It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Adobe announced Generative Fill at Adobe Max 2023, the company’s annual creative conference. Generative Fill, along with its cousins Generative Expand and Generate Image, has become such an integral part of my Photoshop process that it feels like I’ve been using all three forever. 

It’s Adobe Max time once again. Here are some of the AI features the company just launched — we’ll follow up with more details in subsequent articles as the event continues. 

Photoshop

On the Photoshop front are two new features that are sure to improve the disposition of photo editors, as well as save a lot of time. Adobe calls this “distraction removal smart technology.” It figures that marketing folks can somehow take something amazingly useful and reduce it to buzzword-ified corporate speak.

Also: How to use Photoshop’s Generative Fill AI tool to easily transform your boring photos

Here’s what they’re doing. Adobe now has a tool that will remove cables and wires from photographs. You know, all those phone wires, power cables, and other teeny little lines that get in the middle of your shots and take half of your Saturday to remove? Gone in one click.

Adobe has also added what I like to call the new “Post-Apocalyptic” effect to Photoshop. All you need to do is select a group of people, apply the effect, and poof…no more people. It’s called Find Distractions and is available once you select the Remove tool.

Unmesh Dinda has a great demo of Remove Distractions in the beta over on his PiXimperfect YouTube channel. While you’re there, take a moment to look at the guy’s perfect hair. It’s a special effect all on its own. That’s some serious Captain Pike-level hair right there. I mean, it’s no Ancient Aliens hair, but it’s still quite impressive.

Adobe is also introducing a tool for editing 3D objects in 2D space, as well as something they’re calling Generative Workspace, which is an “ideation” and brainstorming tool that we’ll be learning more about soon.

Premiere

Premiere’s new killer feature is Adobe Firefly Video Model, in beta, the company’s AI-generated video solution. It comes in three modes: text to video, generative expand (adding frames to continue an action), and the ability to extend footage to fit a music track. These are all powered by Adobe’s Firefly AI tech.

Also: ChatGPT’s productivity upgrade and your new AI coworkers

I switched away from Premiere many years ago because it crashed on me regularly. The product has improved substantially since then, but you develop both muscle memory and infrastructure for your nonlinear editing system, so switching back would require a great deal of investment and time that I’d rather not put in. This is a form of lock-in, but it’s a voluntary form of lock-in.

That said, some of these new Premiere features are very interesting. I could see this AI-generated video feature as very useful for creating generic B roll clips of things like kids in a classroom or people in a park. But there are limits.

I don’t expect it to be useful for a clip of changing filament on a 3D printer or of tanks driving up Main Street because Adobe assets are fairly limited, and, as we’ve seen in our other Generative Fill tests, their restrictions on what kind of content you can request are fairly extensive.

Also: Meta says its Movie Gen marks ‘real’ advance in AI video generation

As of now, Final Cut doesn’t have anything like the AI features in Premiere. So I can see possibly launching Premiere to generate some simple B roll, and exporting that for inclusion in my Final Cut projects. This kind of feature is compelling, so I may try to incorporate it into my workflow. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes if I do.

Other Creative Cloud creations to look forward to

This summer, I showed you Illustrator’s vector generative fill and wrote about why I thought it was so game-changing. Adobe continues to move forward with Illustrator, adding an Objects on Path feature that allows users to move objects along any path in their creations.

They’ve also added an Enhanced Image Trace feature that makes it easier to convert bitmap images into vectors. This is definitely a much-needed feature that could benefit from all the AI Adobe can bake into it.

Also: Every high-performing business embraces AI now – but here’s what else they’re doing right

Lightroom has a new Generative Remove feature. I’m not sure how that differs from the wire and people distraction removal tool being added in Photoshop, but my sources deep within their PR team tell me it will be able to remove anything.

The company is also “Unveiling Powerful New Innovations for Photographers.” I’m not sure what that means, but my source, Deep Pixel, says it’s pretty cool.

That’s it for now. The ZDNET news team is covering Adobe Max in-depth, so stay tuned for many more details and announcements. I’ll be back soon with some hands-on tests of these new features.

Also: Adobe unveiled a new tool to help protect artist’s work from AI – and it’s free

What are you most looking forward to? Have you used the generative AI features introduced in the past year? Have you saved time? Let us know in the comments below.

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