Adobe just launched a whole suite of editing products into ChatGPT, and the best bit is that they are available for free.

I decided to give Photoshop in OpenAI's chatbot a try, opting to see if it's really better than opening up my app just to remove the background from a product image to create a header image at work.

I don't like to exaggerate, but honestly, I'm so impressed with this new addition to ChatGPT that I want to shout about it from the rooftops. And that's not all. OpenAI's chatbot now works with Express and Acrobat, too!

In fact, it's so great that I've decided to write about the best 3 new additions now available thanks to Adobe's ChatGPT integration - and best of all, you don't need to pay a fee.

To enable these features in ChatGPT open Settings, then Apps & Connectors, and enable each Adobe product.

1. Photoshop background removal

I’ve used Photoshop for years, and I still find half the tools confusing, so being able to type “brighten the face” and get a perfect adjustment feels like cheating. ChatGPT taps into proper Photoshop tools, so the edits actually look good, not like AI slop.

You can fix exposure, sharpen details, add effects, or tidy up messy backgrounds. If you want more control, sliders pop up so you can fine-tune things. It’s the sort of quick edit that normally takes five minutes, done in five seconds.

The best bit, however, is being able to remove the background from images in a split second without the need for any extra software. Simply type "Adobe Photoshop remove background", upload an image, and click go. Easy peasy.

2. Express for quick graphics

I’m constantly making quick graphics for articles, and Adobe's Express ChatGPT integration shocked me the most. You can ask ChatGPT to create a design, pull in templates from Adobe Express, and adjust everything on the fly – fonts, colors, images, animations, the lot.

It’s perfect if you want something that looks polished but don’t have the time to mess around in another app. The whole thing happens right where you’re already chatting, which makes the workflow feel weirdly natural.

I followed Adobe's example to create a Christmas party invite, and something that would've taken me a good hour now can be done in a split second – impressive.

3. Acrobat PDF editing

This one might be less glamorous, but it’s easily the feature I’ll use the most. Acrobat tools are now built into ChatGPT too, so you can fix PDF text, edit images, merge documents, extract data, compress huge files, and even redact sensitive info.

It turns all the annoying little work tasks into quick voice or text-based commands. I decided to test it out by uploading a PDF draft of an article I wrote, and thanks to Acrobat, I was able to edit directly from within the PDF, something I've always wanted to be able to do in ChatGPT.

This addition to ChatGPT might be less flashy than Photoshop's inclusion, but I think a lot of people will fall in love with this newfound ability.

• Adobe Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat are now apps inside ChatGPT and are free for everyone to use
• The apps come with sliders and controls inside ChatGPT that let you adjust effects and colors
• You can open your creations directly in the web versions of the apps

Adobe has launched its most popular creativity and productivity apps inside ChatGPT, and yes, that includes Adobe Photoshop. The premier graphic design tool is now an app inside ChatGPT alongside Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Express, and they are all free.

Best of all, you do not need to understand how any of these apps work. Inside ChatGPT, you simply describe what you want using natural language, and the apps do it for you. Instead of generating a single static image or document, the apps give you control sliders and options right inside ChatGPT so you can tweak and adjust the results until you get exactly what you want.

Photoshop is well known for editing images, while Adobe Express is built for fast document creation with templates that let you spin up a party invitation or an invoice in seconds. Finally, Acrobat is its PDF manager and editor.

What is it like to Photoshop in ChatGPT?

We watched a demo of Photoshop running as an app inside the web version of ChatGPT, and it is impressive. Here's how it works:

First, you drag an image into the ChatGPT prompt bar to upload it. You can then ask ChatGPT to perform an edit in Photoshop, such as "Convert this image to black and white using Photoshop." There is no need to know how to use Photoshop at all.

After a brief moment, ChatGPT shows you the image converted to black and white using Photoshop and presents an Intensity slider so you can control the strength of the effect.

But you can keep going. If you type "Adjust the exposure on the image," ChatGPT will again think for a moment and then display Photoshop's exposure sliders so you can fine-tune the result.

You do not even need to know what tools you want. For example, you can upload another image and type "Add some effects to the image," and ChatGPT will show previews of five different Photoshop effects, including Tritone, Halftone Color, Glitch, and Dither. Pick one, and you will get sliders to adjust the look.

Photoshop-level selections can also be controlled with natural language. You can type "Apply a Halftone Color effect to the image everywhere except her hair," and ChatGPT will handle the masking automatically.

Each creation includes an "Open in Photoshop" button that launches the file in Photoshop on the web.

Adobe Express in use

If you need something like a party invitation, Adobe Express can be used inside ChatGPT, too. You can ask ChatGPT to come up with holiday party invitation ideas, pick one you like, and say, "Use Adobe Express to create this theme."

You can then edit the invitation using natural language. If you ask it to change the background color, it will do that and also give you a set of color options with on-screen controls.

Adobe Acrobat in use

Acrobat, Adobe's PDF editor, works just like the other apps. You can use natural language to perform tasks without opening the standalone program. Upload your resume, cover letter, and references, then ask it to merge them into one PDF using Acrobat, and you will get a unified document.

It takes a few moments to complete, but once it is done, you can even make last-minute edits to the PDF directly inside ChatGPT without switching to the full Acrobat interface.

Adobe's arrival inside ChatGPT is a significant milestone. It pushes OpenAI's chatbot into new territory, expanding what is possible and moving it beyond content generation into real editing, design, and document workflows. If this is only the beginning, it is not hard to imagine a future where ChatGPT becomes the place where ideas are not just created but completed without ever leaving the chatbot.

• Google's new Mixboard offers AI-fueled visualization and image remixing
• Users can create and edit idea boards using text prompts
• Mixboard is available as an experimental beta in the U.S.

Google's popular new Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model, better known as Nano Banana, has a new home in Adobe Photoshop. Those with access to Photoshop’s beta app can produce images with Nano Banana, best known for making viral 3D figurines from photographs, directly within the Generative Fill tool, alongside Adobe’s own Firefly model.

Nano Banana is joining the platform along with a new contextual model from Black Forest Labs, the developers of the AI image-maker used by Grok on X, called FLUX.1 Kontext [pro].

It's a notable expansion for Adobe's AI strategy, which has largely relied on Adobe-built models until now. But now, Photoshop users can generate a dreamy, stylized background using Nano Banana, refine it with realistic shadows via FLUX.1, and polish the whole thing using Firefly, all within the Generative Fill feature. Adobe seems to want Photoshop to serve as a hub for multiple AI models to compete for your creative attention.

Adobe still encourages users to consider the Firefly model as the go-to for commercial-safe results. Firefly is built for higher-end images in terms of quality, consistency, and reliance on a database that Adobe has permission to use for training its models.

Nano Banana and FLUX have their own strengths, of course. Google's contribution is known for its stylistic flourishes and eye-catching visuals, which are based on text, while Black Forest Labs pitches its model as ideal for more realistic and coherent images.

Now that they're swappable inside the same prompt window, users will be able to test those strengths out very quickly. For instance, if you have an idea for a fantasy story illustration, Nano Banana could add some magical effects, while FLUX realistically lights a cave setting, and Firefly cleans it all up.

AI image imagination

Adobe opening up to third-party providers will likely help the company as it battles to keep Photoshop atop the list of high-end visual platforms. Making it easy to switch among the models will streamline a lot of projects, both professional and personal. Speeding up the sometimes tedious process of editing images is going to appeal to plenty of creators.

For instance, a designer making social content can generate stylized backgrounds in seconds and tweak them without toggling between tabs. An inventor could run the entire product imagery and marketing launch campaign entirely within Photoshop, and even someone making a funny greeting card image will find the process a lot easier.

You still need taste and direction. However, the burden of drafting and editing might be significantly lighter. If you want to try mixing Photoshop and Nano Banana, you’ll need to opt into the Photoshop beta via Creative Cloud. Adobe says more improvements are coming as they optimize the back-end systems and introduce finer controls over each model’s output.

You might also like

• I turned myself into a 3D figurine with Google's Nano Banana - here's how you can hop on the latest AI image trend
• Will Adobe's AI agents cause the death of creativity?
• I refuse to jump on ChatGPT’s Studio Ghibli image generator bandwagon because it goes against everything I love about those movies

Adobe has joined in the back-to-school sales with a massive 40% price-cut on its Creative Cloud Pro plan for the first year.

In the US, save 40% off a year's subscription to Creative Cloud Pro was $70, now $42 a month. The Adobe deals cut right across Individual, Business, and Student & Teacher subscriptions, with Creative Cloud Pro for Teams dropping by 40% from $100 a month per license down to the $60.

In Canada, a Creative Cloud Pro plan has dropped from C$92 down to C$56 a month.

In the UK, get 50% off for three months on the Creative Cloud Pro plan.

The CC Pro subscription plan bundles together over 20 top apps including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. So, if you're going to use more than two Adobe apps at around $20 a month each, then this 40% off deal is going to save you money right away.

You can check out the full range of deals below.

• See all Adobe deals in the US
• See all Adobe deals in Canada
• See all Adobe deals in the UK

Today's top Adobe discounts & deals in the US and Canada

In Canada? Click here

Today's top Adobe discounts & deals in the UK

Why I think this is a great deal

There's no denying that Adobe has set the industry-standard when it comes to creative software. There aren't many software houses whose products become everyday verbs the way Photoshop has.

Having extensively tested out pretty much the full suite of apps on offer, I know they rank as some of the best photo editors, best video editing software, and best PDF editors around. If you want pro-grade tools for design and content creation, there's not much that can beat Adobe's line-up.

However, recently, the company raised the price of its Creative Cloud Pro plan (formerly known as Creative Cloud All Apps) - which went down like a lead balloon with users. So, I welcome this current discount for students, teams, and individual users, particularly as minds are turning to back to school thoughts.

• Photoshop on Android (beta) drops for devices running Android 11 or later
• It's free for a limited time
• Creative Cloud subscriptions unlock Adobe Stock assets and generative edits

Following the release of Photoshop for iPhone earlier this year, the biggest photo-editing app has finally made it to Android in pro-grade form, complete with Photoshop's marquee features and generative capabilities.

Offering much of the same functionality as the iPhone app, the free beta version of Photoshop for Android has an intuitive interface designed specifically for phones, with core Photoshop tools such as layering, masking, and blending.

I'm yet to use the app, but I watched a demonstration of its capabilities presented by Adobe, and it looks super impressive, seemingly being one of if not the most fully equipped and powerful photo editors for Android phones.

You can import images from your camera roll, start from a blank canvas, utilize Adobe Stock assets, and take a photo with your phone to then edit.

As a regular Photoshop user I can't wait to try the app out on my Google Pixel phone, and here are three tools I'll start with…

1. Tap select

Simplifying Photoshop's subject and background selection tools on a mobile phone is no easy task, but what Adobe calls 'Tap select' appears to do the trick nicely.

During a demo, an Adobe professional walked us through an edit of a classic car photo, using Tap select to make image adjustments to just the car itself, and then to other subjects.

Tap select suggests various objects in an image that you might want to selectively edit, displaying thumbnails of these, and when you've made a selection it'll suggest a huge arsenal of Photoshop tools such as color adjustments and so forth.

Subject selection can be refined with Photoshop's Brush Tool to add / subtract from the selection when it has missed the mark.

And with these edits working within Photoshop's layering capabilities, changes can be tweaked at any point in the editing process.

Tap select is the kind of tool I can see myself using on almost every edit, and its implementation for Android phones looks well thought out.

2. Generative Firefly

Adobe has focused a lot of its energy recently into developing Firefly – the generative AI tools that sit within its leading apps such as Photoshop. Naturally, Photoshop for Android phones can tap into these tools too.

For example, Generative Fill can replace subjects and backgrounds to your liking, however fanciful your ideas are. Again, during the demo, we saw these tools put into practice – removing parked cars in the background and replacing surrounding trees for palm trees, with multiple generated options to choose between.

Naturally, there are limits to Firefly's capabilities, but the Android phone version appeared to be as powerful and efficient as the full version of Photoshop with the word prompt tasks it was assigned.

3. Tapping into Adobe Stock assets

Despite having a Creative Cloud subscription, I don't generally make use of the 'commercially safe' Adobe Stock assets at my disposal, whether that's images or textures or other assets. However, on the mobile version I can see myself having a proper play with these.

Let's say I want to add text to an image, for which there's a huge selection of fonts to choose from. I can then mask that text layer, modifying the lettering with just about any texture or image of my choice from hundreds of thousands of stock assets.

In the demo, we saw 'Aloha' text added to the classic car photo, taken in Hawaii, and then modified with an image of a hibiscus flower within the lettering.

I came away from the demo with the feeling that the scope of the edits I can make to photos from my phone is vast, and limited only by my imagination.

I'm really looking forward to having a play with Photoshop on my Android phone to get a proper feel for it.

You might also like

• I'm a Photoshop pro – here are 5 things I love about the new iPhone app and 3 things I don’t
• Best Adobe Photoshop alternative of 2025: Avoid Creative Cloud subscriptions with these top apps
• The 5 biggest new Photoshop, Firefly and Premiere Pro tools that were announced at Adobe Max London 2025

There's a big sale on Adobe software right now, with the creative software house offering 50% off its Creative Cloud Pro plan.

This deal is for the annual, billed monthly plan (sign up for a year and pay each month, like any contract). The plan couples all the top Adobe apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Acrobat with a host of extras like cloud storage, generative AI credits, and access to smaller tools like Adobe Fonts and Express.

I've been tracking the best Black Friday Adobe deals you can get (and there are plenty of them around), but these ones really stood out to me - particularly those found on Adobe's Amazon store, where you can purchase a year-long subscription upfront without worrying about monthly payments.

Today's top Adobe deal

• Deals for students, teachers, and business are also on Adobe's website via the same link above.

More Adobe deals

• See all savings on software at Adobe
• Check out all discounted Adobe software at Amazon

• Adobe introduces latest Firefly Image Model 4 & 4 Ultra
• Firefly Boards debuts, plus mobile app coming soon
• Adobe's new Content Authenticity app can verify creator's digital work

Adobe Max 2025 is currently being hosted in London, where the creative software giant has revealed the latest round of updates to its key apps, including Firefly, Photoshop and Premiere Pro.

As we expected, almost every improvement is powered by AI, yet Adobe is also keen to point out that these tools are designed to aid human creativity, not replace it. We'll see.

Adobe hopes to reenforce this sentiment with a new Content Authenticity app that should make it easier for creators to gain proper attribution for their digital work. It's a bit of a minefield when you start thinking about all of the permutations, but kudos to Adobe for being at the forefront for protecting creators in this ever evolving space.

There's a raft of new features and tools to cover, from a new collaborative moodboard app to smarter Photoshop color adjustments, and we've compiled the top five changes that you need to know about, below.

1. Firefly Image Model 4 & 4 Ultra is here, plus a mobile app is on the way

Firefly seemingly has enjoyed the bulk of Adobe's advances, with the latest generative AI model promising more lifelike image generation smarts and faster output.

The 'commercially safe' Firefly Model 4 is free to use for those with Adobe subscriptions and, as always with Firefly tools, is by extension available in Adobe's apps such as Photoshop, meaning these improved generative powers can enhance the editing experience.

Firefly Model 4 Ultra is a credit-based model designed for further enhancements of images created using Model 4.

Adobe also showcased the first commercially safe AI video model, now generally available through the Firefly web app, with a new text-to vector for creating fully editable vector-based artwork.

For example, users can select one of their images as the opening and end keyframe, and use a word prompt to generate a video effect to bring that image to life.

All the tools we were shown during Adobe Max 2025 are available in Adobe's apps, some of which are now in public beta. We were also told that a new Firefly mobile app is coming soon, though the launch date has yet to be confirmed.

2. The all-new Firefly Boards

During Adobe's Max 2025 presentation, we were also shown the impressive capabilities of an all-new Adobe tool; Firefly Boards.

Firefly Boards is an 'AI-first' surface designed for moodboarding, brainstorming and exploring creative concepts, ideal for collaborative projects.

Picture this; multiple generated images can be displayed side by side on a board, moved and grouped, with the possibility of moving those ideas and aesthetic styles into production using Adobe's other tools such as Photoshop, plus non-Adobe models such as OpenAI.

The scope for what is possible through Firefly in general, now made easier with the Boards app that can utilize multiple AI image generators for the same project, is vast. We're keen to take Boards for a spin.

3. Photoshop, refined with Firefly

Adobe Photoshop receives a number of refined tools that should speed up edits that could otherwise be a time sink.

Adobe says 'Select Details' makes it faster and more intuitive to select things like hair, facial features and clothing; 'Adjust Colors' simplifies the process of adjusting color hue, saturation and lightness in images for seamless, instant color adjustments; while a reimagined Actions panel (beta) delivers smarter workflow suggestions, based on the user's unique language.

Again, during a demo, the speed and accuracy of certain tools was clear to see. The remove background feature was able to isolate a fish in a net with remarkable precision, removing the ocean backdrop while keeping every strand of the net.

Overall, the majority of Photoshop improvements are realized because of the improved generative powers of the latest Firefly image model, which can be directly accessed through Photoshop.

4. Content Credentials is here via a free app

As Adobe further utilizes AI tools in its creative apps, authenticity is an increasing concern for photographers and viewers alike. That's why the ability to verify images is all the more vital, and why this next Adobe announcement is most welcome.

Adobe Content Credentials – an industry-recognized image verification standard, adds a digital signature to images to verify ownership and authenticity – and is now available in a free Adobe Content Authenticity app, launched in public beta.

Through the app, creators can attach info about themselves; their LinkedIn and social media accounts, plus image authenticity, including date, time, place and edits of said image. An invisible watermark is added to an image, and the info is easily seen with a new Chrome browser extension installed.

Furthermore, through the app, creators will be able to attach their preferences for Adobe's use of their content, including Generative AI Training and Usage Preference. This should put the control back with creators, although this is also a bit of a minefield – other generative AI models do not currently adhere to the same practices.

5. Adobe rolls out Premiere Pro's Generative Extend

The upgrades to Premiere Pro are more restrained, with the Firefly-powered Generative Extend now generally available being the headline announcement. Not only is the powerful tool now available to all users, but it also now supports 4K and vertical video.

Elsewhere, 'Media Intelligence' helps editors find relevant clips in seconds from vast amounts of footage, plus Caption Translation can recognize captions in up to 27 languages.

These tools are powered by, you guessed it: Adobe Firefly.

You might also like

• Adobe users are furious about the company's terms of service change to help it train AI
• What is Firefly: everything you need to know about Adobe’s safe AI image generator
• Adobe Photoshop CC (2024) review: the best photo editor gets even better

Welcome to our liveblog for Adobe Max London 2025. The 'creativity conference', as Adobe calls it, is where top designers and photographers show us how they're using the company's latest tools. But it's also where Adobe reveals the new features it's bringing to the likes of Photoshop, Firefly, Lightroom and more – and that's what we've rounded up in this live report direct from the show.

The Adobe Max London 2025 keynote kicked off at 5am ET / 10am BST / 7pm ACT. You can re-watch the livestream on Adobe's website and also see demos from the show floor on the Adobe Live YouTube channel. But we're also at the show in London and will be bringing you all of the news and our first impressions direct from the source.

Given Adobe has been racing to add AI features to its apps to compete with the likes of ChatGPT, Midjourney and others, that was understandably a big theme of the London edition of Adobe Max – which is a forerunner of the main Max show in LA that kicks off on October 28.

Here were all of the biggest announcements from Adobe Max London 2025...

