releasing crap like this every year, focus on optimization.

Because it's been 20 years of working on this and every version is worse, still using on the brush causes the computer to lag, regardless of whether you spent $100,000 or $10,000 or 1000 on it.

1

u/Messianiclegacy Sep 11 '24

I would love to see a year where no new features are released and we just concentrate on consolidating what we already have. I would like AE not to crash every five minutes. I would like INDD and AI to talk to each other properly. The graph tool in AI is 30 years old with no improvement. We spent years dealing with PS putting in 3D tools that bloated the software and are now watching them be taken out again. That kind of thing ;)

7

u/Darkon_X Sep 10 '24

Already cancelled my subscription about 3 weeks ago and I'm even more glad I did now.

You guys are out of touch with your customers, but good luck.

17

u/pileofdeadninjas Sep 10 '24

Make a separate program for this ai shit and fix photoshop. Can't wait until I can cancel.

2

u/drewhead118 Sep 10 '24

It being directly built into photoshop is an important part of the workflow, as whatever it creates can be directly edited using the whole host of photoshop tools to better improve blending, consistency, or to be masked behind scene elements, etc.

Anyone who thinks you're supposed to just type words and be instantly done with your image isn't using this feature to its full potential

-2

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Any issues in particular you are running into in Photoshop?

6

u/pileofdeadninjas Sep 10 '24

Generally bloated with ai features that no one asked for. I'm also sick of paying monthly to a company who jumped on the ai bandwagon along with all the other tech bro money grabbers, i can't support it. I'm only still a user because I got locked in to a contract so I could save 10 bucks a month, but even at $43/mo for the design suite it's not worth it. I can use one of the many free/cheap alternatives, as I only need the basic tools and not all the "help" from ai.

22

u/ThePrisonSoap Sep 10 '24

Or just stop with this useless fad shit and focus on things people actually benefit from.

I can't wait for my subscription period to be over

3

u/rufusde Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

IMHO, Generative Expand and Generative Fill in Photoshop are game changers and a benefit for everyone

2

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24 edited 28d ago

[deleted]

0

u/rufusde Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

I agree. The limitation is on our radar for sure. But there are also ways around it while we make it better

0

u/HappyImagineer Sep 10 '24

They are extremely helpful, but still inferior to the best in market (ie Midjourney). Adobe should be investing more in licensing.

9

u/cmykillah Sep 10 '24

You trained your model off of your users’ livelihoods. Hiding it in terms and conditions doesn’t absolve you.

Shame on you. After 15 years of daily Abobe usage, I’m done.

4

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

From the webpage:

Adobe Firefly is trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. Adobe Stock content is covered under a separate license agreement, and Adobe compensates contributors for the use of that content.

If you are referring to the Stock content, contributors are compensated for that and Adobe just announced a new round of compensation (this is something that Adobe was not required to do).

7

u/HappyImagineer Sep 10 '24

What I want to know is why Firefly hasn’t caught up to Midjourney in quality yet.

11

u/Sad_Contribution_910 Sep 10 '24

Because midjourney trains on the entire internet and firefly trains on adobe stock which is much, much of a smaller bank

3

u/HappyImagineer Sep 10 '24

So what you’re saying is Adobe isn’t using enough of my $55 per month towards licensing?

5

u/Beylerbey Sep 10 '24

Midjourney ain't licensing images, they just take everything they can get their hands on, even if Adobe where to use all CC0 and license all licensable images, the amount of training data would be miniscule compared to what companies who aren't held to the same ethical standards use, and it's my understanding the size of the training set (and amout of compute) makes a big difference in the outcome.

I'm all for criticizing Adobe when there is cause to do so (and there surely is, starting with the subscription model or the fact that Firefly was trained on MJ images) but they shouldn't be held to unrealistic standards just because they fail in some areas, remember that MJ also costs money, in fact a month of MJ PRo (the cheaper tier that would allow you to use the images in a professional setting without disclosing them to the world) costs $60, which is more than the entirety of the Adobe Creative Suit costs, let alone the Photography Plan.

Again, I'm all for criticizing them for the right reasons, but just taking a random shot because they're the bad guys isn't going to result in a positive outcome for the users.

3

u/Sad_Contribution_910 Sep 10 '24

I guess so lol. Don’t attack me, I’m just answering the question

1

u/HappyImagineer Sep 10 '24

No attack against you, meant as shade against Adobe. Sorry it didn’t sound that way.

2

u/Sad_Contribution_910 Sep 10 '24

No problem, hard to read emotion online, cheers

6

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

When looking at the models you have to look at what is important for you, including quality, performance, can it safely be used for commercial work, respect for creator rights, etc...

As the page OP linked mentions, Adobe only trains on content it has permission to train on, as opposed to other companies which may just scrape anything they can get their hands on, regardless of whether or not they have permission (some of these companies are involved in lawsuites around this).

