Adobe Photoshop’s new “Generative Fill” AI tool lets you manipulate photos with text

Adobe, on Tuesday, unveiled a new tool added to its custom image-synthesis model Firefly. The tool, “Generative Fill”, uses cloud-based image synthesis to fill selected areas of an image with new AI-generated content based on a text description. Having revealed their new AI image-generating tool, “Firefly”, in April, this is another major update coming from the creative image software developer.

Generative Fill works similarly to the " inpainting " technique used in OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion. Powered by Firefly, Generative Fill uses inpainting techniques to create a context-aware generation that seamlessly blends synthesised imagery into an existing image. 

To use Generative Fill, select an area of an existing image that you want to modify. After selecting it, a “Contextual Task Bar” will pop up, allowing you to type in a description of what you want to see generated in the selected area. Photoshop sends the data to Adobe’s servers for processing and then returns results in the app. After generating them, the user has the option to select between several options of generations or create more options to browse through.

The Generative Fill tool creates a new “Generative Layer” when being used, allowing the non-destructive alterations of image content, such as additions, extensions, or removals, driven by these text prompts. It automatically adjusts to the perspective, lighting, and style of the selected image.

Generative Fill in the Photoshop beta app is available to all Creative Cloud members with a Photoshop subscription or trial through the “Beta apps” section of the Creative Cloud app. It is not yet available for commercial use and currently supports English-only text prompts. Adobe is doubling down on its content authenticity initiative, which uses content credentials to add metadata to generated files, just like Google’s new image identification tool, to help track their provenance.

Linked articles: Microsoft and Adobe reveal their new AI image generators, Bing image creator, and Firefly and Google launching tools to identify misleading and AI images.