The latest news

• Adobe has announced the new Firefly Boards in public beta
• New AI tool for moodboarding lets you use non-Adobe AI models
• Firefly has also been updated with the new Image Model 4

Welcome to Adobe Max London 2025

Good morning from London, where it's a classic grey April start. We're outside the Adobe Max London 2025 venue in Greenwich where there'll be a bit more color in the keynote that kicks off in about 15 minutes.

It's going to be fascinating to see how Adobe bakes more AI-powered tools into apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro and Firefly, without incurring the wrath of traditional fans who feel their skills are being sidelined by some of these new tricks.

So if, like me, you're a longtime Creative Cloud user, it's going to be essential viewing...

We're almost ready for kick off

We've taken our spot in the Adobe Max London 2025 venue. As predicted, it's looking a bit more colorful in here than the grey London skies outside.

You can watch the keynote live on the Adobe Max London website,but we'll be bringing you all of the news and our early reactions here – starting in just a few minutes...

And we're off

Adobe's David Wadhwani (President, Digital Media Business) is now on stage talking about the first Max event in London last year – and the early days of Photoshop.

Interestingly, he's talking about the early worries that "digital editing would kill creativity", before Photoshop became mainstream. Definite parallels with AI here...

Jumping forward to Firefly

We're now talking Adobe Firefly, which is evolving fast – Adobe is calling it the "all-in-one app for ideation" with generative AI.

Adobe has just announced a new Firefly Image Model 4, which seems to be particularly focused on "greater photo realism".

A demo is showing some impressive, hyper-realistic portrait results, with options to tweak the lighting and more. Some photographers may not be happy with how easy this is becoming, but it looks handy for planning shoots.

Firefly's video powers are evolving

Adobe's Kelly Hurlburt is showing off Firefly's text-to-video powers now – you can start with text or your own sample image.

It's been trained on Adobe Stock, so is commercially viable in theory. Oh, and Adobe has just mentioned that Firefly is coming to iOS and Android, so to keep an eye out for that "in the next few months".

Firefly Boards is a new feature

We're now getting out first look at Firefly Boards, which is out now in public beta.

It's basically an AI-powered moodboarding tool, where you add some images for inspiration then hit 'generate' to see some AI images in a film strip.

A remix feature lets you merge images together and then get a suggested prompt, if you're not sure what to type. It's collaborative too, so co-workers can chuck their ideas onto the same board. Very cool.

You can use non-Adobe AI models too

Interestingly, in Firefly Boards you can also use non-Adobe models, like Google Imagen. These AI images can then sit alongside the ones you've generated with Firefly.

That will definitely broaden its appeal a lot. On the other hand, it also slightly dilutes Adobe's approach to strictly using generative AI that's been trained on Stock images with a known origin.

Adobe addresses AI concerns

Adobe's David Wadhwani is back on stage now to calm some of the recent concerns that have understandably surfaced about AI tools.

He's reiterating that Firefly models are "commercially safe", though this obviously doesn't include the non-Adobe models you can use in the new Firefly Boards.

Adobe has also again promised that "your content will not be used to train generative AI". That includes images and videos generated by Adobe's models and also third-party ones in Firefly Boards.

That won't calm everyone's concerns about AI tools, but it makes sense for Adobe to repeat it as a point-of-difference from its rivals.

We're talking new Photoshop features now

Adobe's Paul Trani (Creative Cloud Evangelist, what a job title that is) is on stage now showing some new tools for Photoshop.

Naturally, some of these are Firefly-powered, including 'Composition Reference' in text-to-image, which lets you use a reference image to generate new assets. You can also generate videos too, which isn't something Photoshop is traditionally known for.

The new 'Adjust colors' also looks a handy way to tweak hue, saturation and more, and I'm personally quite excited about the improved selection tools, which automatically pick out specific details like a person's hair.

But the biggest new addition for Photoshop newbies is probably the updated 'Actions panel' (now in beta). You can use natural language like 'increase saturation' and 'brighten the image' to quickly make edits.

Illustrator is next, homies!

It's Illustrator's turn for the spotlight now, with Michael Fugoso (Senior Design Evangelist) – the London audience doesn't know quite what to do with his impressive enthusiasm and 'homies' call-outs.

The headlines are a speed boost (it's apparently now up to five times faster, presumably depending on your machine) and, naturally, some new Firefly-powered tools like 'Text to Pattern' and, helpfully, generative expand (in beta from today).

Because you can never have enough fonts, there's also apparently 1,500 new fonts in Illustrator. That'll keep your designer friends happy.

Premiere Pro gets some useful upgrades

AI is supposed to be saving us from organizational drudgery, so it's good to see Adobe highlighting some of the new workflow benefits in Premiere Pro.

Kelly Weldon (Senior Experience Designer) is showing the app's improved search experience in the app, which lets you type in specifics like "brown hat" to quickly find clips.

But there are naturally some generative AI tricks, too. 'Generative Extend' is now available in 4K, letting you extend a scene in both horizontal and vertical video – very handy, particularly for fleshing out b-roll.

Captions have also been given a boost, with the most useful trick being Caption Translation – it instantly creates captions in 25 languages.

Even better, you can use it to automatically translate voiceovers – that takes a bit longer to generate, but will be a big boost for YouTube channels with multi-national audiences.

A fresh look at Photoshop on iPhone

It's now time for a run-through of Photoshop on iPhone, which landed last month – Adobe says an Android version will arrive "early this Summer".

There doesn't appear to be anything new here, which isn't surprising as the app's only about a month old.

The main theme is the desktop-level tools like generative expand and adjustment layers – although you can read our first impressions of the app for our thoughts on what it's still missing.

'Created without generative AI'

This is interesting – Adobe's free graphics editor Fresco now has a new “created without generative AI" tag, which you can include in the image’s Content Credentials to help protect your rights (in theory). That label could become increasingly important, and popular, and in the years ahead.

Lightroom masks get better

One of the most popular new tricks on smartphones is removing distractions from your images – see 'Clean Up' in Apple Intelligence on iPhones and Samsung's impressive Galaxy AI (which we recently pitted against each other).

If you don't have one of those latest smartphones, Lightroom on mobile can also do something similar with 'generative remove' – that isn't new, but from the demos it looks like Adobe has given it a Firefly-powered boost.

But the new feature I'm most looking forward to is 'Select Landscape' in desktop Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. It goes beyond 'Select Sky' to automatically create masks for different parts of your landscape scene for local edits – I can see that being a big time-saver.

A new tool to stop AI stealing your work

This will be one of the biggest headlines from Max London 2025 – Adobe has launched a free Content Authenticity web app in public beta, which has a few tricks to help protect your creative works.

The app can apply invisible metadata, baked into the pixels so it works even with screenshotting, to any work regardless of which tool or app you've used to make it. You can add all kinds of attribution data, including your websites or social accounts, and can prove your identity using LinkedIn verification. It can also describe how an image has been altered (or not).

But perhaps the most interesting feature is a check box that says “I request that generative AI models not use my content". Of course, that only works if AI companies respect those requests when training models, which remains to be seen – but it's another step in the right direction.

A 'creative civil war'

The YouTuber Brandon Baum is on stage now talking (at some considerable length) about what he's calling the "creative civil war" of AI.

The diatribe is dragging on a bit and he may love James Cameron a bit too much, but there are some fair historical parallels – like Tron once being disqualified from the 'best special effects' Oscars because using computers was considered 'cheating', and Netflix once being disqualified from the Oscars.

You wouldn't expect anything less than a passionate defense of AI tools at an Adobe conference, and it probably won't go down well with what he calls creative "traditionalists". But AI is indeed all about tools – and Adobe clearly wants to make sure the likes of OpenAI doesn't steal its lunch.

That's a wrap

That's it for the Adobe Max London 2025 keynote – which contained enough enthusiasm about generative AI to power North Greenwich for a year or so. If you missed the news, we've rounded it all up in our guide to the 5 biggest new tools for Photoshop, Firefly, Premiere Pro and more.

The standout stories for me were Firefly Boards (looking forward to giving that a spin for brainstorming soon), the new Content Authenticity Web app (another small step towards protecting the work of creatives) and, as a Lightroom user, that app's new 'Select Landscape' masks.

We'll be getting involved in the demos now and bringing you some of our early impressions, but that's all from Max London 2025 for now – thanks for tuning in.

One more thing – here's what Firefly 4 can do

Aside from the new Firefly Boards, one of the biggest pieces of news from this year's Max London was the arrival of Firefly Image Model 4 – an updated generative AI tool that's capable of some impressively realistic photo generation.

You can see some examples below, along with the prompts that were used to create them. Adobe was naturally keen to reiterate at Max that its Firefly models are "commercially safe", due to being trained on Adobe Stock images.

So while some photographers might be fretting at the quality of these results, it's good to see that artists are at least being compensated in some form for the AI training – although exactly how much isn't clear.

When you think of Asus’ Vivobook range, cheap laptops probably spring to mind. So you may wonder what’s going on here: a Vivobook costing £2,500? Surely that’s more Asus ROG gaming laptop territory? Dig into the specs and it sounds like a gaming machine, too, with a turbo-fueled Core i9 matched with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics.

Here, though, Asus has creators in its sights rather than gamers. It comes loaded with Nvidia’s Studio drivers, a Pantone-validated OLED screen and even a clever dial built into the touchpad. But let’s start with the fundamentals: power.

Top guns, part one

It’s easy to get blasé about such things, but I still find it remarkable to say that there are 24 cores inside this laptop. That’s because Asus has opted for a Core i9-13980HX processor, which is as boy racer as it sounds. The 13980 indicates that it’s right at the top end of Intel’s family, a fact reinforced by the H suffix (which stands for high performance). The X is the overclocking cherry on top.

All this would be for naught if Asus had skimped on cooling, but a double fan and meaty heatsinks mean that the CPU should keep running at its peak speeds – 5.6GHz for the eight performance P-cores – even under duress. No wonder it can gobble up to 105W.

It’s also why this laptop returned such stonking speeds in our CPU-torture tests. A result of 16,581 in Geekbench 6.1 multicore is as fast as we’ve seen from a laptop, making me nervous that our new graphs should have a higher peak than 20,000. This supreme speed was repeated in Cinebench R23’s multicore section, where it scorched its way to 25,660.

Top guns, part two

The RTX 4070 doesn’t sit at the top of Nvidia’s mobile range, but it’s still a potent chip. Its main weapons are the 4,608 CUDA cores, which sounds like a huge number when compared to the RTX 4060 (3,072) but surprisingly few next to the 7,424 of the RTX 4080 and 9,728 of the RTX 4090 (to be clear, these numbers refer to the laptop versions of Nvidia’s chips).

How many CUDA cores you have matters in professional applications such as 3ds Max, Catia and Maya – while there isn’t a linear relationship, it’s a great indicator of how long tasks will take – so there are reasons to opt for an RTX 4080 or 4090. Especially as those products come with far superior memory setups: the RTX 4070 includes 8GB of GDDR6 RAM with a 128-bit interface width, but switch to the 4080 and you get 12GB/192-bit, while a 4090 offers 16GB/256-bit. That’s a huge jump.

However, the RTX 4070 has power efficiency in its favor, getting by on up to 115W (35W minimum) compared to 150W for its siblings. It’s also the reason why this laptop costs £2,500 rather than £3,000 or £3,500.

The good news is that with a Core i9 and 32GB of RAM as the backing cast, the RTX 4070 here is given every chance to excel. I first saw this in our suite of gaming tests. Taking the 1080p High results first, the Vivobook returned 225fps in F1 2022, 93fps in Metro Exodus Enhanced, 183fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and 86fps in Dirt 5.

Switching to the panel’s native resolution of 3,200 x 2,000, those results dropped to 116fps (F1 2022), 49fps (Metro), 95fps (Tomb Raider) and 49fps (Dirt 5). In our toughest test, Metro Exodus Enhanced at Extreme settings, the Vivobook returned 48fps at 1080p and 25fps at native resolution. In other words, its only unplayable frame rates came in that final, brutal test.

Creative spin

All those results were with Nvidia’s Studio drivers, as supplied; if you know you’ll be using this machine only for gaming then switch to the Game Ready drivers for the latest optimizations. Asus clearly expects people to use this laptop for creativity, however, so I also put it through its paces in Specviewperf R20.

Here, it performed in line with expectations for an RTX 4070 laptop. Highlights included 91 in the 3ds Max viewset, 335 in Maya and 238 in SolidWorks; to put those scores in perspective, the Lenovo P620 Tower scored 147, 439 and 278 respectively. Those results are significantly higher, but so they should be for a desktop workstation with a Threadripper Pro 5945WX and Nvidia’s RTX A4000 graphics.

Asus loves to add little extras to its touchpads, and here that’s a DialPad. This is a dotted circle, with an inch diameter, that sits at the top left of the touchpad, but you need to activate it: press and hold the tiny symbol at the top right of the pad, then swipe in. It’s a clunky mechanism, but this stops you accidentally switching the dial on and off.

Once active, a white circle within the dotted lines lights up. Press it, and the Asus dial overlay appears on-screen, with different options depending on context. In Photoshop, for instance, it offers the chance to cycle through brush sizes, switch between documents, zoom in and out of layers and quickly undo changes. It’s no substitute for a physical dial, but creatives with dexterous fingers may grow fond of it.

Getting physical

I ended up leaving the dial on most of the time, as the touchpad is large enough (130 x 83mm) that it didn’t interfere with navigation. With a glass coating it ticks the usual smooth and responsive boxes, although I occasionally found myself reaching for the F6 key to deactivate the whole thing as palm rejection didn’t always work.

Nor will those people who type for a living love this keyboard, which offers surprisingly little travel for a laptop that measures 21mm thick. The keys themselves offer little “feel”, with a lifeless action, but once you move past this and the single-height Enter key (oddly jammed next to the hash key and finished in the same dark grey) the keyboard fades into the inoffensive background.

And there are a couple of positives. All the keys are a generous size and have a sensible gap between them, helping to minimize typos, the spacebar is huge and, while the cursor keys are shortened, they’re also separated from the main buttons. Plus, a dedicated number pad makes sense in a laptop this width.

Super size

This machine is no ultraportable.

Whichever dimension you measure, it’s chunky. A 356 x 249mm footprint means you’ll need a good-sized rucksack to carry it with you, and while Asus officially states the weight as 1.9kg that’s for the more basic spec: I weighed it at 2.1kg. The 21mm thickness refers to the front of the chassis; once you factor in the orange “foot” – a U-shape strip that lifts the Vivobook from a surface to aid airflow – it’s closer to 2.5mm.

I like the brash orange color (echoed in the Esc key) as it lifts what is otherwise quite a boring-looking design. Asus also makes this Vivobook in black, but the silver version I tested is unlikely to gain any lustful glances from passersby. Its only other flash of styling is a raised area on the lid – almost like a melded-on business card – that reveals the laptop’s name.

Rather than style, then, this laptop is designed for practicality. Head to the left and you’ll find a gigabit Ethernet port, full-size SD card reader, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbits/sec) port and the power connector. Over on the right, a 3.5mm jack and HDMI 2.1 output are kept company by two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports and a second USB-A port. That’s a strong connectivity offering, backed up by Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

Power down

To get the most out of this laptop, though, you’ll need to keep it plugged in. I found that battery life varied considerably during my tests, but set your expectations at around four hours – hardly a full working day. And in PCMark’s Gaming test, which pushes the graphics chip in the same way creative graphics tasks will, it lasted only 1hr 41mins.

You can trickle-charge it using the Thunderbolt ports, but I can’t imagine travelling without the 540g power supply. Considering its 240W output, it’s surprisingly compact, and it takes the laptop from empty to 80% in an hour, reaching full capacity in less than two hours.

You’ll probably keep it plugged in much of the time, in which case I recommend you fully investigate the MyAsus app. From here you can switch on the battery care mode, adjust the fan profile (we tested with Performance mode, and the fans get noisy when you’re pushing this machine), and play around with “TaskFirst”, which allows you to set network connectivity priorities – to game streaming, say, or communication apps.

There’s also a bunch of options for the microphone, and unlike many “AI optimizations” I’ve tried, this is worth using. There’s nothing wrong with the plain mode, but the “single presenter conference call” option will bring your voice to the fore. Thanks to the excellent 1080p webcam, which supports Windows Hello and includes a fiddly but effective privacy shutter, you’ll look great on calls, too.

Entertain me

I have mixed feelings about the speakers, but that’s mainly due to the high expectations set elsewhere. If you listen to music in isolation on the Vivobook then you’ll be impressed by its volume and how clearly instruments and voices emerge – the intricate instrumentation of Björk is normally too much for laptops, but the Vivobook handles the mix of strings and vocals well. Where it falls down is bass, pushing the trebles and mids too much to the fore, but I’m being picky.

Certainly you’ll love watching films on this laptop thanks to its sheer volume (with no sign of distortion), and it helps that Asus includes a top-quality OLED panel. It barely needs saying, but a 3,200 x 2,000 resolution ensures sharp edges on text, and black absolutely punches through to make dark scenes in films look fantastic.

It has DisplayHDR 600 Black certification, confirming that it will hit 600cd/m² in HDR content, while its peak of 389cd/m² in SDR mode means it’s easy to read in every condition. Except, as it turns out, bright sunshine, where the screen’s reflectivity became obvious.

Inside, though, it’s superb. You can choose from a variety of settings in the MyAsus app, but for testing I stuck to the standard mode and then switched between the preset gamuts: Native, sRGB, DCI-P3 and Display P3. Native makes most sense if you want to enjoy the widest color range (it stretches 19% beyond even the DCI-P3 gamut), but sRGB and DCI-P3 locked the screen down to those gamuts almost perfectly.

Color accuracy is strong – its average Delta-E never went above 0.72, with anything under one considered excellent – and anyone who values true whites will be pleased by a natural color temperature of 6479K, only 21K off the target 6500K.

Final thoughts

If you’re a demanding user, then, this is almost a perfect laptop. It even has the opportunity to upgrade over time: the 32GB of memory comes supplies as two 16GB SODIMMs, rather than being embedded, and if you’re a nimble hand with a Phillips screwdriver you can whip the bottom off this chassis within a minute.

This will reveal the fact that the 1TB M.2 2280 SSD is also replaceable, and note this isn’t the speediest Gen 4 drive around: 4,061MB/sec reads and 2,971MB/sec writes are strong but not exceptional. I would be tempted to replace it with a faster 2TB drive at some future date; sadly there isn’t a second M.2 slot, despite the amount of space available on the board.

Then again, we need to remember that this isn’t a £3,000+ mobile workstation. While hardly cheap at £2,500, it rewards you with all the power and quality that most creative professionals need. In terms of price, that’s certainly competitive when placed next to an equivalent 16in MacBook Pro. And yes, that laptop offers far superior battery life, minimal fan noise and better performance away from the mains, but it lacks the graphical grunt of Nvidia’s RTX chip along with easy upgrades.

Whether the Vivobook Pro is right for you, then, depends entirely on what you intend to use it for. All I can tell you is that Asus extracts the most from its components, while the supporting cast – particularly the screen – come from the top drawer in terms of quality.

We've also rated the best video-editing software.

When putting together graphic designs or editing photos, opaque backgrounds on images can be a hindrance - so knowing how to make the background transparent in Photoshop is a useful trick. Whether it's a plain white background, or you’ve been caught out with some fake grey and white squares, we’ll be covering all bases in this step-by-step guide.

Sometimes Adobe Photoshop can be a finicky software to get the hang of, so we’ve been sure to boil this down to basics so even those who are just starting out with the software can learn how to make an image background transparent in Photoshop.

