Adobe’s New AI Assistants Are Changing How I Design in Photoshop & Express. Here’s What You Must Try

In summary:

• Adobe has launched new AI Assistants in Photoshop and Express, aiming to streamline creative workflows with conversational prompts.
• The Photoshop AI Assistant, now in private beta, automates complex tasks like compositing and upscaling using models from Firefly, Google Gemini, and others.
• Adobe Express gets a conversational AI editor, making it easier for users of all skill levels to create and edit designs with simple text commands.
• New features like Firefly Boards and Creative Production are designed to enhance team collaboration and handle bulk image editing on an enterprise scale.

For anyone in the digital creative space, it feels like we’re at a turning point. Adobe just rolled out its next-generation AI assistants across Photoshop and Express, and it’s not just another incremental update. This feels different. It promises a faster, smarter way to work, giving us creative control that was hard to imagine just a year ago. As David Wadhwani, Adobe’s President of Digital Media, put it, “Our AI at Adobe is made to create and built for the creators who paint the world with their imagination.” It’s a bold statement, but after spending some time with these new tools, it’s one that starts to feel very real.

How the Photoshop AI Assistant Is Reimagining Design

The new Photoshop AI Assistant, which is currently in a private beta, is a genuine game-changer. Instead of clicking through endless menus, you can now chat with the assistant to handle complex edits. Need to automate a repetitive task? Just ask. It even offers tailored creative recommendations right inside the app. This isn’t about replacing the designer but empowering them. Deepa Subramaniam, VP of Product Marketing, really hit the nail on the head when she said, “With AI that gives creative professionals more power, precision and control—and time-savings—Creative Cloud is truly the creative professional’s best friend.”

Features like Generative Fill are now supercharged, pulling from powerful models including Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Image and Black Forest Labs FLUX.1 Kontext. This allows for incredibly realistic object blending and enhancements with minimal effort. Then there’s Gen Upscale, which uses Topaz Labs’ AI to turn low-resolution assets into sharp, print-ready images. Harmonize is another standout, automatically matching the color and tone of a newly added object to the rest of your image. These aren’t just minor tweaks; they fundamentally change how we approach compositing and image enhancement, a process that is constantly evolving.

What’s New in Adobe Express

It’s not just Photoshop getting a major AI upgrade. Adobe Express, the all-in-one design app, now has its own AI Assistant in beta. This lets you prompt, create, and edit any part of your design using plain English. You can make quick changes to any layer without digging through menus, making the whole process feel more intuitive. Whether you’re mocking up social media posts or designing brand collateral, the conversational assistant helps you brainstorm and iterate on the fly.

What I find particularly useful are the smart recommendations. The assistant suggests fonts, color palettes, and layouts directly through the chat, which helps streamline those small but time-consuming decisions that ultimately define the final product and are critical for what works in design.

Recommended Tech

The TechBull recommends having the right hardware to keep up with these powerful AI features. To avoid lag and get the most out of tools like Generative Fill and Gen Upscale, a capable machine is a must. Consider checking out an AI-powered laptop like the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3X AI Laptop, a Copilot+ PC built to handle the heavy processing that modern creative workflows demand.

Firefly Boards and Bulk Editing

For teams, Adobe introduced Firefly Boards, a collaborative AI space for ideation. It now integrates prompt generation and instant 4K image upscaling, helping teams move from a rough idea to a polished concept much faster. At the enterprise level, Firefly Creative Production allows for bulk editing of thousands of images, a huge time-saver for large-scale campaigns. These tools demonstrate a clear understanding of the need for both creative exploration and production efficiency, two sides of the same coin when it comes to making it in today’s market.

The Tech Behind the Magic

So, what’s powering all this? Adobe is using what it calls agentic AI, which enables its assistants to provide step-by-step help while keeping the user in the driver’s seat. This feels less like a black box and more like a collaboration. The integration of partner models like Google’s Gemini and others in Photoshop shows a commitment to using the best tech available for more precise, realistic results. The whole ecosystem is becoming smarter, with tools like Perplexity’s Comet Agentic Browser emerging to help automate the research phase of a project, perfectly complementing these in-app creative assistants.

Real-Life Wins and Getting Started

This isn’t just theory. According to Adobe, designers in the beta program have already reported up to a 30% reduction in time spent on routine tasks like compositing and upscaling. At Adobe MAX, presenters showcased real projects where AI accelerated turnarounds for complex masking and bulk image edits, demonstrating tangible benefits.

If you’re eager to try it yourself, Creative Cloud Pro and Firefly subscribers can join the Photoshop AI Assistant beta waitlist until December 1. The AI Assistant in Express is already available for all users in beta, and the app’s help menu has plenty of tutorials to get you started.

Why These Updates Matter

Ultimately, these new AI assistants are about more than just speeding up workflows. They’re making professional-grade tools more accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level. This shift could democratize design for both independent creators and large corporate teams, a trend impacting many white-collar jobs. As David Wadhwani said, “Every creator should be able to harness the economic and artistic opportunities flowing from generative AI…” After seeing these tools in action, it’s hard to disagree. The future of digital creation is here, and it’s more collaborative and intuitive than ever before.