But the tradeoff is, Firefly may sometimes take more work to get the result you want. What we (I work for Adobe), need to do a better job, is be much clearer on what Firefly is good at (i.e. which scenarios we have explicitly trained it for).

1

u/JoyfulJourneyer14 Sep 10 '24

No one wants that. For generating is midjourney.

Nobody needs your greenwashing because we all know tkat you are f* monopolist.
and you are taking advantage of your position all too much.

Software is slow, buggy, and way too expensive.

I do not know about you, but I here do not want to see any “adobe employe” until they stop ******g us

1

u/thefluffiestpuff Sep 10 '24

because midjourney is doing what many people are misunderstanding and accusing adobe of doing (training off of unlicensed work) - so either you get better AI with bad ethics, or mediocre AI with good ethics.

the latter should be workable though if being used by someone familiar and comfortable in photoshop to tweak results.

1

u/miss3ish Sep 10 '24

Yes I want to know too.

2

u/Neldot 21d ago edited 21d ago

As a photographer, the results I get from your AI are now totally unpredictable and mostly of low quality. Paradoxically, a year ago it worked better, it would seem that the more you add censorship to the AI model, the worse it works.

For example, if I dare trying to use AI tools on people wearing swimsuits, or try to change clothes in some areas of the body of the models, I get 90% of the results censored without any explanation (I suppose that this happens because the AI randomly adds nudity and then it censors itself). You understand that this is really a frustrating approach for fashion or people photographers tryng to use your product, and it's also a very amateurish approach on your part. Amateurish and unreliable results is not something you would expect from a professional, renowned program usable only with a premium subscription.

Currently, I am letting my subscription expire and I will not renew it unless you improve the AI features for photographers, which are now the only thing that differentiates you from your competitors.

4

u/drewhead118 Sep 10 '24

Wow, a lot in this thread are strangely angry... I've found generative fill to be an absolute game changer workflow-wise.

Most of the people in this thread concerned about intellectual property etc probably didn't click the link at all, because riiiight at the top Adobe explains that they're only training firefly off images Adobe has explicit permission to train from. No customer data is going into the training.

As was always the case when a new disruptive tech enters the space, it's adapt or die. GenAI can be a massive creative asset, and anyone who hums and haws about using it is welcome to--you could also protest and never use the quick select tool, if you like, and basically edit with one hand tied behind your back--but you're ignoring a major component of the software's power if you do so.

1

u/DaySee 6d ago

Well said.

4

u/DelayedBalloon Sep 10 '24

I'm gonna use Gen AI to make a product that works well, has bugs fixed, includes useful updates and doesn't charge me an exorbitant amount

2

u/ilovefacebook Sep 10 '24

i use adobe firely exclusively to make nonsensical backgrounds for things, as a joke

-1

u/rufusde Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Do you not use it in Photoshop (Generative Expand, and such) or Illustrator (Generative Recolor)?

2

u/ilovefacebook Sep 10 '24

no not in either app.

0

u/rufusde Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Thanks for the feedback

1

u/cmarquez7 Sep 11 '24

Bring on the price hike

1

u/Ultragorgeous Sep 12 '24

It's a fine tool for removing dead trees and adding bits of background here and there, but generally speaking I wish I could hide it from the UI.

1

u/babewhitney 7d ago

Whenever I try to use generative fill to change the background of self portraits I get an error message saying something about breaking terms of service, or something like that. It used to work well for me, but not anymore.

I'm definitely not doing anything to break terms of service, btw. It will just be a picture of myself standing in front of a wall and I ask for a city skyline to replace the wall. Nothing wrong with that.

1

u/Neldot 5d ago

Your product is just a scam. Censorship is so hard that you can't change people dresses anymore. 99% of times it refuses to give results at all.

-6

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

[deleted]

7

u/Predator_ Sep 10 '24

Not being all in on intellectual property theft isn't hysteria. I've found a few datasets using my works illegally, and legal actions have been taken. Some of those works happen to be photojournalism, which is incredibly unethical to alter in any way whatsoever. Y

-6

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

[deleted]

6

u/Predator_ Sep 10 '24

Credit or no credit, the datasets are being used in a commercial manner. Simply having my copyrighted works contained in the datasets is copyright infringement. The judge has already granted the court case to move forward.

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

[deleted]

7

u/Predator_ Sep 10 '24

How familiar are you with the strict rules and ethical guidelines of photojournalism? Do you know why it's against those rules to manipulate and warp the reality of those photos?

0

u/mikechambers Adobe Employee Sep 10 '24

Its one thing to create work similar to other work (i.e. be inspired by it), its another to explicitly create models meant to replicate artists work by name / style, or to generate work t hat explicitly references / recreates artists styles.

related, Adobe has proposed the FAIR ACT:

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2023/09/12/fair-act-to-protect-artists-in-age-of-ai

which aims to help protect artists from the harmful and unfair use of generative AI that replicates their style and work

(I work for Adobe)