Tools and requirements

• PC or Laptop
• Adobe Photoshop

Steps for how to make the background transparent in Photoshop

• Upload your image into Photoshop and then click Window and then check Layers if it doesn’t already have a tick next to it
• Rasterize the layer if required
• Open the properties panel, select Quick Actions, and then hit Remove Background
• Hide the background layer
• Save the image as a PNG to retain the transparency

Step by step guide on how to make the background transparent in Photoshop

Final thoughts on downloading TikTok videos without a watermark

And there you have it! These steps should work no matter what is going on in the background of your image, simple or complicated. Knowing how to make the background transparent in Photoshop is a handy trick for those who are editing photos, creating custom images, or even just putting together a meme for the work chat (we've all been there).

You might also like

• TikTok finally adds group chat functionality with new safety barriers for teens
• What is Bluesky? The new social media network explained
• TikTok is back on the App Store and Google Play Store – here’s what could happen next

Photoshop is in trouble. Attacked on all sides by the best photo editing apps with powerful image editing features – Canva and Instagram chief among them – the pressure has been on to deliver a Photoshop mobile app deserving of the name.

Lest we forget, Photoshop celebrated its 35th birthday earlier this year, making it one of a very small number of brands to have simultaneously become an enduring household name even as the tectonic plates of content production have shifted dramatically beneath it.

And so, finally, the new Photoshop for iPhone is here. A free app – albeit one improved by the presence of a paid-for Creative Cloud account), Adobe makes some big claims. It delivers Photoshop’s core imaging and design tools as well as some surprisingly powerful pro features, layer masking and blending among them, as well as the generative AI features that are making a splash on the desktop version.

So, as someone who opens Photoshop on a near-daily basis for commercial photography, here’s how the new Photoshop for iPhone tickles my fancy after hours of tinkering and prodding...

Photoshop for iPhone: The likes

1. It's easy to learn

I’ll never admit it, but I don’t know everything about Photoshop. And in an app that can’t offer the usual tooltips when you hover over an unfamiliar icon, Photoshop for iPhone has am slight learning curve, even if you understand the core terminology and principles.

Thank goodness, then, for the dozen or so video tutorials you can access when you first open the app. These take the form of talking-head videos describing various actions, such as working with layers, masks and selections, as well as videos provided by creators as they describe their process to building various collages and concepts.

Of these, the latter are particularly useful as they come with the source files, allowing you to see how a final image comes to be – useful if you don’t a file of your own to hand.

2. All the core features are there

Blimey. A quick feel around Photoshop for iPhone’s clean-looking interface reveals a really full set of tools. There are no fire-and-forget filters here – if you want to apply a split-tone look to an image, you’re going to have to get up to your elbows in hue and saturation sliders.

That’s a book of two chapters, of course – on the one hand it takes longer, and more practice, to get the effect you want. On the other, all those years I’ve spent laboriously learning how to do things in Photoshop translate like-to-like.

3. It can handle some surprisingly big files and tasks

Although Adobe is careful not to claim that Photoshop for iPhone has brought over every tool in the Photoshop chest, the app makes it clear – this is for ambitious types.

So, obviously, I fired a 1GB file over AirDrop to try and bring the whole thing to its knees. Just to make sure it didn’t work, and thus give me something to complain about, the file was a high-res, TIFF-format image in the ProPhoto colorspace. To my immense surprise, the file promptly loaded and looked… fine.

As we’ll come to in a bit, not everything makes the journey betwixt Photoshop desktop and Photoshop for iPhone, but if you’ve got big images, captured on modern cameras, you’ll be able to bring work-in-progress onto your iPhone to work on them.

And, not only is it compatible with layers – finally – it’s also compatible with layer groups, which means you can work up some surprisingly complex image constructions using the same device you use to watch TikToks on the toilet.

4. It's got Adobe Camera Raw

This is another big one – import a raw file into the iPhone for Photoshop app and you’ll be greeted with a different-looking-but-still-all-there version of Adobe Camera Raw, allowing you to prepare a file for further editing via a surprisingly full set of options.

Highlights, shadows, whites and blacks all get their own sliders, as does color balance, complete with its own white balance picker. Texture, clarity, dehaze and vignette control are all there, as is a one-tap lens corrections button.

Once you’re finished, you can finish importing your image either as a standard layer or, get this, as a smart object, letting you step back into ACR if you want to fine tune things further.

5. Generative fill has made it, which is… good?

Getting images share-ready just got faster, thanks to Adobe’s much-vaunted Generative AI features that also make an appearance in the new Photoshop app.

Lean on Photoshop for iPhone’s automated features and you’re in for an impressive experience – the app was uncannily good at automatically detecting and selecting foregrounds, backgrounds, people and skies. And with the annoying legwork of making selections turned into a one-tap process, removing and replacing objects from your work is equally quick.

I found generative AI – replacing skies and such, removing the odd person – to work as well on iPhone as it does on the desktop – which is to say, impressive, with occasionally hilarious outtakes.

Photoshop for iPhone: the dislikes

1. A few obvious tools are missing

It strikes me as strange that an app which prides itself on being the fullest-fledged version of Photoshop that Adobe could manage is missing a few tools which, least for this snapper, are part of my daily arsenal.

For example, I think it’s impressive that Photoshop for iPhone can open a multi-layered, 1GB TIFF file with a load of adjustment layers, but less impressive that when some of those adjustment layers are levels adjustments, there’s no way of editing them. It seems strange – curves has made it, so why not levels?

And although Photoshop for iPhone does a generally decent job of automatically selecting objects, things are a bit trickier if you want to make your selections freehand, as there’s no paths tool. Not only no paths tool, but if an image has paths already in it, there’s no way of accessing them within the app.

You could make the very sensible argument that creating a spot-on bezier curve is hard enough with a mouse or trackpad, of course, and that trying to perfect a bendy path with a fingertip would be a surefire track to PTSD, but it would be nice as an inclusion.

While I'm here, Photoshop’s handy collection of filters are also missing, so if you were looking for a chance to learn, for example, frequency separation, you’ll need to stick with your desktop.

2. It's free, but only just

Real talk: getting an app with the power that Photoshop for iPhone has and then grousing that it costs money is like getting breakfast cooked for you by a Michelin starred chef and then complaining about the language – this is an incredibly powerful app that produces near-desktop results from a device that fits in your pocket.

If you’re a high-end content creator, or want to tip-tap away at an image before transferring it seamlessly to your desktop, Photoshop for iPhone just set a new standard.

Still, if you want the full version – which includes omissions from the free version including generative fill (the free version gives you 10 free generative credits, the paid-for one 100), object select, the magic wand tool and a few others, you’ll need to stump up $69.99 / £69.99 a year.

Don’t sniff – that’s cheaper than Canva, and while Canva is undoubtedly the better tool for whizzing up social media templates, for photographers there’s no contest. And bear in mind – if you already have a Creative Cloud subscription, this is included for free.

3. It's not on Android yet

I’ll be honest, I don’t actually care about this one as I'm on iPhone, but if you’re in the 70% of the smartphone market that uses Android, you might.

While it’s (probably) more efficient to develop an app for Apple’s closed system of app stores and hardware, there will be plenty of content creators out there screaming for a decent image editor, and Adobe hasn’t done them a favor here.

Still, Adobe has promised that an Android version is coming "later this year", so Android fans shouldn't have to wait too much longer for it.

You might also like...

• Photoshop gets its most powerful free iPhone app so far – with a mix of classic tools and Firefly AI
• Photoshop gets the next big thing in AI photography – a tool that makes your unwanted reflections vanish
• Adobe Photoshop CC (2024) review: the best photo editor gets even better

• Adobe has launched a powerful new Photoshop app for iPhones
• The free app also has a paid tier that unlocks tools like Content-Aware Fill
• An Android version is coming "later this year"

Adobe is no stranger to launching Photoshop apps, but it has just launched its most powerful one so far for iPhones – and it's the closest thing we've seen to the desktop experience on smartphones.

The new Photoshop iPhone app, which you can download today for free (with paid upgrades), combines desktop-style tools like layers and masking with Firefly AI image generation. An Android version of the app is coming "later this year".

While Adobe Express will continue to be the company's main Canva rival on smartphones, there is some crossover with the new Photoshop app. Rather than replacing the desktop app, it's been designed to help turn your images into podcast cover art, personalized posters or whatever else you need to look like a creative wizard on social media.

In this sense, the new Photoshop app takes the baton from recently-retired apps like Photoshop Fix and Photoshop Mix, alongside the current Photoshop Express. But it does also go a bit further than those apps, offering some of the advanced tools that are the hallmark of the full-fat desktop app for free.

Alongside layers and masks, the free version offers the Spot Healing Brush, a Tap Select tool to edit specific parts of an image, and lets you dabble with Adobe Firefly tricks like Generative Fill and Generative Expand. If you don't want to use your own photos, you can also start with the free Adobe Stock assets instead.

If those tools aren't enough for you – as Adobe no doubt hopes – then the new Photoshop Mobile and Web Plan ($7.99 p/month, or $69.99 annually) will unlock more powerful tricks, plus access to the browser-based version of the app. We don't yet have international pricing for that plan, but it converts to around £7 / £13 per month or £55 / AU$110 annually.

With that paid plan, you get handy tools like Magic Wand, Object Select and the classic Clone Stamp (which was in the very first version of Photoshop). You'll also unlock extra Firefly tools like 'Generate Similar' to make is super-easy to whip up some fun visuals.

If you already subscribe to Photoshop with Creative Cloud, you'll now get access to this new mobile Photoshop app (alongside Photoshop on iPad and Photoshop on the web). We're looking forward to taking it for a spin soon.

Analysis: Photoshop's biggest smartphone push, but is it too late?

Photoshop recently celebrated its 35th birthday – and with its competition hotter than ever, the influential app is at something of a crossroads.

Adobe launched Photoshop for iPad way back in 2019, so it's about time we got a more powerful smartphone app. But its appeal will depend very much on what you're looking to do.

Rather than trying to cram the full version of Photoshop into a smartphone app, Adobe has created a powerful free alternative to the likes of Snapseed and Pixelmator. Naturally, it's also left out just enough tools to push you towards a (reasonably affordable) subscription.

From our brief first look, it looks like Adobe has successfully translated some of Photoshop's traditional complexity – built around 'layers' for a non-destructive editing process – into a more intuitive, touch-based experience for smartphones. Given the tools on offer, the discounted annual plan could in particular offer decent value.

On the other hand, there's a chance that the new Photoshop app could fall between two stools. I argued a few years ago that Google's AI editing tricks were making Photoshop irrelevant for most people, and since then the best photo editing apps have made Adobe's jumbled approach to offering a mobile Photoshop look like a mistake.

The increasingly ambitious graphic design king Canva snapped up Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher last year in a clear shot at Adobe. And with Apple also recently buying the popular Pixelmator photo editing app, the competition in the AI-powered image editing space is hot.

This competition is good news for us, as it's forced Adobe to create the closest thing so far to a desktop-level Photoshop for our iPhones (and soon, our Android phones). Adobe no doubt also wants to get more people using its Firefly AI image generation, which it brands "commercially safe" because it was apparently trained on licensed content.

Whether that's successful remains to be seen, but for now we're looking forward to spending more time with the new Photoshop app to see how it compares to the best photo editors for smartphones.

You might also like

• This AI art app is so good I'm ready to cancel my Photoshop subscription
• Adobe Photoshop CC (2024) review: the best photo editor gets even better
• Photoshop gets the next big thing in AI photography – a tool that makes your unwanted reflections vanish

Adobe continues its deals with 40% off Creative Cloud All Apps for individual users. That means from now until March 3, you subscribe for just $35.99 a month for the whole year.

Usually, you can pick up Creative Cloud All Apps for Individuals for $59.99 on the annual paid monthly plan - which effectively works like a phone contract, where you sign up for the whole year and pay a monthly charge. This package bundles up over twenty of Adobe’s top apps, including Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.

Not in the US? Right now, Adobe is also offering 50% off Creative Cloud All Apps for the first three months across Canada (click here) and the UK (click here).

• In Canada? Save 50% for the first three months right here.

• In the UK? Check out the deal below for 50% off.

Why I think this is a great deal

Adobe software has long taken the top spot for the likes of best photo editor, best video editing software, and best PDF editor, where in my experience it sets the industry-standard thanks to a whole host of professional-level tools and exciting new features, such as generative AI.

If you use three or more Adobe apps for work (or play), the Creative Cloud All Apps bundle will always work out cheaper than buying individual subscriptions. That’s true at full price, and even more true with 40% off. For comparison, a single subscription to Photoshop typically costs $9.99 a month alone.

OK, it’s not quite as cheap as when I saw a similar deal over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where it was about five bucks cheaper, but still represents a significant saving. If you’re constantly using a lot of Adobe tools as part of your workflow, or plan to over 2025, this deal is worth a look. The 40% discount is also available when paying upfront for the whole year, cutting the $659.88 price-tag down to $395.93 for your first year.

Adobe has cut the cost of its Creative Cloud All Apps plan for students and teachers by 90% - but you'll need to hurry, as this deal ends on February 27.

The plan typically carries a monthly subscription cost of £28.99, currently down to £16.24 a month. But on top of the initial 70% discount, Adobe has added a further 20% discount to entice creatives across academia. That's a lot of numbers just to say that right now, you can grab the full package of 20+ apps for just £12.98 a month for the first year.

Even if you're not a student, you can still save, with the company knocking 50% off Creative Cloud All Apps for Individuals for the first three months.

Why I think this is a great deal

Whatever deal you choose, this is a massive saving for students and individuals - and they're both on par with the discounts I saw during Black Friday last year.

I generally recommend the Creative Cloud All Apps subscription if you're going to use three or more Adobe products - particularly the big-name apps like Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere Pro, where individual monthly subscriptions can run to around £20 anyway.

So, this is an excellent deal considering the All Apps plan features some of the best photo editors, best video editing software, and best PDF editors, we've tested here at TechRadar Pro. Through these reviews, we found each app to be incredibly powerful, full of professional-grade tools, features, and artificial intelligence that absolutely sets the gold-standard for creative software.

Adobe has slashed the price of its Creative Cloud All Apps package for students and teachers by a massive 70%.

From now until February 17, you can subscribe to the All Apps plan for just $15.99 a month for your first year.

In the UK? You can also save on the CC All Apps plan, which is now £12.98 a month, by clicking here (offer ends February 27). Not a student? Then you can still save 50% for your first three months when you click here.

Creative Cloud All Apps packs all of Adobe’s best software and tools into one plan, from Photoshop and Lightroom to Premiere Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, and more. I generally recommend this package if you use three or more Adobe apps, as it offers a significant discount compared to individual subscriptions. Now, with a 70% saving for students, it’s even better.

Why I think this is a great deal

Having extensively tested and reviewed the full suite, it’s no secret that I love what Adobe does in the creative software space.

Whether you’re working with images, video, document management, or graphic design work, the company’s apps have long topped my round up of the best photo editors, best video editing software, best PDF editors, and more.

This is thanks to a whole host of pro-grade features, including some deeply impressive generative AI, that effectively set - and continues to set - the industry standard for content creators and professionals.

The last time I saw this Adobe deal was during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where prices were also discounted by 70% for students and teachers, while individual subscribers saved 50% for three months. If you don't want to wait until this November, now's as good a time as any to save on the Adobe K12 deal.

This year’s update to Asus’ Vivobook Pro 15 makes one thing obvious: the days when you had to pay over £2,000 for a powerful mobile workstation are gone. Packed inside this 1.8kg monster you’ll find Intel’s top-end Core Ultra 9 185H processor and GeForce RTX 4060 graphics, and with Nvidia’s Studio software it’s ready to go with a bunch of professional apps.

Asus certainly has its eye on designers here, even building a dial into the top left of the touchpad. If you’re dexterous enough to keep within its 3cm diameter then you can use it to whizz through timelines in Premiere Pro, adjust brush sizes in Photoshop and switch font sizes in PowerPoint. It’s no replacement for a hardware dial, but could be a time-saver on the move.

The Pantone-validated OLED display is another plus point. Not merely because it’s incredibly sharp, thanks to 2,880 x 1,620 pixels across a 15.6in diagonal, but also because it ships with presets for sRGB, DCI-P3 and Display P3. Or you can stick with its native color gamut, which covers 99% of the DCI-P3 space (with a 115% volume) and reproduces colors with near-perfect accuracy. It hit a respectable 387cd/m² in SDR mode, and with VESA DisplayHDR True Black 600 certification it should be no surprise that films look incredible.

There’s a fine pair of speakers here, too, with vocals coming through with particular clarity. That quality extends to the 1440p webcam. If you find, as I did, that the captured audio isn’t as clear as you hoped, head into the settings within the MyAsus app and switch off all the AI enhancements.

This app is also where you’ll find the color gamut options and control over the fan settings. I don’t see the point of buying a laptop as powerful as this and not putting those fans into Performance mode; they’re noisier, but you’re rewarded with significantly faster frame rates in games: Metro Exodus Enhanced’s averages went up by over 10%, for instance, moving from 61fps at 1080p High settings to 68fps. And 3DMark Time Spy jumped from 7,969 to 8,605.

If you buy this laptop then you’ll get faster results still, as the system Asus sent me had RTX 4050 graphics rather than RTX 4060. As mentioned in the HP Omen Transcend review, you’ll struggle to get above 120fps to take advantage of the screen’s 120Hz refresh rate in most games – I only breached 100fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p medium and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p High – but all current AAA games will play fluidly at reduced settings.

Our test machine came with a Core 7 Ultra, but shipping units include the Core Ultra 9 185H. With Asus providing combined CPU and GPU power of 125W it will never feel sluggish. The thick – by modern standards – chassis also has plenty of room for a chunky heatsink and fans, but the drawback is battery life. It lasted for 8hrs 19mins in PCMark’s video-rundown test, but switching to Modern Office dropped that to 5hrs 59mins. You’ll need to take the meaty 200W power supply with you.

This has its own power socket, which sits on the right-hand side of the chassis along with Thunderbolt 4, USB-C and USB-A ports. And a gigabit Ethernet connector, 3.5mm jack and HDMI 2.1 output. Safe to say it’s crowded. A single USB-A port and SD card reader sit on the left, along with the heat exhaust vents.

With a crisp keyboard, complete with number pad, this is a laptop computer that has appeal across the spectrum. I can see reasons for writers, gamers, designers and video editors to reach for their wallets.

You’ll notice its bulk and weight when travelling, but sometimes only a powerhouse will do. And that’s exactly what the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is.

We also ranked the best laptops for animation.

• Adobe will eliminate its cheaper 20GB storage tier for Creative Cloud
• Move takes effect on January 15, 2025
• This is aimed at encouraging users to migrate to costlier yearly subscriptions

The 20GB Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan is designed for hobbyist and professional photo editors, offering low-cost access to the industry-standard tools Photoshop and Lightroom.

However, as of January 15, 2025, Adobe is phasing out this popular plan - and as per our previous report, existing users will still be able to retain their subscriptions, albeit at a higher cost.

In the US, the 20GB plan will rise from $9.99 to $14.99 monthly for users already subscribed to it; a 50% increase. The 1TB plan for both Photoshop and Lightroom remains unchanged at $19.99 monthly. The 1TB Lightroom-only plan increases from $9.99 to $11.99 monthly, a 20% hike.

Big (cost increases) in Japan

Recent reports from Japan (originally published in Japanese) reveal the 20GB Photography & Lightroom plan will get a similar treatment there.

