Adobe is bringing more Firefly AI features to its popular Photoshop and Illustrator design platforms. The upgrade is a significant step forward for Adobe since the 2023 debut of Firefly, and sees Photoshop finally getting in-app ability to generate AI images, and also a new Generative Shape Fill that is still in beta, allowing designers to quickly add detailed vectors to shapes by entering text prompts directly in the Contextual Taskbar. Improvements to Illustrator include the Dimension Tool, Retype, Style Reference, its own Contextual Taskbar, Retype and two new beta tools, Text to Pattern and Mockup.

“These are some of the most substantial updates to Adobe Firefly,” writes CNET, pointing out that “the company’s AI tools are integrated into its suite of design programs, which means you must be a Creative Cloud subscriber to use the AI design tools.”

Photoshop’s text-to-image generator “can generate a whole image from a text prompt,” CNET explains, noting that “previously, you could only generate AI art for portions of designs with generative fill, not complete images.” The feature is powered by Adobe’s Firefly Image 3 Model.

Generative fill is also improved, with the ability to create renderings with more detail. New brush selection and adjustment tools for Photoshop, and Contextual Taskbar updates aim to streamline workflow and make it easier to input prompts and perform editing functions on images, Adobe lists in a news release.

VentureBeat provides a run-down on each of the new features, writing after a demo that they “seem incredibly useful and time-saving.” Illustrator’s Mockup, for instance “personally blew me away in the demo, as it lets Illustrator users drag logos and other designs onto any other product in a 2D image, say, a baseball hat or mug or flexible food package, and it automatically, nearly instantaneously transforms the logo to fit the contours and shape of the underlying product.”

The Contextual Taskbar that is new to both programs “automatically changes to include relevant buttons, related imagery and next steps in the design process, making it easier for users to navigate their projects,” VentureBeat says.

In a related Nvidia blog post about using Adobe’s Firefly-powered Creative Suite apps with Nvidia RTX GPUs — optimized for AI, ray tracing and other complex tasks — the company explains that “generative AI creates new data in forms such as images or text by learning from existing data.” The post includes many visual examples as well as links to informative videos.