Currently priced at 1,180 yen per month, the monthly plan will increase to 1,780 yen upon renewal after January 15, 2025.

As in the US, any user who does not subscribe to the 20GB plan before January 15 will no longer be able to do so.

The report also claimed the annual lump-sum payment option, costing 14,080 yen (equivalent to approximately 1,173 yen per month), will remain available and unaffected by the price hike.

Additionally, Adobe will provide a pro-rata refund for any remaining period on the monthly plan for those transitioning to the annual option.

You might also like

• These are the best video editing software available
• Here are the best photo editors around right now
• Adobe unveils new AI-powered app for marketing teams

• Some monthly costs are going up for Adobe's Photography plans
• The cheapest option will no longer be available for new users
• Changes come into effect from January 15, 2025

Brace yourself for price rises if you're signed up to one of the Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom photography plans – these are the subscription options that just give you access to the photo applications, rather than the whole of Creative Cloud.

As per the Adobe blog (via PetaPixel), these new prices come into effect from January 15, 2025. At the moment we just have US pricing, but you can calculate the equivalent price rise for your region. Long story cut short: the users currently paying Adobe the least money will have to cough up more cash, or start paying annually.

The Photography plan with 20GB of storage (including Photoshop, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic) will be $14.99 a month rather than $9.99 – a bump of over 50%. You'll need to commit for a year ($179.88) or pay an unspecified termination fee, or switch to the $119.88-per-year plan, which remains unchanged (and locks you in for longer).

On top of all that, this cheapest plan is going away, and won't be available to new subscribers next year, so these changes are only for existing subscribers. If you're signing up for Photoshop after January 15, the cheapest option will be twice as much as it currently is (though you do get 50 times as much cloud storage).

Going up

There's no change to the more expensive monthly ($19.99) or yearly ($239.88) Photography plans with 1TB of storage, which of course send more revenue Adobe's way. As mentioned above, from January 15, these plans will be the only way to just get Photoshop without the rest of Creative Cloud.

Prices for the Lightroom-only plan with 1TB of storage are going up too, though you will now get Lightroom Classic as well as Lightroom. Going forward you need to pay $11.99 per month rather than $9.99 a month – so it's 20% more expensive. Again, you need to commit for a year ($143.88) or pay a penalty.

Adobe would prefer you to lock yourself in to the $119.88-per-year plan, the cost of which remains unchanged. If these prices are now a little too rich for your blood, then you might want to check out our guides to the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives and the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives.

These new prices "better reflect the value that the apps deliver" Adobe says, noting it hasn't raised subscription prices since it started demanding continuous monthly or yearly payments for Photoshop rather than one-off fees for each version. If you're an existing subscriber, look out for an email from Adobe close to renewal time.

You might also like

• Photoshop gets the next big thing in AI photography
• Our full review of Adobe Photoshop CC (2024)
• These are the best photo editors available now

The likes of Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo have been the best photo editors for a long time now. There have, however, been rumblings of change. A number of creators I know have moved away from Adobe products in favor of more affordable solutions, while others have begun embracing editing tools that are built around AI technology.

You may have heard of Topaz Labs Photo AI and Photoroom. They are relatively new kids on the block but with their focus on generative tools and mobile functionality, they’re seeing a huge rise in popularity. I know that Adobe is doing everything it can to reposition itself within the market but it better move fast to keep up with these upstarts.

Another option is Picsart, which I’ve been using recently. This mobile and web app accelerates creative projects and processes so you can edit photos and videos as well as generate new ones. It’s quick, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive compared to an Adobe subscription.

I began my Picsart journey by putting all the photo editing tools through their paces. What better place to start than the background removal tool? I, and countless creatives, have had decades of painstakingly cutting objects out using manual selection tools. It looks like those years of hard labor might now be over.

I loaded in a picture of a child with wispy hair. I did, after all, want to give Picsart a proper test. The child was also holding a couple of objects, which some background removal tools might find tricky to differentiate. After pressing the button and waiting a couple of seconds, I was amazed that Picsart had done a near-perfect job, even around the hair. Unbelievable.

Through an easy-to-use interface, I was then able to insert a plain colored background or a picture from their presets library. All fairly straightforward but then I opened up the AI background tool and this is where things jumped to an eerily scary level. Picsart inserted the child into a range of different scenes, all perfectly. One option even included her standing on a chair. Anyone would struggle to know she wasn’t originally photographed in that location.

Suitably impressed, I then headed into the AI enhancement tools. This is where images can be sharpened and defects removed. I gave Picsart a pretty decent image already and yet it still provided a higher level of clarity and even smoothed out blemishes on the person's skin. I particularly liked the ability to adjust the intensity of the enhancement.

Other than testing a range of other basic tools within Picsart, I was also very keen to check out its integrated generative AI feature. Considering these often require dedicated hardware, I was intrigued to see what my iPhone XR would be able to cope with. Again, I was blown away. I gave it the prompt “Cute animal like Father Christmas,’ and it absolutely nailed it! I can definitely see myself using this feature on a regular basis to generate bespoke imagery, although maybe not Father Christmas-themed.

These tools only scratch the surface of what is possible with Picsart and it really has to be seen to be believed. There is also an AI logo maker, an avatar creator, and a whole host of impressive video tools.

Picsart has opened my eyes to how far AI tools have come. The fact that most tools can be utilized on a mobile is truly exceptional and helps open up new creative possibilities to creatives who don’t want to be tied down to a laptop. In reality, it has challenged my own creative processes while having a lot of fun along the way.

Picsart Pro is available to try for 7 days with the ability to cancel at any time. To continue using the app, you’ll need the free, plus, or pro licenses. As you’d expect, the free version has a serious limit on the use of generative AI tools and very little cloud storage. It does, however, have a decent set of photo and video editing tools.

The Plus license includes more generous use of AI tools, a full range of templates and fonts, and 5GB of cloud storage. The Pro version builds on this by offering branding, productivity, and team tools. Plus costs $5 / £5 per month, while Pro costs $7 / £7 per month. Picsart is also available as a web app.

Download the Picsart app on iOS or Android.

• Adobe has launched an experimental new 'Reflections Removal' tool
• It's available in beta for raw files in Photoshop and Adobe Bridge
• The impressive tool is also "coming soon" to Lightroom

The next big AI photography trick is removing pesky window reflections from our photos – and Adobe has seemingly cracked it with a new feature that's available in beta now for Adobe Bridge, Photoshop and soon Lightroom.

The sensibly-named 'Reflection Removal' tool can instantly remove reflections from photos you've shot through the windows of homes, vehicles, shops or airplanes. And best of all, it doesn't do it in an overly artificial way using generative AI.

Instead, Adobe says the 'Reflection Removal' model has been trained using millions of simulated photographs that task it with separating an underlying photo from a reflection. By rewarding the correct answers, the tool learns how to separate the 'real' photo from the reflection and allow you to fix it accordingly.

Right now, the tool only works on raw photos – so that's the uncompressed files taken on your camera (like DNGs or CR2s) or the likes of ProRaw from iPhones. And it's currently only a "technology preview" for Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, with Lightroom support "coming soon".

But it's clearly something that could ultimately become a built-in feature on the best camera phones. And it's the latest AI tool that automates something that professionals have long battled with, in this case either by using pricey polarizing filters or advanced editing techniques.

How to try it

To take 'Reflection Removal' for a spin, open Photoshop's Camera Raw plug-in (which pops up when you open a raw file in the app), then go to the Settings cog > Technology Previews, and check the 'New AI Settings and Features' box.

Once you restart Photoshop or Adobe Bridge, head to the Remove panel (which is the eraser symbol on the right) and in the Distraction Removal section check the 'Reflections' box.

After a few seconds, you'll see an estimation of what the final image will look like with the reflections removed, but you can also tweak the strength of the effect.

By default, the slider will be set to 100, but like most Adobe sliders, you'll likely be best going for something more subtle by moving the slider to the left.

Analysis: Not perfect yet, but it's an impressive start

Adobe admits that the best fix for this photography problem is to avoid reflections in the first place, rather than using its experimental tool. For example, when taking photos through a window, you want to press the lens as close to the glass as possible (photographers also use a 'lens skirt' to help with this).

The 'Reflection Removal' tool does also have a few weaknesses. It doesn't currently work very well with cityscapes at night, and it might end up removing some reflections that you actually want in the photo. That's why Adobe's included the slider to adjust the strength of the effect.

But considering how complex removing reflections from photos is, the tool is a solid first step and something I'd consider using in the editing process. Some aspects of the photo may end looking artificial, but Adobe isn't relying on generative AI to 'guess' at what should be in the photo – and it could ultimately rescue shots that would otherwise head straight to the trash can.

The technique will also clearly become much more user-friendly and approachable. Adobe says it's "planning to support JPEGs, HEICs, and other non-raw files" and I can see the tool, albeit in less powerful form, arriving natively on Pixel phones, Android and iOS, with Google and Apple presumably looking on with interest.

Interestingly, Adobe also says it wants to "extend our tool to the removal of dust, scratches, rain, snow, or other things that land on windows", like bugs on windshields. It isn't clear how that differs from existing object removal tools, but the problem may ultimately become – how sanitized and perfect do we want our photos to become? For those who have long struggled with photo-ruining reflections, that'll be a nice dilemma to have.

You might also like

• Adobe Fresco is celebrating five years by going free for all users
• I tried Adobe’s free AI podcast enhancer, and I can’t believe how good it makes even bad recordings sound
• Adobe powers up Photoshop with some clever new AI tools

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024: two-minute review

Photoshop has long been our benchmark for what a photo-editing app should be capable of, and that doesn’t change with the 2024 edition. Whether you work with graphics or photographs, it’s a comprehensive solution for manipulating images in pretty much any way you can think of.

As we covered in our in-depth Adobe Photoshop CC 2023 review, the last edition of Photoshop introduced a range of significant AI-powered upgrades. Those included generative features for creating visual assets using simple text prompts, as well as object-selection and removal tools supercharged by AI.

The 2024 version of Photoshop is an evolution of last year’s release. Rather than introducing any groundbreaking features, it builds on the existing toolkit to offer users an even more polished, accessible and powerful editing app.

Adobe sticks with a proven interface, and Photoshop CC 2024 will feel familiar to anyone who's used an older version of the app in recent years. The useful Contextual Task Bar returns, now with enhanced support for the transform, shape and gradient tools. Nothing is dramatically different, and the app is all the better for it.

Chief among the updates is Adobe’s Firefly Image Model 3, which drives the generative AI tools in Photoshop CC 2024. The net gain here is more realistic and consistent AI imagery from text-based prompts. Photoshop’s AI is far from infallible, but its best output is significantly more believable and convincingly integrated when compared to Photoshop CC 2023.

New generative tools help in this regard. Generate Similar allows you to create further variations based on your favorite of three generated images, letting you get closer to a visual that fits. When you find one that does, the Enhance Detail option boosts detail in a generated image for better clarity.

It’s all very effectively executed. You’ll still encounter errant output, sometimes to a laughable degree, and an eagle-eyed inspection will still pick up inconsistencies and smudginess in the best of Photoshop’s efforts. But if you want to incorporate generative AI into your workflow, Photoshop CC 2024 has the most complete set of tools to let you do so.

That includes a new Selection Brush option, which allows you to more easily make selections using a hybrid of the brush and lasso tools, as well as an Adjustment Brush for selectively applying granular tweaks to parts of an image.

Further refining the formula is the Distraction Removal tool, which can automatically detect, select and paint out people and wires from your photos with remarkable effectiveness.

With more updates in the pipeline, including a Generative Workspace that’s currently available in Photoshop Beta, Photoshop continues to set the standard for photo-editing apps in 2024. Adobe’s payment model might not be popular with everyone, but we think a Creative Cloud subscription offers a lot of value.

If you need an all-in-one image-editing solution with the latest generative AI features implemented to genuinely useful effect, Photoshop CC 2024 is the app to beat.

• Best Adobe Photoshop alternatives

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024: pricing & plans

• Available as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
• From $22.99 / £21.98 / AU$32.99 per month for the Photoshop plan
• From $19.99 / £9.98 / AU$28.59 per month for the Photography plan

As with all Adobe apps, Photoshop is only available to use via a Creative Cloud subscription. There’s no option to buy a one-off license, so you’ll need to keep paying for this subscription to maintain your access. You can sign up for plans on a monthly or an annual basis, with significant savings offered if you pay for the full year up front.

Photoshop is also available as part of several Creative Cloud plans, including the All Apps bundle. You can also choose to take out a single-app subscription for Photoshop alone, but this isn’t actually the most cost-effective way to access the app. Strangely, you’re better off with the Photography plan, which combines Photoshop and Lightroom, together with 20GB of cloud storage

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024 review: Interface

• Interface largely unchanged from Photoshop Creative Cloud 2023
• Contextual Task Bar supports more shape, transform and gradient settings

Photoshop’s interface has undergone iterative refinements over the years, but it remains fundamentally familiar for anyone who’s used a version of Photoshop – or, indeed, any desktop photo editor – in the past. Tool shortcuts reside in a vertical column down the left-hand side, while panels on the right are where you’ll find layers, image adjustments and color controls. Granular settings for your chosen tool can be found in the options bar along the top of the workspace.

The interface is largely unchanged from Photoshop CC 2023. Seasoned users won’t notice any major changes, which is the kind of consistency that keeps people paying for a Creative Cloud subscription. It does also mean that the same learning curve is present in 2024, with a degree of tuition required to fully get to grips with everything that Photoshop has to offer. It’s not the most beginner-friendly photo editor, but that’s inevitable when you’re dealing with such a capable and comprehensive piece of software.

Returning in Photoshop CC 2024 is the Contextual Task Bar, which floats at the bottom of the workspace. It can also be dragged around, pinned in place or disabled if you don’t need its input. Wherever you place it, the Contextual Task Bar displays shortcuts relevant to your current task or selection, genuinely streamlining editing workflows.

The Contextual Task Bar has been improved for 2024 to support fill and stroke settings for shapes, rotate and flip tools when transforming objects, as well as the ability to change color, opacity, type, and presets when working with gradients. These aren’t groundbreaking additions, but they are genuinely useful refinements that contribute to a slicker user experience.

That user experience is going to evolve in future iterations, and you can get a preview of this by downloading the Photoshop Beta version through Creative Cloud. Choose Generative Workspace from the welcome screen and you’ll find a space where you can create visual assets from text prompts and browse through previously generated elements. You can have several prompts running simultaneously, and everything is saved to a timeline, which allows you to go back and add variables.

Photoshop’s Generative Workspace is not dissimilar to the interface used by some of the best AI image generators. In our experience, it adds a useful cataloging function to Photoshop’s AI toolkit, allowing you to easily generate, manage and build on a library of generated creative assets in real time.

• Interface score: 4.5/5

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024 review: generative AI features

• Generative features powered by Firefly Image Model 3 for greater realism
• New Generate Similar feature lets you create more image variations

One of the most significant additions to Photoshop CC 2023 was its suite of generative tools, which use Adobe’s Firefly Image Model to drive AI-powered image generation. We covered the effectiveness of these features at length in our review of Photoshop 2023, and they return with even greater potential in 2024.

Generative Fill and Generative Expand are now driven by the latest version of Adobe’s Firefly Image Model. The tools themselves still function in the same way: Generative Fill creates AI imagery in a selected area based on a descriptive text prompt, which can include adding and removing objects, while Generative Expand allows you to increase the dimensions of an existing image using generated content.

What the upgrade means for Photoshop users is more realistic generated imagery, complete with enhanced control over detail and composition. This bears out in practice: while Photoshop’s generative tools aren’t perfect, results in the 2024 edition are consistently more believable. We encountered far fewer uncanny effects, particularly when text prompts included living creatures.

In our review of Photoshop CC 2023, we commented that the unreality of AI-generated imagery could be spotted fairly easily upon closer inspection, particularly when larger objects were added or generative adjustments were made to bigger areas of an image. These issues have been significantly improved in the 2024 version.

We still encountered smudging of detailed textures, as well as warped edges and occasional freakish shapes, particularly in mixed lighting. It also struggles with reflections. Certain prompts simply produce hilarious results, like when we tried to change a blue-sky background for a fiery one over a volcano. On the whole, though, we were very impressed with the realism of generated elements in Photoshop CC 2024.

What struck us is that when we compared the ‘best’ result from the same prompt in the 2023 and 2024 versions, we had to look much closer in the latest edition before spotting any telltale signs that AI was involved. Everything from shadows and tone to general detail is more consistent – and that’s particularly the case if you hover over the thumbnail of a generated variation in the Properties panel and hit the Enhance Detail icon, which boosts detail further.

The Generate Similar option also allows you to refine generated content by choosing the best variation and generating more iterations from it. Say you prompt Photoshop to create a red truck – it will give you three variations to begin with. Pick the one of these that best fits your vision, click the three dots icon on the Contextual Tool Bar and select Generate Similar. You’ll then get three more images based on that variation, allowing you to steer the AI model towards what’s in your mind’s eye.

• Generative AI features score: 4.5/5

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024 review: selection

• Selection Brush is a hybrid of Brush and Lasso tools
• Adjustment Brush applies non-destructive edits selectively

Photoshop already has some of the most powerful selection features of any photo editor, including the AI-driven Object Selection Tool and ‘select subject’ shortcut found on the Contextual Task Bar. While some tidying up is often still required when using these tools to mask off parts of an image, they can significantly accelerate workflow and, depending on the object you’re selecting, can sometimes automate it entirely.

Photoshop CC 2024 doesn’t introduce any groundbreaking selection features, but there are a few new and improved tools which enhance the existing offering. First is the enhanced Selection Brush Tool, which is designed to simplify the selection process for trackpad users. It’s really a combination of masking and lasso tools, executed in a more user-friendly way.

Choose the Selection Brush then simply paint over an area as you would when masking. You can adjust the brush hardness, opacity and color from the toolbar, as well as toggling between add and subtract modes to amend your selection. Switch to another tool and your selection will change from a pink overlay to a classic ‘marching ants’ outline, as if you’ve lassoed your way around the object. Both visually and practically, it’s an effective change that’s genuinely useful.

Joining it is the Adjustment Brush tool, which allows you to apply non-destructive edits to specific areas of an image. Select the tool, then use the Contextual Task Bar to select the kind of adjustment you want to make. You can then paint over part of your image or select ‘Apply to object.’ You can change the hardness and size of the brush, as well as subtracting from your selection. You can then make granular changes to that new adjustment layer in the adjustments panel.

Again, this isn’t a groundbreaking feature. Instead, it’s one more way in which Adobe is making Photoshop more intuitive and accessible, through new applications of existing editing mechanics. While seasoned users may prefer to stick with traditional selection and application techniques, we think these brush tools tools will be easier for beginners to grasp. The good thing about Photoshop is that the choice is yours.

• Selection score: 5/5

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024: Removal tools

• Distraction Removal automatically takes away distracting elements
• Generate Background Tool can simulate photorealistic settings

We talked extensively about the effectiveness of the Remove Tool in our review of Photoshop CC 2023. In short, it’s a powerful feature that’s able to make unwanted elements disappear from your images in just a few clicks. Paint over anything in your image that you want gone and Photoshop will replace it with AI-generated pixels which, more often than not, blend effortlessly into the existing scene as if the original element was never there.

This feature returns in Photoshop CC 2024, with added functionality. Rather than manually painting over unwanted wires and people in your image, you can now use the Distraction Removal Tool to detect and remove them with a couple of clicks.

Select the Remove Tool from the sidebar, then select ‘Find distractions’ from the toolbar at the top. Here you can select ‘Wires and cables’ or ‘People’. Choose the former and Photoshop will try to remove all telephone and power lines from a scene. Select the latter and it will highlight all the people it can find, giving you the option to deselect any that you want to keep in the image.

When it works, it’s an impressive feature that genuinely saves time. We found it incredibly effective for removing wires and cables, even where these run across different backgrounds. For example, in an image in which multiple cables were running away from the camera, in front of several buildings and the sky, every single wire was seamlessly removed, and it wasn’t possible to trace where they’d been.

People selection is also powerful. Even out-of-focus figures in the background were picked up by the tool, and it was also able to detect people walking side-on to and away from the camera, only once missing someone with their back turned. The effectiveness of the actual removal depends on the given scene, with complex textures resulting in a few floating faces. Nevertheless, it’s a useful and convincing enhancement to Photoshop's object removal arsenal.

Firefly improvements are also evident when using the Generate Background Tool. Background removal was another big introduction in Photoshop CC 2023. After removing a background, the Generate Background tool lets you swap in a completely different setting which matches the position and lighting of the subject. Once again, it isn’t faultless by any means, but in our tests we did find it a particularly effective shortcut for changing the background of product shots and flatlay photography.

• Removal tools score: 4.5/5

Should you buy Adobe Photoshop CC 2024?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Adobe Photoshop CC 2024: Also consider

How I tested Adobe Photoshop CC 2024

• I tested it for more than three months
• I used it as my primary image-editing app
• I created a range visuals in different styles

As I regularly edit images for work, Photoshop was already an important part of my visual toolkit. Having updated the app to version 26, I continued to use it as my primary editing tool for both photo and graphics work. Because I’m familiar with the software’s interface and capabilities, I was able to focus on the new features and compare these to previous versions.

I spent a lot of time exploring the capabilities of Firefly Image Model 3. This included making adjustments to a range of photos, as well as removing objects, to see how Photoshop’s updated generative tools could streamline my workflow. I also tested these extensively with a wide range of text prompts, to assess how realistically and seamlessly Photoshop was able to integrated generated content into compositions.

First reviewed: December 2024

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• GIMP 3.0 release date is nearly here after a long wait
• Open source image editor is a key Photoshop rival
• New logo and host of features coming for loyal users

The long-awaited release of GIMP 3.0 is coming, according to the team behind the open source Photoshop alternative.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, previously known as the General Image Manipulation Program, unveiled a release candidate version of the platform on November 6.

“We are very excited to share the first release candidate for the long-awaited GIMP 3.0,” the developers said in a blog post announcing the release. “We’ve been hard at work since our last development update to get this ready, and we’re looking forward to everyone finally being able to see the results.”

GIMP 3.0 release

The announcement follows years of speculation over the release of the latest version of the Photoshop-style tool, with GIMP 2.0 released in March 2004.

Since then, there have been frequent updates, including GIMP 2.4X and 2.6X in 2007, 2.8X in 2022, and the most recent release, GIMP 2.10X, from 2018 until now.

The developers behind the tool said the software version is nearing completion and set to be released to the community after final testing and bug testing has been completed.

“If user feedback reveals only small and easy to fix bugs, we will solve those problems and issue the result as GIMP 3.0,” the developers said.

“However, we hope and expect a much larger audience to try out 3.0 RC1 - including many people who have only been using 2.10 up until now."

“If larger bugs and regressions are uncovered that require more substantial code changes, we may need to publish a second release candidate for further testing.”

What this means is that, providing there are no significant issues flagged by users, the release of GIMP 3.0 could be imminent, or at least within the next few months.

What to expect with GIMP 3.0

So, what can users expect to see with the new release? First off, there’s a new logo, designed in collaboration between Aryeom and other contributors.

Developers said the iconic Wilber logo, which was created by Jakub Steiner for GIMP 2.6 in 2008, remains a “fantastic logo”, but “design trends have changed a bit in the last sixteen years”.

Elsewhere, the interface will remain recognizable for many users but has been given a bit of TLC, enabling it to better scale to high-resolution displays. A raft of icons have also been converted to scalable vector graphics as well, improving the overall quality and scalability of assets.

“One of the major improvements from the GTK3 port is that the vector UI icons now scale more cleanly based on your preference settings,” developers said.

“Our Legacy icon theme was mainly raster PNGs however, so it could not take advantage of the GTK3 scaling system. Contributor Denis Rangelov took on the extensive challenge of recreating the Legacy tool icons as SVGs.

Notably, the biggest changes in GIMP 3.0 are on the backend and will help improve plugin compatibility for users still relying on older versions of the platform.

Similarly, a public GIMP API has also been built to allow users to port GIMP 2.0 plugins and scripts to the newer version.

“Another task that had to be finished before the 3.0 release was finalizing the public API.”

“Since the API is now stable, plug-in and script developers can begin porting their 2.10 scripts based on this release.”

You might also like

• Here's our list of the best photo editor tools around today
• This popular Photoshop alternative just got a massive, free six-month trial
• Adobe's decision to eliminate perpetual licensing for Elements has stirred controversy among consumers

Update: After highlighting this half-price deal before Black Friday officially started, I've checked and it's still available from Adobe and it's one of the best deals I've seen period (but as Creative Software Editor, I would say that, wouldn't I?).

Black Friday is here and I'm continuing to flag the best Black Friday Adobe deals - but if you want a catch-all with all the trimmings, then I'm strongly recommending this one.

Right now, prices for the package have been slashed from $60 a month down to $30 a month for 12 months. That’s a full 50% off for the entire year.

• In the UK? Click here to save 50% on your Creative Cloud All Apps subscription and scroll below for more deals.

What do you get with the Creative Cloud All Apps Adobe deal?

If you already subscribe to three or more Adobe products, I generally recommend selecting the Creative Cloud All Apps package over individual subscriptions. The plan offers incredible value for money - and at this price, it’s even better.

The plan gives you access to over 20 top Adobe apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Acrobat Pro, InDesign, and Illustrator. Effectively, then, you have pretty much the full suite of apps and software, and in my experience, these are absolutely the top tools in their respective fields.

However, the deal only lasts for the first year, before prices revert, and you’ll need to commit to the full 12 months to get this deal. Technically, this Black Friday offer runs from November 15 - 29, but don’t worry if you miss the boat, as Adobe has confirmed the deal will extend into Cyber Monday, coming to an end on December 8.

More deals

If you'd prefer to pay for the whole year in advance, instead of paying the monthly fee, Adobe's offering up to 50% off via its Amazon store.

• In the UK? You can get the exact same deal from Adobe's Amazon store by clicking here.

For the latest savings across technology, visit out our main Black Friday deals hub

When testing out the best alternatives to Photoshop, what I like to see are professional tools and effects that compare well with Adobe's premiere photo editing suite. And whether you're into professional photography or lightly touching up blemishes on photos, these are the top alternatives I recommend.

There's no denying that Adobe Photoshop reigns supreme, setting the industry-standard when it comes to the best photo editors around. And for my money, Serif Affinity Photo is as close as you can get in terms of features and workflow. In our tests, we found this a highly capable app that easily matches almost everything you can do in Photoshop. Better yet, it's available on Windows, macOS, and iPad for a one-off cost. So, if you're looking to avoid subscriptions, it's a stellar choice.

You can check out the full review below, alongside some other alternatives for photographers and designers at every skill-level. As part of the round-up, I've included some of the best graphic design software and best drawing apps that serve up many of the tools you'll find in Photoshop. We've tested each app in this round-up to discover the pros and cons, and find out how each one really compares to Adobe Photoshop.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Adobe Photoshop alternative overall

Affinity Photo, from Serif, is positively packed with professional tools that make it a genuine rival to Photoshop for both Windows and macOS. There’s also a tablet version if you're looking for one of the best Photoshop alternatives on iPad.

During our testing, we found an impressively clean interface (although the UI can be occasionally glitchy). There’s also no shortage of useful tools, including PSD file support, RAW Support, masking, layering, retouching, removing blemishes, curving, and a full set of 16-bit filters. In fact, the amount of tools available is impressively large, capably rivalling the professional feature-set of Photoshop. Just don't let yourself get too overwhelmed with the power on offer.

Best of all, there are no endless subscriptions, just a one-off cost, making it ideal when working to a budget - one of the main reasons why we like this software so much. The app is available as a standalone download. Alternatively, the Affinity V2 universal license, bundling the photo editor alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, which offers great value if you're working across different design projects.

Read our full Serif Affinity Photo review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best free Adobe Photoshop alternative

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a professional, open-source photography powerhouse that works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. So, it's both the best Adobe Photoshop alternative overall, and an excellent free alternative, too.

In our review, we championed the fact that Gimp comes with an absolutely huge range of pro-grade tools for editing images, drawing and more. If you're familiar with Photoshop already, it won't take too long to get to grips with the interface. And if you're new to all this, you'll find a huge community of developers and artists who have created a wide array of plugins, making this a highly adaptable program. If you desire a specific feature, there’s probably an add-on for it.

The interface is highly customizable, so you can pare things back or leverage multiple windows and toolbars as needed. For this reason, GIMP has a similarly steep learning curve as Photoshop, but once you’ve made your way through a few tutorials, it’s quite comfortable.

In our experience, GIMP was slightly less responsive and used a few more resources than its proprietary counterpart, but this can be easily forgiven on the basis that GIMP always has been and always will be free and open source.

Read our full GIMP review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Photoshop alternative online

Pixlr is one of the best free Photoshop alternatives online - but what makes this a good pick is that it's available as a web app. During our review of the HTML 5 photo editing software, we found it to be impressively feature-rich compared to downloadable software.

Quite often, I find myself using this tool and Pixlr Editor for those quick image edits and compositions when there's no need to crack open Photoshop. The interface is more spartan than either Photoshop or GIMP, but that’s not a bad thing. The workflow is streamlined and intuitive: you can drag-and-drop a photo from your computer or add a URL, and then get to work adjusting images with familiar one-click filters and sliders.

Given that it’s a web app, Pixlr has surprisingly robust layer support - one of the reasons why it's considered one of the best Photoshop alternatives. However, important features are still missing. Custom brushes, for example, are slated for development in the future but don’t exist yet.

Overall, Pixlr gives you a super clean and intuitive interface for basic to medium-complexity photo editing.

Read our full Pixlr X review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Photoshop alternative for intermediates

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate is an image manipulation tool that, like any good Photoshop alternative, allows you to perform many of the functions you’d find in Adobe's popular photo editor, but at a fraction of the cost. We found this app to be an ideal middle-ground if you're not quite a beginner, but not yet a pro.

When we tested out the software, we found a versatile alternative to Photoshop. It might not match every powerful feature in Adobe’s top tool, but it delivers most tools for most photographers and designers, including layers and RAW file editing. As expected, there are AI tools on offer here, too. For us, this an ideal Photoshop alternative for intermediates, rather than full professionals.

What I especially like here is the option to buy a perpetual license - great for those wanting to avoid Adobe subscriptions (or any other subscriptions for that matter). But you can still get it for a monthly or annual fee, if you prefer, with a range of cloud storage options depending on how much you pay.

Overall, it's one of the best Photoshop alternatives for creating professional-looking content while working to a budget.

Read our full ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Adobe Photoshop alternative for photographers

Photoshop is loaded with AI tools - so a good alternative should also boast at least some of these features. And that's precisely what Luminar Neo offers.

This app features a wealth of industry-standard AI tools that should make design and content creation so much easier (and, presumably, faster). This includes tweaking curves, white balance, a cropping tool, and Luminar's much-vaunted sky replacement tool. In our tests, these worked very well, overall. Aside from a couple of hitches, we were left generally rather impressed with results.

So, who's it good for? Our sense having reviewed the software is that this is the ideal tool for amateur photographers. Unfortunately, for professional use, it's missing certain features and performance, as with its simpler sister software Luminar AI, can be occasionally spotty. But once you get going, the overall experience of using Neo is surprisingly fluid, with more than enough fine-tuning tools for perfectionists.

Read our full Luminar Neo review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best alternative to Adobe Photoshop for businesses

We're ranking this as one of the best Photoshop alternatives - particularly for small teams and businesses - because it's just so feature-rich, Photo Pos Pro comes with tools for editing images, web design, and document creation. Pretty much any design work you need can be handled here. Better still, it has a twin-track interface: one for beginners, one for experts.

This customizable interface lets you select either Novice or Pro layouts. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but essentially, the novice layout sacrifices power for usability, while the pro layout is feature-rich, albeit with a steep learning curve. Even if it’s not executed perfectly, this flexibility is commendable and practical.

While it lacks the deep customization that professional photographers rely on, it's still one of the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives for making adjustments to photos for presentations, marketing campaigns. An ideal tool for professional use in a business or office setting, particularly if you don't have time to learn the intricacies of Adobe's tool.

With layers, masking, brushes, scripts, and batch editing, Photos Pos Pro is a feature-rich alternative to Photoshop.

Read our full Photo Pos Pro review.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Adobe Photoshop alternative for artists

Krita is open-source and free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, backed by a huge community of developers and talented artists who share artwork and methods. If you’re looking for an active user base that’s invested in discussing and sharing art, Krita is a great Photoshop alternative for drawing.

Beyond the community, Krita is an incredibly powerful photo editing software, with hundreds of brushes and a brush customization engine, vector and text capabilities for comic strips, a wrap-around mode for seamless repeating images and patterns, and a powerful resource manager for importing tools from other artists.

We found the interface intuitive and familiar, with minor functions like being able to scroll sliders with the trackpad and having helpful tooltips that let us know to find the right tool.

Krita isn't one of the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives for its photo editing tools. In fact, it's more of a drawing tool than a photo editor. For that reason, certain features are missing: fewer photo filters, no automatic heal tool, etc. It does, however, support opening and saving PSD files.

Also, Krita has fantastic tablet support with custom sensitivity settings, so for artists looking to combine drawing and photos, it’s hard to beat.

• ^ Back to the top

Best Adobe Photoshop alternative: Frequently asked questions

How to choose the best Adobe Photoshop alternative for you

When deciding which alternative to Photoshop is best for you, first consider how much of your relevant image file you need to edit and change. If you’re just trying to make simple edits to an existing image file, you may find a free software program will suit you fine.

However, if you plan to develop a file from scratch and/or plan to make a series of complicated edits using advanced photo-editing tools and filters, it may be better to aim for one of the higher range and more expensive programs on our list.

You should also check your current computer specs. Photo editors tend to have low minimum requirements, but for more seamless workflows, you may need a higher-power device. To help with this, we've reviewed the best laptops for graphic design, best laptops for photo editing, and best photo editing PCs. For professionals, we also recommend choosing one of the best monitors for photo editing.

How we tested the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

To test for the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service using a handful of images to see how the software could be used for the editing and development of each image. The aim was to push each software platform to see whether it could simply and easily not just edit a range of content types but also do so faithfully and consistently without introducing formatting issues or similar problems.

Get in touch

• Want to find out about commercial or marketing opportunities? Click here
• Out of date info, errors, complaints or broken links? Give us a nudge
• Got a suggestion for a product or service provider? Message us directly

• You've reached the end of the page. Jump back up to the top ^

This year’s Adobe Max event has seen the company greatly expand its AI offerings, with loads of new tools hitting Photoshop - all powered by Firefly.

Top tools coming to our current pick for the best photo editor around include an upgrade Remove tool, a space for design ideation, and a range of genAI tools now available to all.

And, since it’s Adobe Max-mas, the company has also announced a handful of extras for Illustrator and InDesign, too.

What’s new in Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop was already no slouch in the artificial intelligence department, filled with tools that streamline editing workflows - so, we were intrigued to see the latest servings for Adobe users.

First up, a number of essential AI tools will see general availability for Photoshop desktop and web users. So, look out for Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Similar, Generate Background, and Generate Image powered by Firefly Image 3 Model.

The Remove tool gets a serious update, too, and now features what Adobe dubbed “distraction removal technology”. Effectively, this will let users remove unwanted elements from an image in a single click.

The company has also announced a new Generative Workspace within Photoshop. This lets designers try out new ideas (or adapt existing ones) in a sandbox, where generations run in the background without disrupting the workflow. The space also includes generation history, to quickly view previous prompts and images.

One of the most exciting developments to come to Photoshop is the Adobe Substance 3D Viewer app. Now in beta, this tool merges 2D and 3D image design, so users can import models created in Adobe Substance 3D straight into Photoshop.

More AI tools are also on the way for Illustrator, including new Objects on Path and Generative Shape Fill, and InDesign, which now boasts Generative Expand, Text to Image, and integration with Adobe Express.

You can check out the latest beta tools from Adobe by clicking here.

More from TechRadar Pro

• Get creative - we tested the best graphic design software
• Looking for something different? See our review of the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives
• Game-changing AI comes to Adobe Premiere Pro

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve been frustrated by something since 2013. It’s not a huge frustration but rather a little niggly stone in my shoe that has refused to go away. It all began in June of that year when Photoshop decided to transition from a one-off purchase model to a subscription model. I remember thinking, “Can they do this? Is this even legal? If I buy something, then surely I own it, don’t I?” The answers turned out to be, yes, yes, and no. It turned out that this was a one-way train that no one could stop.

Fast forward 11 years and it’s become difficult to own anything outright. I even have friends who hire their washing machines on subscription. It’s infiltrated every area of our lives and I’m not particularly happy about it.

With no desire to give in, if I have a choice between a one-off purchase and a subscription model, I’ll usually go for the former. I want the control and I don’t like being tied in. I’ve been a loyal Photoshop user because of a lack of viable alternatives but one little app, called Pixelmator, is making me question my allegiance. 

Pixelmator is a full-featured image editor available across all iOS devices and even works great on old iPads or iPhones you might have lying around. The app is designed specifically for iOS and iPadOS meaning it can take full advantage of Apple silicon, Metal, Core Image, and Core Animation - all resulting in amazing performance and responsiveness.

Designs can be edited across both types of Apple devices thanks to seamless syncing using iCloud Drive. This lets me work on images at coffee shops, on the bus, at home, or even in the middle of meetings. The flexibility is incredible.

Did I mention that it only costs $9.99? That is an absolute steal for what this app provides. It delivers tools for creating, editing, and enhancing images on the go and is a dream to work with. One of my favorite things about it is the layer-based interface that allows for complex setups without becoming too cumbersome on a mobile device.

One of the photos that I used Pixelmator for was a gorgeous image that I had taken of my children. It was one of those moments where they were all smiling and demonstrating a ‘we never have nor ever will do anything wrong’ sort of persona. They looked like they never succumbed to an argument with each other and I was grateful for the fleeting memory and glimpse of how things might be. 

The only problem was that there were two people in the background distracting and therefore limiting the visual appeal of the photo. I knew that Pixelmator contained a repair tool that could remove these types of things so I thought I would give it a go. 

I launched Pixelmator, navigated to my photos, and selected the photo. After selecting the ‘Repair’ tool, all I had to do was use my finger to paint out the unwanted elements and before my eyes, I saw them not only erased but replaced with more of the background. To be fair, it wasn’t perfect but after a little more fine-tuning, I was amazed at how believable the results were.

Not wanting to limit my creativity, I thought I could do more to enhance the photo. I hopped into the ‘Adjust Colors’ tool and chose one of the preloaded effects. Some of the options just ruined the photo but the ‘Rich’ option did wonders for the photo by enhancing contrast and giving it a slightly nostalgic feel.

With all the changes applied, I just knew I had to share it with my family. This was easily done with the built-in sharing tools, which means you don’t have to exit Pixelmator to share your happy memories with the world. There are also professional export tools that support formats including PSD and TIFF. 

Pixelmator is now my go-to image editing app. It is responsive, contains a ton of tools, and is super cheap. Being able to edit photos on the go with just a phone gives me the sort of flexibility Photoshop users could only dream of.

Download the Pixelmator app for free on iOS

Adobe is rolling out a bunch of new AI features for Photoshop and Illustrator that aim to speed up the design process and offer more control and variety to users. Using Adobe’s Firefly generative AI models, the company suggests it will take a fraction of the time it currently takes to manually produce minute image details.

One of the most notable additions is the Generative Shape Fill feature. It fills in detailed vector graphics to shapes based on text prompts like the one in the above image. The Firefly Vector AI model handles the rest, and you suddenly have multiple options for logos and other branded material.

A graphic designer working on a new logo for a tech startup could use Generative Shape Fill to quickly generate complex vector patterns and shapes that align with the brand’s futuristic theme. By entering specific text prompts like “geometric tech shapes” or “futuristic circuits,” the designer can explore various intricate designs without manually drawing each element.

Smarter patterns

To build a pattern from scratch, the new Text to Pattern option does as the name suggests and converts a text prompt into a scalable vector pattern. If you don’t know how to describe exactly what you want, there’s even a new Style Reference feature that takes uploaded images as inspiration for Adobe’s AI creation. Similarly, the new Retype feature can edit otherwise static text and offer ideas for a font to match the image.

The new Photoshop-specific AI features center more on streamlining the often repetitive tasks necessary for editing images. The Selection Brush Tool and Adjustment Brush Tool do as their names hint and make selecting and adjusting parts of an image easier with AI assistance to separate out the elements with more precision.

The new AI features are more than just digital aids. The Dimension tool can make precise sizing measurements, while the Mockup feature can produce visual prototypes that fit the curves and edges of real-life objects. So, an architect designing a new residential building could accurately plot out floor plans and elevations with the Dimension tool, while a fashion designer might apply Mockup to their designs to see how they look on different types of garments.

AI Visualize

No matter how good the AI tools are, Adobe is still embroiled in the debate over how its Firefly AI models get trained. The company recently made it clear it won’t use projects made by its customers for AI training, but the larger conflict over ethical AI and synthetic media is far from resolved. 

Still, AI augmentation of Illustrator and Photoshop marks a milestone for Adobe’s technology strategy. And Adobe has a lot of utopian ideals, at least in its official philosophy. The company described its goal for the new AI tools as not only increasing productivity but also creativity. The idea is that AI helps designers push the boundaries of their vision.

 “Adobe’s new innovations in Illustrator and Photoshop are built directly into designers’ existing workflows, offering new ways to create and helping them to work faster and focus on what they do best - drawing, designing, and bringing their creative visions to life,” Adobe senior vice president for digital media Ashley Still said in a release on the new features.

You might also like

• Adobe Firefly's latest image model looks like a generational leap and I can't wait to try it
• Adobe Firefly delivers the AI wow-factor, but soon reaches its creative limits
• Adobe Firefly is doing generative AI differently and it may even be good for you

Photoshop has been under fire lately following some controversy around its new smallprint – and now the Canva-owned Affinity Photo is looking to capitalize with an impressive-looking new trial offer for its photo-editing software.

A new six-month trial for Affinity Photo, which you can also get for its Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher software, covers the versions for Mac, Windows and iPad. There's no obligation to buy and the best part is that you don't need to give your payment details when signing up for the trial.

Free trials are nothing new, but they don't usually last for six months – and this one is for the software we currently rate as the best Photoshop alternative. One of the reasons for that is because it's also possible to buy Affinity Photo as a one-time purchase, rather than an ongoing subscription.

You can currently get 50% off Affinity Photo when buying it outright, taking it down to $35 / £35, although it isn't clear whether this offer will still be available at the end of a six-month trial. Still, both are good offers for editing software that offers a clean interface, good range of tools and support for PSD files.

To check out the six-month free offer, head to Affinity's official trial page. You get access to the full versions of the software for desktop or iPad, and can also sign up for the offer if you've previously done one of Affinity's trials.

Is it worth signing up?

Right now, you can only get a seven-day free trial for Photoshop – so Affinity Photo's six-month offer certainly looks a good one, particularly if you're a beginner or starting from scratch.

Both Affinity Photo and Photoshop have a learning curve, so it's good to have an extended free period to see if it works for you. As a photographer, I'm already locked into Adobe's workflows and use accompanying apps like Lightroom Classic (which is included in Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography Plan), so the trial doesn't hold the same appeal for me.

But if I was a beginner or amateur who was starting out in photo editing, and didn't want to get locked into subscription software down the road, I'd certainly consider this Affinity Photo trial. It may lack some of Adobe's most recent AI-powered tools, like Generative Fill, but it's powerful enough for most situations – and you only need a free Affinity account to start the trial.

It's also refreshing to have a trial that doesn't ask you for payment details up-front, given it's easy to forget and then waste megabucks on tech subscriptions.

You might also like...

• These are the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives in 2024
• Calm down, Adobe tells fans – Photoshop’s new small print isn’t as controversial as it looks
• Adobe Photoshop Express (2024) review

There’s no denying that when it comes to the best photo editors, Adobe Photoshop sets the industry-standard. The image editing software is so ubiquitous, the name has even become a common noun.

But Photoshop is a huge beast of a program for desktop computers. How can it be squeezed into a mobile device? Well it can, for iPads, but you can’t run that on a phone or Android device. However, by paring it down to a few cool essential features you can: enter Photoshop Express.

Adobe Photoshop Express: Pricing & plans

• A free download is great, but the best tools are hidden behind a paywall. Still, there are numerous ways to unlock all the features, and if you subscribe to an Adobe plan that includes Photoshop, you already have Express as part of the deal.

Photoshop Express is a free download from the App Store, Google Play and the Windows Store (no joy for Mac users, sadly). You’ll have a number of tools available to use as soon as you launch the app for the first time, but as you may expect, some premium features need to be paid for.

If you already subscribe to one of Adobe’s packages which includes the full version of Photoshop, you’ll get access to all of Photoshop Express’ features. Prices for such plans vary widely, depending on the contract you choose, and if you're an individual, in education, or a business, but to give you an idea, an individual on a one-year contract would expect to pay $20 a month for the photography package (which includes Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop Express) - a much better deal than the $23 a month for Photoshop and Photoshop Express on their own. Alternatively, you could opt for $60 monthly for the 'All Apps' package (which comes with over 20 professional software packages, including Photoshop Express).

But if none of that appeals, Photoshop Express has a standalone subscription for $5 a month or $35 a year.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Photoshop Express: Interface & experience

• A very simple and streamlined interface, with numerous simplified tools at your disposal. All very easy to use, but marred by a few features that should’ve been included.

Adobe Photoshop Express is designed to work on tablets and phones, so is ideal for editing on the go. The interface works in either orientation on a tablet, but phones appear to be restricted to portrait.

As with any other image editing app, you can grant it access to your entire image library, or restrict it to only a chosen few (a list which can be amended at any time). You’re also able to connect to your Google Photos, DropBox and Facebook accounts, but not your iCloud files. If you work with Lightroom, you can access its online library from within Photoshop Express, and the same goes for your Creative Cloud libraries (should you have any).

If you wish to explore and use other people’s photography, you can browse through a ‘Free Library’. Photoshop Express can Las gain access to your camera. This is not just for convenience, as the interface includes a series of interesting filters you cannot find on your device’s default camera app, such as Artful, Blue Skies and Pop Art, with each filter having a few swappable options to choose from.

The interface itself is pared down, and easy to understand; this is a simplified version of Photoshop after all. You scroll down through your projects, photos, tutorials and templates, choose what you want to start with, and away you go.

When it comes to working on a project, most tools can be found at the bottom of the interface, with a few others located to the side. For instance the layers are found on the right. Tap on whatever you need to bring up various options, along with a slider to determine the intensity of your chosen effect.

It’s all very simple and there are even some interesting ‘smart’ tools, where internal algorithms determine what to automatically select. This works well for the Cutout and Masking tools, but as always they’re not always perfect. Thankfully you’re able to make adjustments.

There are some drawbacks though: surprisingly, the brushes lack edge detection, something that has been part and parcel of Adobe’s other offerings for some time, and would greatly improve any fine tuning you’d care to make. The lack of curves for colour correction is also disappointing, as is the lack of a refine brush. But as it’s a simplified version of Photoshop, perhaps this is something we should accept and work with.

• Interface & experience: 3.5/5

Adobe Photoshop Express: Tools

• Some features are truly impressive, such as the masking and cutout tools, as well as Face Retouch, which is incredibly well implemented.

As mentioned, there are no curves, so when it’s time to make some image adjustments, you’re offered a selection of tools represented by a thumbnail of the image you’re working with, with the effect applied to it. It’s not often easy to see what the change is, so thankfully each adjustment comes with a name. This is all fine, relatively basic and simple to use, but these adjustments have a clever trick up their sleeve: the ability to select a specific part of your photo, through automatic or manual masks, letting you apply changes to only a chosen section. Multiple objects are found automatically for you, but if you’re not happy with what's on offer, you’re free to create additional masks, and refine existing ones, with the understanding your level of precision will be limited.

Perhaps the most impressive feature is Face Retouch. The algorithm will automatically find a face in your photo and reveal what you can alter, including, lips, nose, eyes, contour, etc. Each offers a number of sub-categories, with a slider to apply it to your image. It’s simple, enabling you to make some pretty substantial changes, and the results are most impressive, if somewhat uncanny.

Perhaps best of all, you can continue working on your projects when you get back to your computer - as long as your devices are logged in to the same Adobe ID, and you’ve got a subscription of Photoshop of course.

Despite its limitations Photoshop Express does allow you to create fairly complex projects, like being able to combine photos, create collages, add text layers, and more. If you’re looking for a simple image compositor, that has some impressive functions. Despite lacking in certain areas, it could be worth taking a look, and maybe even opting for the premium features.

• Tools: 4/5

Adobe Photoshop Express: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You need to apply more image editing than the default apps on your mobile device allow, and don’t mind subscribing to a product to gain access to some premium features.

Don't buy it if...

You feel constrained by some of the missing features, you’re not a fan of an app that hides its best features behind a paywall, or you prefer working on a ‘proper’ computer when editing your images.

Avoiding Adobe? We compared all the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is relatively expensive, which can be a significant barrier for schools with limited budgets that would like to offer it to students. ACDSee might not be as well-known as Adobe, but the company has just made its software infinitely more attractive to educational establishments.

The company has announced that it will provide free access to its premium software suite to all K-12 and higher education institutions. The initiative includes ACDSee’s Photo Studio Ultimate, a comprehensive photo editing and management software which offers advanced editing tools, layer support, and a robust organizational system for photographers. We listed it as one of the best alternatives to Photoshop.

ACDSee's new initiative also covers Photo Studio for Mac, Gemstone Photo Editor, Luxea Pro Video Editor, and Video Converter Pro. The tools are versatile enough to meet a wide range of educational needs, whether for art, media studies, or general education, and the free price tag makes them even more attractive. 

Free for all schools

ACDSee believes that by equipping classrooms with professional-grade software, schools will enable students to explore their creativity, develop problem-solving skills, and communicate visually in compelling ways.

Anyone interested in participating in the program can visit ACDSee Educational Licensing for more information and to sign up. To qualify for the offer, users must be certified K-12 educators or faculty members and administrators at accredited higher education institutions currently engaged in teaching roles. Eligible organizations include government-recognized and accredited K-12 schools, higher education institutions, school districts, and departments of education.

Access remains valid as long as the person signing up maintains active eligibility. To keep track of that, ACDSee requires re-verification every three years.

More from TechRadar Pro

• These are the best photo editors around today
• Adobe users are furious about the company's terms of service change to help it train AI
• We tried out Adobe's latest design app, here's how AI changes creation

Adobe has been under fire lately, having been called out for its "shocking dismissal of photography" by the American Society of Media Photographers for some tone-deaf Photoshop ads it ran a few weeks ago. And now the software giant has been forced to defend itself again, after a social media outcry over some new Photoshop terms and conditions that started rolling out this week.

Over the past few days, a number of high-profile Photoshop users have expressed their dismay on X (formerly Twitter) about a new 'Updated Terms of Use' pop-up that they've been forced to accept. The new small print contains some seemingly alarming lines, including one that states "we may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review".

Adobe has now defended the new conditions in a new blog post. In short, Adobe claims that the slightly ambiguous legalese in its new small print has created an unnecessary furore, and that nothing has fundamentally changed. The two key takeaways are that Adobe says it "does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content" and that it will "never assume ownership of a customer's work".

On the latter point, Adobe explains that apps like Photoshop need to access our cloud-based content in order to "perform the functions they are designed and used for", like opening and editing files. The new terms and conditions also only impact cloud-based files, with the small print stating that "we [Adobe] don’t analyze content processed or stored locally on your device".

Adobe does also admit that its new small print could have been explained better, and also stated that "we will be clarifying the Terms of Use acceptance customers see when opening applications". But while the statement should help to allay some fears, other concerns will likely remain.

One of the main points raised on social media was concern about what Adobe's content review processes mean for work that's under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Adobe says in its statement that for work stored in the cloud, Adobe "may use technologies and other processes, including escalation for manual (human) review, to screen for certain types of illegal content".

That may not completely settle the privacy concerns of some Adobe users, then, although those issues are arguably applicable to using cloud storage in general, rather than Adobe specifically.

A crisis of trust?

This Adobe incident is another example of how the aggressive expansion of cloud-based services and AI tools is contributing to a crisis of trust between tech giants and software users – in some cases, understandably so.

On one hand, the convenience of cloud storage has been a massive boon for creatives – particularly for those with remote teams spread across the world – and AI tools like Generative Fill in Photoshop can also be big time-savers. 

But they can also come at a cost, and it remains the case that the only way to ensure true privacy is store your work locally rather than in the cloud. For many Photoshop users, that won't be an issue, but the furore will still no doubt see some looking for the best Photoshop alternatives that don't have such a big cloud component.

As for AI tools, Adobe remains the self-appointed torch-bearer for 'ethical' AI that isn't trained on copyrighted works, though it's landed in some controversies. For example, last month the estate of legendary photography Ansel Adams accused Adobe on Threads of selling AI-created imitations of his work.

In fairness to Adobe, it removed the work and stated that it "goes against our Generative AI content policy". But it again shows the delicate balancing act that the likes of Adobe are now in between rolling out powerful new AI-powered tools and retaining the trust of both users and creatives.

You might also like

• Adobe Lightroom's new Generative Remove AI tool makes Content-aware Fill feel basic – and gives you one less reason to use Photoshop
• Even Adobe Acrobat is getting an AI assistant now
• These are the best Photoshop alternatives of 2024

The 1990s was a period of fast-paced change and disruption for the desktop publishing industry. 

A swathe of different companies were bought, sold and merged together to reshape the foundations for what we see today – an industry dominated by Adobe. 

One of the most significant deals of this era was Adobe's merger with Aldus in 1994, which pioneered a number of key applications and developed others that were derived from pervious industry deals. It's difficult to see how we've gotten to a point at which Adobe is releasing products like the artificial intelligence (AI) powered imagine generator Firefly in Photoshop if such a deal hadn't happened three decades ago.

Creating a dynasty

Aldus, founded in 1984, released its game-changer of a product the following year with PageMaker, which relied on Adobe's PostScript page description language. It was perhaps the first spark of a relationship that culminated in the $500 million merger just ten years later. 

The PostSCript language had become the de facto standard for exchanging documents on printing and display devices, according to a New York Times report from the time. Its inclusion on the Apple Compuer laser printer, alongside the use of Aldus' Pagemaker for the Macintosh, allowed individual consumers to produce professional-grade documents at a fraction of the cost of typesetting services.

Analysts, at the time, said the merger would create a comprehensive product line for document creation, desktop publishing, prepress production and electronic document delivery. So, too, did Adobe go on to create a myriad of products spanning different formats and media from images to video, with tools and services handling different aspects of the production process.

After all, these two companies were "on a collision course for several years," according to Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story by Pamela Pfiffner. But while Adobe was relatively prospering, Aldus was struggling, and its flagship products weren't the market leaders in their respective categories.

When Aldus eventually found a partner with which to merge, Adobe, the two entities combined into Adobe Systems. Not all of Aldus' products, however, continued under the joint label, although there was an exception for the likes of PageMaker and After Effects. The last major release of PageMaker came in 2001, after which point InDesign became the chief product moving forwards.

As Linda Clarke, one of the original members of Adobe's graphics applications division, put it: "The Aldus acquisition was a huge turning point for the company. It changed the nature of Adobe."

More from TechRadar Pro

• Adobe's new beta Express app gives you Firefly AI image generation for free
• Adobe Acrobat adds generative AI so you can talk to your PDF
• These are the best Adobe alternatives

I get it, Kate Middleton, our best photo-editing intentions can sometimes go awry.

Every year around Christmas I hang an ornament on the tree featuring a photo of my family. There we are, all four of us, in one shot… except something is wrong with the photo. While we're all dressed in our winter best, we don't quite hang together as a unit. In fact, it becomes quite clear that this is not a natural group shot, and is something I cooked up in Photoshop because I needed a nice family photo for the ornament frame. No one is fooled when they look at it. 

Suffice to say, I feel for Kate, the Princess of Wales, who, in an apparent effort to convey normalcy in what might not be entirely normal times, did a bit of family portrait photo-editing wizardry that didn't all go according to plan. There are numerous artifacts in her final image, which had been shared widely over the weekend to celebrate Mother's Day in the UK – so many that the Royal Family eventually pulled the photo, and Middleton fessed up to having done some creative editing.

I'm not here to judge that effort or why she did it. No, I offer a helping hand, and a few tips on modern mobile and application-based technology that could help her, and you, avoid similar photo-editing mishaps.

The Best Shot

If the goal was simply to get all those enthusiastic faces together (all the kids smiling and happy, along with Kate's best look) then I think the Google Pixel 8 Pro's new Best Shot feature might have saved her a lot of trouble.

Best Shot works by letting you take a quick series of pictures from one position (no moving or you ruin it), and then choosing the best expressions from each shot, before combining them into one near-perfect master shot. If Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis weren't all smiling or laughing at once, Kate could have selected the biggest smiles from each image and combined them into one in a way that, thanks to AI, looks surprisingly natural.

This is a much better approach than trying to copy and paste people (or even parts of people) from one image to another and then doing your best to match hand and clothing placement. Using that method never ends well.

Magic Editor

Sometimes, it's not just the expressions you want to replace or edit. If you have more work to do – as it appears Kate did – then Google's Magic Editor (and Magic Eraser), also found on the Pixel 8 Pro, could help here.

While Magic Editor and Magic Eraser won't let you combine disparate photos, the tools can help you make the most of what you've got and even clean up a bad Photoshop edit, and all using AI. 

You'll find the tools on a Pixel 8 phone under Photos/Edit/Tools.

If, for instance, you want to remove some extra coat fabric showing in a space where there should be nothing but the background, you can use Magic Eraser to select the offending object by drawing over it with a semi-transparent digital marker, delete it, and have the Pixel 8 Pro automatically replace the removed fabric with a natural-looking background.

Or, if you see a blurred hand that looks unnatural, you can un-blur the fuzzy parts of your photo.

Firefly to the rescue

Sometimes, you need to use the right tools in Adobe Photoshop. I, too, have overused the Clone tool, which lets you take an element, background, or texture from one part of a photo and copy it in another place to, for instance, cover up an errant few strands of hair. The problem with this feature is that it's a bit of a blunt object.

Adobe Photoshop now includes Firefly (as does Photoshop Express), which lets you use generative AI to fill in and extend image elements in ways that often look as natural as (or even better than) the original photos.

Is your photo missing part of a coast zipper? Delete the bad-looking part, select the real zipper plus the space left by your cut, and ask Firefly to fill it in. You will probably have a perfect-looking coat zipper. Do you want to replace that coat fabric with the grass from the background? Delete the grass, select the area, and then tell Firefly how you want it to fill the space.

As for that hair falling unnaturally on top of another subject's hair, you can select those strands, then select the hair you want to extend and that blank space, ask Firefly to generate the rest, and you'll have a full head of flowing hair.

I'm not suggesting these tools will solve every photo-editing issue. There are a wealth of powerful tools in Adobe Photoshop, and a shocking amount of power in Google's AI editing tools on the Pixel 8. Plus, you can find a lot of third-party mobile apps that you can download and try. But the tools and features I've outlined here might do the least damage and the maximum good.

Ultimately, we want our photos to match what we see in our mind's eye. I'm sure that's all Kate hoped to achieve – she probably just chose the wrong tools.

You might also like

• The best free photo editors for PC and Mac for
• 'There is no such thing as a real picture': Samsung defends AI photo ...
• Best photo editing apps: the best phone and tablet apps ...
• This is my go-to photo editor on mobile that's completely free, no ...

No-one really wants to make a New Year's resolution, so this year we recommend committing to a tech resolution instead. These friendlier commitments aren't about self-improvement, giving up indulgences or hitting gyms – instead, they're little projects to help fortify you against the looming threat of January. And best of all, they all involve tech.

We polled the TechRadar team and our many contributors to find out what tech resolutions they'll be making for 2024 – and the results are below. The ideas vary wildly, from an in-depth plan to get back into Blu-rays to another writer's vow to restore their family's old photos using Photoshop.

For every laudable commitment to rediscovering comics on tablets or becoming a board games super-nerd, there are more sensible resolutions too – including one writer's explanation of how they're finally sorting out their passwords nightmare, plus another's plan to save money in 2024 with some nifty Chrome extensions.

Whichever part of your tech life needs some attention or a shot of new year's enthusiasm, you'll find some valuable advice and ideas on how to fix it below. And if it all goes wrong, you can always blame the gadgets...

1. 2024 is the year I feed my OLED TV with 4K Blu-rays, and you should too

Yes, the best streaming services are convenient, user-friendly and offer impressive image quality at times. But they still have notable weaknesses – and we're not just talking about movies vanishing from catalogues or downloads disappearing from your account. 

Read about why TechRadar's Matt Bolton (Managing Editor, Entertainment) has decided to bring 4K Blu-Rays back into his life in 2024 – and why you should consider doing the same, particularly given how easy it is to find second-hand bargains.

• Read the full story: 2024 is the year I feed my OLED TV with 4K Blu-rays, and you should too

2. I’ve had enough of password frustrations – here’s how I’m finally fixing them in 2024

Passwords aren't fun – in fact, they're now positively infuriating if you don't have them under control. 

TechRadar contributor Darren Allen has finally snapped and made a grand plan to tame them in 2024. You can benefit from his wisdom and research in this round-up, covering everything from his pick of the best password managers to his plan to embrace biometrics.

• Read the full story: I’ve had enough of password frustrations – here’s how I’m finally fixing them in 2024

3. I'm a Photoshop pro – here's how to restore your old family photos in 2024

Photo editing software has become ridiculously good in the age of generative AI – and one of the benefits is how easy it now is to restore old photos that are either low-resolution, damaged, lacking in color, or a combination of the above.

TechRadar contributor Chris Rowlands gives you a step-by-step tour to restoring those old family photos in this guide, covering everything from scanning them with your phone to retouching those blemishes. If you don't subscribe to Photoshop, there are also some tips on how to do it for free with online tools, too.

• Read the full story: I'm a Photoshop pro – here's how to restore your old family photos this Christmas

4. Escaping the algorithm – 5 new ways I'm planning to discover movies and music this year

Sometimes it feels like you're trapped in a feedback loop of the same movie, TV and music recommendations, all unimaginatively served up by an apparently all-knowing algorithm. How do you break free and go off piste?

TechRadar contributor David Nield has been wondering the same thing and has made this plan to discover the untrodden streaming worlds that Netflix and Spotify tend to ignore. Read about the podcasts, newsletters, subreddits, iPad magazines and more that could help you join him in 2024.

• Read the full story: Escaping the algorithm – 5 new ways I'm planning to discover movies and music this year

5. How to start using ChatGPT in 2024 – 7 tips for beginners

The internet loves nothing more than telling you how far you're falling behind by not using ChatGPT. But what if you've been really busy doing other stuff in 2023? 

Don't worry – if your New Year's resolution is to get up to speed with AI chatbots, we've made the perfect place for you to start. Our beginner's guide to ChatGPT will tell you how to write more effective prompts, make custom instructions and much more. 

• Read the full story: How to use ChatGPT – 7 tips for beginners

6. I’m ditching Spotify for Tidal in 2024 – here’s why you should too

TechRadar contributor, and former What Hi Fi? staffer, Verity Burns has been a loyal Spotify subscriber for nearly 15 years. So why is her tech resolution to switch to Tidal in 2024?

As with any long-term relationship, it's complicated – but you can find out why Tidal now holds such allure for music fans, and why it could make sense for you to switch, in this helpful breakdown of music streaming in 2024.

• Read the full story: I’m ditching Spotify for Tidal in 2024 – here’s why you should too

7. In 2024 I’m using my cheap tablet to rediscover my love of comic books

After an eight-year break from his X-Men and Spider-Man addiction, TechRadar's Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector is reinvigorating his long-held love for comics in 2024 – with the help of a cheap, trusty Lenovo tablet.

Read about how Marvel Unlimited is going to fuel his comic book needs in 2024 and why the broader lesson of his project is that tech doesn’t need to be perfect, just perfect for you.

• Read the full story: In 2024 I’m using my cheap tablet to rediscover my love of comic books

8. Why it's a great time to buy second-hand camera lenses – plus our top picks

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that only that new piece of impossibly expensive mirrorless glass can take your photography to new heights. But these days, second-hand lenses offer incredible value – and in this guide we show you how to navigate the minefield to land some bargains. 

Whether you prefer wide-angle, telephoto or zoom lenses, our guide takes you through the best places to buy used lenses, the important things to check, and which lenses are offering particularly good value right now for Canon, Nikon and Sony fans.

• Read the full story: Why it's a great time to buy second-hand camera lenses – plus our top picks

9. I’m finally going to use these Chrome extensions to save me money in 2024

It's shaping up to be another financially-trying year for many of us. But rather than staring dolefully at mushrooming bills, TechRadar contributor Darren Allen has resolved to find ways to claw back a little cash  – and one of those things is harnessing the power of Chrome extensions.

Sure, they may not make you a millionaire, but the many shopping assistants, voucher finders and price-watching tools available now can certainly help you make some decent savings – and this guide rounds up some of the best Chrome extensions for doing just that.

• Read the full story: I’m finally going to use these Chrome extensions to save me money in 2024

10. 5 ways I'll be using my Apple Watch to run my life in 2024 

The Apple Watch is probably best-known for its fitness tracking, but did you know about its impressive range of other life-helping skills? 

TechRadar contributor and Apple expert Lloyd Coombes does – and he's written about the ones he'll be using maintain maintain good habits and keep his life running smoothly 2024. If you got an Apple Watch for Christmas, this is a fine primer on some of the smartwatch's lesser-known talents. 

• Read the full story: 5 ways I'll be using my Apple Watch to run my life in 2024

11. I'm a huge board games fan – here are the 7 best ones to help you survive January

In our book, a new year's resolution can be as simple as finding a way to get through the harsh realities of January – and there are few better ways of doing that than by pretending the Christmas holidays haven't ended with some brilliant board games.

Some call it denial, others a wholly necessary response to the least fun month of the year – and TechRadar's Hamish Hector (our resident board game fanatic) is firmly in the latter camp. Join him as he takes you on an uplifting tour around the finest board games you can buy right now.

• Read the full story: I'm a huge board games fan – here are the 7 best ones to help you survive January

12. 5 ways I'm using tech to survive January and romanticize my life in 2024

If board games aren't up your street, there are other emergency ways to help you survive January. TechRadar contributor and author Becca Caddy, who's literally written the book on how to live peacefully with your tech (see Screen Time), explains how she'll be using gadgets to 'romanticize' her life in 2024.

Whether you fancy starting a digital journal, experimenting with soundscapes or basking in finely-tuned smart lights, put aside some time to leaf through her ideas – before heading out for a phone-free walk through a forest.  

• Read the full story: 5 ways I'm using tech to survive January and romanticize my life in 2024

13. How to make your home theater setup sing in 2024 with a few simple tweaks

Sometimes, a new year's resolution is best spent on your favorite piece of tech. So if your own life is perfectly calibrated and singing beautifully (if so, please tell us how) it's time to make sure your home theater is doing the same in 2024 with these handy tips.

TechRadar contributor and former What Hi Fi? staffer Verity Burns tells you how to do everything from perfecting your TV settings (including which modes to avoid), fine-tuning your speaker placement, and arranging your room for the best audio and visual experience. What a way to see in the new year.

• Read the full guide: How to make your home theater setup sing in 2024 with a few simple tweaks

14. New year, new music – here are 7 ways I’m super-charging Spotify in 2024

While some TechRadar writers are ditching Spotify for Tidal, others are going in the other direction and fully embracing Spotify's music discovery powers. Rowan Davies, TechRadar's Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer, is doing just that and has revealed his seven-stage plan for escaping musical echo chambers and finding hidden gems in 2024.

Rowan has the Spotify Wrapped stats to back up his credentials – 48,650 minutes of listening in 2023, including 1,633 artists across 71 genres. We're also talking about a Beyonce top 0.01%-er and a former music editor here – so if you're looking to become a Spotify power user in 2024, this is the place to start.

• Read the full story: New year, new music – here are 7 ways I’m super-charging Spotify in 2024

You might also like

• The 15 best Spotify tips and tricks – how to master the streaming service
• Google names the best Chrome extensions of 2023 with a glaring omission
• ChatGPT explained: everything you need to know about the AI chatbot

Leafing through photo albums at Christmas is guaranteed to leave your whole clan feeling nostalgic. But even cherished memories don’t have the same effect when they’re cracked and faded after decades of imperfect storage. Luckily, with the help of a few Photoshop tips and tricks, it’s easy to bring life and color back to festive family snaps.

From neural filters to automated scratch-removal tools, Photoshop is well-equipped to help you restore your old family photos this Christmas. If you’re familiar with Adobe’s creative software, you should find it straightforward to effectively revive your prints in just a few steps. What’s more, once you’ve learnt how to do it for Christmas images, you can apply your new skills to other snaps in your family archive.

So whether you want to surprise fellow family members with a photographic gift, or simply restore forgotten Christmas photos to their former glory, this guide will walk you through all the ways to go about it – starting with how to digitize your photo prints. 

How to digitize your old family photos

Before you can restore your old family photos in Photoshop, you’ll need to make a digital version. There are a few ways to achieve this. The easiest is using Google’s PhotoScan app. Available for iOS and Android, it lets you capture glare-free photos of printed images in just a few seconds. Features such as edge-detection, smart rotation and perspective correction ensure you get a clean, flat image to edit.

If you have a printer with a built-in scanner, you can also use this to create high-resolution copies of your old family photos. Output resolution will depend on the quality of your scanner. Some scanners feature a dedicated photo mode, but if your photo prints have a gloss finish, you may still need to correct for glare in the scanned image.

A third option is to use a mirrorless or DSLR camera to photograph your prints. This can produce sharp images, but there are a few things to be aware of. You’ll need to ensure prints are set flat on a surface and evenly lit. You’ll also want to take a square-on photo to avoid perspective issues as much as possible, something a tripod can help with.

How to restore family photos using neural filters

If you’re using Adobe Photoshop CC, you'll have access to a neural filter called Photo Restoration. You can read our in-depth review of the Photo Restoration filter here but, in short, it uses a trained AI model to analyze and revive prints. It’s the closest thing to an automated fix for film photos. It’s still in beta, but it’s incredibly powerful. 

Start by opening your digitized family photo in Photoshop. Then go to Filters > Neural Filters > Photo Restoration. If it’s your first time using the filter, you’ll need to download it first. Note that the file runs to several hundred megabytes.

When enabled, the filter will automatically get to work. Depending on the condition of your source image, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. Either way, it’s worth the wait: from our experience, you should see a dramatic improvement in your old family photos. It repairs damage, enhances color and refines detail remarkably well. It can even fix issues in the original shot, such as motion blur.

After the AI’s first pass, you can fine-tune the result using the adjustment sliders under the Photo Restoration tab. These include options to adjust the intensity of the enhancement and increase the level of scratch reduction. You’ll want to do this, as it’s a seriously effective way to remove imperfections from a scanned print.

You can also make tweaks to how heavily noise and artifacts are reduced. Careful input here is the key to achieving a realistic-looking image. Dial everything up high and the input of AI can become noticeable. But keep it subtle and you can easily create a remarkable restoration in a few clicks.

How to restore color in old family photos

The Photo Restoration tool isn’t the end of the line for your old family photos. If you’re working on a black and white snap, you can use another neural filter in Photoshop to turn it a full-color photo. Go to Filters > Neural Filters > Colorize.

When downloaded and enabled by checking Auto color image, this will do its best to read the contents of your film photo and accurately re-color it. From our time using the tool, it works best with skin tones in images where there’s a clear contrast against the background. It generally does an excellent job of subtly saturating subjects in old photos, while leaving surroundings gently faded.

You can apply different color profiles within the filter. Compare Retro high contrast with Retro faded and you’ll notice a marked difference in intensity. You can also make individual adjustments to profile strength, saturation and color levels.

Once you’re happy with the filter’s work, return to the main workspace for further refinement. The Colorize filter won’t always deliver the hues you expected, especially if you know what the colors in an image should be (such as those of a Christmas sweater). Here’s where Color Balance comes in.

From the Adjustments panel, select Color Balance. This will create a new adjustment layer. You can use it to selectively tweak the color tones across shadows, mid-tones and highlights, allowing you to get closer to the look you want for your film snaps.

You can adjust colors further through the Hue/Saturation adjustment panel, change the black point via Levels, and fine-tune contrast using Curves. You might also want to apply an Unsharp Mask to better define the edges in your image. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask, then set the Amount, Radius and Threshold to your preference.

Whatever adjustments you make, it’s best practice to apply each on a separate layer. This way, you can easily change or remove them individually to perfect the overall result.

Work sensitively with these tools and you’ll be most of the way towards a wonderfully restored old photo for Christmas. When making adjustments, it can help to have a quality reference image to compare to. This could be a clear, undamaged print that’s already a family favorite, or a modern digital shot with a look you’d like to aim for.

How to remove blemishes from old family photos

Photoshop’s Photo Restoration filter is very effective at removing dust, scratches and blemishes from old family photos. But it’s not the only tool at your disposal. 

The Dust & Scratches tool allows you to make fine-grain adjustments to counteract any cracks present in scanned snaps. Go to Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches.

The trick is to slide the Radius slider far enough to make scratches disappear from the preview window, but no further. Then drag the Threshold bar far enough to bring back some of the sharpness lost.

Any remaining blemishes will need to be removed manually. Start with the Spot Healing Brush. In the top toolbar, select Content-Aware and check the box labelled Sample All Layers. Set the hardness to 50% and the size small enough for precision work. Then it’s a case of carefully painting areas that you wish to repair.

If this doesn’t completely remove scratches from your scanned print, try the Clone Stamp tool. From the top toolbar, set the sample to Current & Below. Hold the Alt/Option key and click to select a sample point. It’s best to take a reference from as close as possible to the target mark. Then carefully paint over the cracks.

How to restore old family photos for free

If you don’t have Photoshop, there are a few apps and programs you can use to restore your old family photos for free this Christmas. 

We’ve put together a detailed guide here, but our top recommendations are VanceAI on the web and Face Restore if you’d like an AI-powered app (for iOS and Android). Both feature free, albeit restricted, tiers and both have tools that can help to restore old photos. 

Another AI-powered online option is Fotor, which has a dedicated image restoration tool that can transform blurry monochrome prints into sharp, colorized images. 

You might also like

• Photoshop’s new AI-powered tricks will fix your biggest mistakes
• Midjourney unveils its own version of Photoshop's top AI tool
• This AI-powered Photoshop rival is the end of photography as we know it

Adobe's browser-based 'Photoshop on the web' has finally launched after spending two years in beta – but the photo-editing tool still requires a hefty monthly subscription, despite previous rumors of a freemium version.

The good news for Creative Cloud subscribers who need a web-based version of Photoshop – hello, Chromebook fans – is that Photoshop on the web has launched with two of Adobe's most useful AI-powered tools, Generative Fill and Generative Expand.

The former can add new objects to your images with a simple text prompt, while the latter lets you broaden an image to add more information to a scene (it's a bit like a reverse of the traditional crop tool).

While Photoshop on the web is a more basic version of the desktop program, these tools do sit alongside staples like 'remove background', the spot healing brush, and layers-based editing. As images are saved in Creative Cloud, you can also access any in-progress files from any computer and keep working on them.

Naturally, there are lots of missing features, but Adobe says that the patch tool, pen tool, smart object support, polygonal lasso, and more are all coming "soon". What isn't coming, sadly, is a free version of web-based Photoshop – the feature's FAQ page still says that "there isn't a free version of Photoshop on the web". We've asked Adobe if this is likely to change and will update this article when we hear back.

That's a slight shame, as there were strong rumors last year that Photoshop on the web would be coming as a freemium option, following some tests with Canadian users. That still looks unlikely right now, so the only way to get Photoshop on the web is to pay for a full Photoshop plan ($20.99 / £19.97 / AU$29.99 per month). 

Analysis: Photoshop remains a premium editor

Despite the eventual arrival of Photoshop on the web, Adobe remains reluctant to open it up to a wider audience with a freemium or even standalone, subsidized version. 

This means the best free photo editors – most notably, Canva and GIMP – will remain popular choices for anyone who needs a simple tool for lighter image editing. Canva is known for its user-friendliness, and while some of its tools (like background removal) need a paid subscription (from S119 / £99 / AU$165 per year) this is still cheaper than Photoshop.

Rather than a heavily watered-down version of Photoshop, Adobe instead appears to be packing the program's web-based equivalent with some pretty powerful features, including those AI-powered generative tools.

Unfortunately, from November 1, Adobe will start introducing what it calls "generative credits" for features like Generative Fill and Generative Expand, a confusing system that could restrict how many times you can use them per month.

According to Adobe's FAQ on generative credits, a Photoshop subscriber will get 500 of these credits per month, with Generative Fill and Expand counting as one credit. We'll likely get more clarification on this closer to when it rolls out. But it's a reminder that as impressive as new AI-powered features are, they also come with big processing demands for the likes of Adobe.

You might also like

• Photoshop has a new AI-powered fix for your compositional mistakes
• How to use Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop
• Midjourney unveils its own version of Photoshop's top AI tool

School season is right around the corner and if trying Adobe applications is on your to-do list, then this deal is perfect for you. For a limited time only, Adobe is offering a one-month free trial for the Creative Cloud.

For those in the know, Adobe Creative Cloud is a game-changer. It grants exclusive access to a plethora of Adobe's cutting-edge applications from Photoshop, to In Design, to Lightroom to name just a few. 

The Student and Teacher Creative Cloud plan is usually $19.99 (£16.24) per month for the first year but with this deal, you can start exploring and learning new skills for free.

Why choose Adobe Creative Cloud?

Adobe has made it easier for all creative enthusiasts to unlock Adobe apps with a single subscription. The Creative Cloud acts as the central hub and brings it all together, providing seamless integration between apps for an efficient workflow.

You gain access to 1 TB of cloud storage and the Adobe Stock library of photos and videos. Creative Cloud also allows you to collaborate with your class-mates or colleagues, and consists of a wealth of tutorials for you to explore. 

In terms of value for your money, Adobe Creative Cloud is quite good as it unlocks a lot of high-end Adobe tools. From online storage to collaborative features and a vast collection of cutting-edge apps, it's a one-stop shop for creatives. Plus the regular updates ensure you're always equipped with the latest tools.

Claim this offer now. Just visit Adobe Creative Cloud, sign up for the Student and Teacher plan, and see what you can create. Remember, this deal ends on September 19. 

Photoshop has matched its growing number of AI-powered rivals with a new feature that lets you expand images with a few clicks.

Like the existing Generative Fill, the new Generative Expand feature – available to Photoshop (Beta) users – lets you extend an existing image in any direction, with the software filling in the extra space either automatically or based on the guidance of your prompts.

If you already know how to use Generative Fill in Photoshop, then you'll quickly be able to pick up Generative Expand. It's based on the same AI generative tech, but instead works with the Crop tool (rather than the Marquee or Lasso tools).

In fact, it's a bit like using the Crop tool in reverse. Rather than cropping images smaller, the feature lets you fix compositional mistakes or effectively switch to a wider angle view. You just select the Crop tool from the toolbar, go to the Fill menu in the Options bars, and select Generative Expand.

Once you've done that, it's a case of dragging the corner and side handles to the size you want, then clicking the 'Generative Expand' button. You can leave Photoshop to guess what it should added to the image (which it's very good at, based on our experiences with Generative Fill) or add a text prompt to give it a helping hand.

From the demos so far, it looks like another very useful AI feature, with photo-realistic results. Like its rivals – for example, Midjourney's 'outpainting' feature – there is are potential mistakes and artifacts, but Photoshop also gives you three variations of your expanded image to choose from.

Adobe now has a full guide to using Generative Expand – and if you aren't already using Photoshop (Beta), you can download it by going to your Creative Cloud download app and clicking 'Beta apps' on the left-hand side.

Playing AI catchup

A whole range of apps have been offering image expansion, or 'outpainting' as Midjourney calls it, for a while now – so it may look like Photoshop is a bit behind the curve here.

But with the launch of Firefly – Adobe's family of tools to take on Midjourney and Dall-E – the company has shown it's keen to tread carefully in the world of AI image generation. This is understandable given the emergence of class-action lawsuits against the likes of Midjourney from artists, who claim some models are based on copyrighted works.

Adobe has been keen to stress that Firefly-powered tools like Generative Expand and Fill have been trained on Adobe Stock images, openly-licensed content, or public domain content where the copyright has expired. 

This means that pros who uses the likes of Photoshop can use its generative AI tools without any concerns about copyright infringement, even if those tools are a bit slower to roll out than on some rivals.

Google is also happy with Adobe's more ethical approach to AI, with the search giant announcing back in May that it would be integrating Firefly image generation into its Bard chatbot. So far, that still hasn't rolled out, so we've asked Adobe for an update on when that will happen and will update this article when we hear back. 

Adobe Photoshop Firefly Generative AI is so good, it's addictive. 

That's not supposed to be the case with a powerful productivity tool like Adobe Photoshop. Preferably you open the Mac or Windows application, do your photo editing task, close it, and walk away. It's not a toy, it's not fun. Is it?

With the new Generative Fill tool, though, Photoshop is fun and ridiculously powerful. I've now spent hours completing, or letting the AI complete, all manner of images.

Released late last month, this new beta version of Photoshop looks and works a lot like previous Creative Cloud versions, but as soon as you start messing with subjects and backgrounds, the new Firefly-powered generative fill tools steps in to help you utterly transform your images with nothing more than a single click.

Having used Photoshop for decades, I know my way around the app and thought quite a bit about how I might use these new tools, but it wasn't until I saw a TikTok where someone 'completed' famous meme images using Photoshop Beta Generative AI that I knew I had to try it out myself.

I started by finding almost a dozen classic meme images (Strutting Leonardo DiCaprio, Sad Keanu, Success Kid, Distracted Boyfriend, Disaster Girl) and then, through some experimentation, figured out how to expand the frame to imagine the rest of these iconic and often-used images.

In order to imagine what might be, for instance, going on around the Distracted Boyfriend, I had to expand the canvas of the image and then reposition the original so there's ample white space (background).

Once I'd established a bit of white space around the original image, I could select it with the magic selector and then select the generative fill button that automatically appeared.

Doing so launched a prompt box where I could describe how I wanted the Firefly-powered AI to fill in the photo. I found, however, that the system usually worked best when I left that space blank and just hit "Generate."

AI image generation usually takes about 15 seconds on a MacBook Air M2. It's worth noting that Adobe Photoshop Generative AI relies on a cloud-based system, which means it won't work unless you're connected to the Internet.

In the case of the Ermahgerd Girl (an image of an extremely enthusiastic girl holding her favorite Goose Bumps books), the results were shockingly good. Adobe Generative AI completed the background and crafted an entire body and fashion ensemble out of little more than portions of a white shirt and a vest.

I actually ran the Generative AI three times and got different outfits and backgrounds. All were pretty convincing and not just because the AI hit the fashion aesthetics. The resulting image followed the overall photo quality and tone and seamlessly blended it all together.

It's not perfect. The girl's fingers appear blended together and I can't tell if one of her hands has five or seven fingers.

On Distracted Boyfriend, Adobe Generative AI did a better job with the fingers and created an even more convincing overall image with a couple of exceptions. There are some small gaps between the original image and where it was generated and the legs of two of the subjects may have blended into a single, twisted, jean-covered limb.

Some of the generative images were both convincing and comical. The resulting Shibu dog's body blended was turned into a couch-covering throw blanket.

Adobe Generative AI almost perfectly completed Scumbag Steve's pants and fur jacket and made convincing work of the finished doorway we never saw before.

There were some truly bizarre results like the disaster girl image that Adobe Generative AI turned into a full blockbuster movie-worthy calamity.

For Sad Keanu, I started with a fairly tight crop of the actor on the bench and let Adobe Generative AI finish the bench and the rest of the actor's body. At a glance, the picture looks solid and quite similar to the full-uncropped image. Close examination, though, reveals that the bench is poorly constructed and Keanu appears to be sitting on air. Also, his fingers are a bit sausage-like. The AI did manage to put what looks like a burrito in his hand, but there was no neglected lunch on the bench beside him.

Later, I tried Adobe Generative AI on some of my own photos. The results were often quite good, though it does seem to work best when the subject is closer to the center of the original frame.

Clearer images also work better. The original Real Housewives image is a little blurry, mostly because the subjects are engaged in a shouting match. The Generative AI's first attempt at completing the image failed miserably. For a second attempt, I typed in "Complete the women." The result was comically insane.

Finally, I used the AI selection tool to remove subjects and essentially de-meme-mify some pictures. Disaster Girl, for instance, hits differently when you remove the little girl.

Overall, results ranged from realistic with only barely noticeable mistakes and oddities to pleasingly artistic and sometimes a little plastic. Some look quite plausible at a glance but, upon closer examination, appeared grotesque.

If you think these results are not nearly good enough to use, just wait. This is only the first beta and Firefly and Adobe Photoshop Generative AI is guaranteed to get better. By the time this app moves from beta to final release, we may not be able to tell the difference between original memes and those fleshed out with a single mouse click.

Adobe Photoshop has been the gold standard in photo editing for over three decades, so it was only a matter of time until it embraced the tricks seen in the best AI art generators – and it's now done just that in the form of a new tool called Generative Fill.

The new tool, which lets you extend images or add objects to them using text prompts, certainly isn't the first AI-powered feature we've seen in Photoshop. Generative Fill is also a user-friendly development of existing Adobe tools, like Content Aware Fill, but it's also one of the most significant new Photoshop features we’ve seen for years.

That’s because it leans on the power of Adobe Firefly, the company’s new generative AI engine, to help you fix big compositional mistakes or completely reinvent an image’s contents. In Adobe’s demos, images in portrait orientation are instantly turned into ones in landscape – with Photoshop simply inventing the sides of the photo based on the original image.

While some of those examples are quite subtle, others have a very obvious art aesthetic. For example, a photo of a corgi is turned into one with very obviously fake bubbles and a van in the background. 

Adobe clearly sees Generative Fill as a tool for both beginners and pros, but the new text-to-image prompt box is certainly a useful touch for those who don’t know Photoshop’s existing tools. You can use this to add small details to an image or completely change its background – in another demo, a deer is moved from its forest background to a city thanks to the prompt ‘wet alley at night’.

Of course, none of this will be new to fans of Midjourney or Dall-E, which have helped spark this year’s boom in text-to-image generation. 

But Adobe is keen to stress that AI tools like Generative Fill model have only been trained on Adobe Stock images, openly-licensed content, and public domain content where the copyright has expired. This means they can be used for commercial use without the threat of class-action lawsuits from artists who claim some AI models have stolen their work.

While Generative Fill is only rolling out to the full Photoshop app in the “second half of 2023”, there are a couple of ways you can try it out now. First, it’s available in Photoshop’s desktop beta app, which you can get by going to the Creative Cloud desktop app, choosing Beta apps in the left sidebar, then installing it from there.

The feature is also available as a module within the web-only Adobe Firefly, which was also recently added to Google Bard. To use Firefly in Bard, you can simply write your image request (for example, 'make an image of a unicorn and a cake at a kid's party') and it'll do the rest. What a time to be alive. 

Analysis: Photoshop battles its new AI rivals

Like Google, Adobe is a giant incumbent that's under attack from AI upstarts like OpenAI and Midjourney. While Firefly and Photoshop's Generative Fill aren't doing things we haven't seen before, they are doing them in a measured way that sidesteps any copyright issues and helps maintains its reputation.

Photoshop's embrace of generative AI also brings these tools fully into the mainstream. The image editor may not be the dominant force it was before the likes of Canva, Affinity Photo and GIMP arrived to offer more affordable alternatives, but it remains one of the best photo editors around and certainly one of the most widely used.

From Adobe's early demos, it looks like Generative Fill is in its early days and produces mixed results, depending on your tastes. In some images, the effects are subtle and realistic, while in others – particularly images where large parts of entirely AI-generated – the results are clearly AI-generated and may not date very well.

Still, the arrival of Generative AI alongside other new features like the Remove Tool –another development of the Photoshop's existing ability to let you eliminate unwanted objects – is only a good thing for those who aren't familiar with the app's sometimes arcane interface. 

And it's another step towards the AI tools, like DragGAN, that will completely change photography as we know it.        

Photoshop has been steadily adding AI-powered tools to its menus in recent years, but an incredible new demo from an independent research team shows where the best photo editors are heading next.

DragGAN may not be a fully-fledged consumer product yet, but the research paper (picked up on Twitter by AI researchers @_akhaliq and @icreatelife) shows the kinds of reality-warping photo manipulation that's going to be possible very soon. This AI-powered tech will again challenge our definition of what a photo actually is.

While we've seen similar photo editing effects before – most notably in Photoshop tools like Perspective Warp – the DragGAN demo takes the idea and user interface to a new level. As the examples below show, DragGAN lets you precisely manipulate photos to change their subject's expressions, body positions and even minor details like reflections.

The results aren't always perfect, but they are impressive – and that's because DragGAN (whose name is a combination of 'drag' and 'generative adversarial network') actually generates new pixels based on the surrounding context and where you place the 'drag' points.

Photoshop's neural filters, particularly those available in the app's beta version, have dabbled in similar effects for a while, for example giving you sliders for 'happy' and 'anger' expressions for tweaking portrait images. DxO software like Photolab also has U Point technology that lets you point at the part of a photo that you'd like to make local adjustments on.

But the power of the DragGAN demo is that it combines both concepts in a pretty user-friendly way, letting you pick the part of a photo you want to change and then completely changing your subject's pose, expression and more with very realistic results. 

When a refined version of this technology ultimately lands on smartphones, imperfect photos will be a thing of the past – as will the idea of a photo being a record of a real moment captured in time.

DragGAN also offers more granular controls, too. If you don't want to change the entire photo, you can apply a mask to a particular area – for example, your dog's head – and the algorithm will only affect that selected area. That level of control should also help reduce artifacts and errors.

The research team has also promised that in the near future it plans "to extend point-based editing to 3D generative models.” Until then, expect to see this kind of reality-warping photo editing improve at a rapid pace in some of the best Photoshop alternatives soon. 

Analysis: The next Photoshop-style revolution

These AI-powered photo editing tricks have echoes of the first early demos of Photoshop over 35 years ago – and will likely have the same level of impact, both culturally and on the democratization of photo editing.

In 1987, the co-creator of Adobe Photoshop John Knoll took the photo above – one of the most significant of the last century – on a Tahiti beach and used it to demo the incredible tools that would appear in the world's most famous photo editing app.

Now we're seeing some similarly momentous demos of image-manipulating tools, from Google's Magic Eraser and Face Unblur to Photoshop's new Remove Tool, which lets you remove unwanted objects in your snaps.

But this DragGAN demo, while only at the research paper phase, does take the whole concept of 'photo retouching' up a notch. It's reforming, rather than retouching, the contents of our photos, using the original expression or pose simply as a starting point for something completely different.

Photographers may argue that this is more digital art than 'drawing with light' (the phrase that gives photography its name). But just like the original Photoshop, these AI-powered tools will change photography as we know it – whether we want to embrace them or not. 

YouTube has seen a recent surge in the number of videos containing harmful links to infostealers in their descriptions, with many using AI-generated personas to fool viewers into trusting them. 

Cyber intelligence firm CloudSEK reports that, since November 2022, there has been a massive 200-300% increase in content uploaded to the video hosting website that dupes viewers into installing well-known malware such as Vidar, RedLine and Raccoon. 

The videos pretend to be tutorials showing how to download illegal copies of popular paid-for design software for free, such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Autodesk 3ds Max, and AutoCAD. 

Appearing trustworthy

The tutorial videos have been growing in sophistication, from screen recordings and audio-only walkthroughs, to now using AI to create a realistic depiction of a person guiding the viewer through the process, all in an attempt to appear more trustworthy.

CloudSEK notes that AI-generated videos in general are on the rise, used for legitimate educational, recruitment and promotional purposes, but now for nefarious ends as well.

Infostealers, as the name suggests, penetrate a user's system and steal valuable personal information, such as passwords and payment details, and are spread via malicious downloads and links, such as those in the description of videos as in this case. This data is then uploaded to the threat actor's server. 

CloudSEK address the fact that,with 2.5 billion users a month, YouTube is a prime target for threat actors who, in order to eschew the platform's automated content review process, work to deceive the algorithm in various ways.

These include using region-specific tags, adding fake comments to make videos seem legitimate, and simply swarming the platform with multiple videos to compensate for any removed and banned videos. CloudSEK found that 5-10 of these malicious videos are uploaded every hour. 

In order to optimize for SEO, many hidden links are also used, as well as making use of random keywords in various languages so that the YouTube algorithm ends up recommending them.

Also, in order to cover up the malicious nature of the links, link shortening services such as bit.ly are used, as well as links to file hosting services such as MediaFire.

“The threat of infostealers is rapidly evolving and becoming more sophisticated," said CloudSEK researcher Pavan Karthick. "In a concerning trend, these threat actors are now utilizing AI-generated videos to amplify their reach, and YouTube has become a convenient platform for their distribution."

CloudSEK suggests that "traditional string-based rules will prove ineffective against malware that dynamically generates strings and/or uses encrypted strings."

Instead, it recommends that firms adopt a more manual approach, where the tactics and techniques of threat actors are closely monitored in order to correctly identify threats. 

In addition, CloudSEK suggests that awareness campaigns should be conducted, sharing simple advice such as refraining from clicking on unknown links and using multi-factor authentication to sure up accounts, ideally with an authenticator app. 

• Use the best firewall to keep your business safe

Photoshop has been pushed out of the limelight by text-to-image wizards like Dall-E in recent months. But it also has some clever AI tricks of its own – including a new 'Photo Restoration' tool that can fix your old photos, and even colorize them, with one click.

The so-called 'neural filter' (Adobe's name for its AI-powered tools) has been in Photoshop's beta version since June, but recently migrated to the full desktop version of the app. 

'Photo Restoration' offers to restore aged, torn and faded photos back to their former glory. Of course, this was possible in the past, but involved either cheap and cheerful apps (which served up equivalent results), or intimate knowledge of the clone stamp and channel separator in Photoshop.

The tool is still currently beta and is an optional 800MB download – you can find it by opening an image, clicking 'Filters' in the menu bar, then choosing Neural Filters. But should you let it loose on your old family photos? And can it really save you hours of painstaking work? I tried it out on a few of the TechRadar team's scratched, stained and dog-eared snaps to find out...

What Photoshop's 'Photo Restoration' tool do?

It’s fair to say that I came to Photoshop's 'Photo Restoration' filter with a sense of seen-it-all-before cynicism. AI photo editing has been around for a while, and top-quality results have long been thin on the ground. 

Then I ran the 'Photo Restoration' filter and it’s fair to say my jaw hasn't left the ground since. Even left totally to its default settings, the Photo Restoration filter offered a definite, obvious improvement on every aged image I ran through it. And it may, in fact, offer a few tools that will even improve modern images.

At a minimum, the 'Photo Restoration' filter aims to do a few things. Color shifts are neutralized, faces are detected and sharpened, and contrast is boosted to counteract the fading effects of age on old images. 

Slightly annoyingly – as nasty reviews are more fun to write than positive ones – these produced results that were only a few steps shy of miraculous. Images that were soft to begin with sharpened up considerably; faces became cleared, and even images suffering from the pronounced grain that high-speed 35mm film can produce became clearer to a seriously impressive extent. 

If you’ve got a stash of old images that you’ve been planning on revamping, perhaps as a Christmas present, now’s the time to update Photoshop, dust off the scanner, and get processing.

How does Photoshop's 'Photo Restoration' tool work?

Can you use the 'Photo Restoration' filter with just one click? You definitely can – even with just a few seconds' work, the tool will produce really pleasing results. 

There is more, though. At the very top of the control panel are sliders for 'photo enhancement' and 'enhance face', and it’s worth experimenting with these to see just what level of editing best suits your image. As ever, the less editing you can get away with, the better.

But wait, there’s even more. For some reason, 'Scratch reduction' is set at zero by default, despite being one of the stars of the show. Give that slider a pull rightwards and you’ll see a satisfyingly fine-toothed approach to scratch removal – perfect for prints that have lived a tough life. 

Interestingly, it was 'Scratch reduction' that seemed to exact the biggest toll on my laptop in terms of performance. 'Photo Restoration' was generally pretty responsive, but changing the Scratch reduction slider by a single per cent left Photoshop – on my M1 MacBook Pro – unresponsive for perhaps 15-20 seconds at a time.

There’s even more if you unpack the 'Adjustments' panel. Noise reduction is in there – it's useful to have, although I felt that the default 'Photo enhancement' slider took care of much of the grain in the images. 

There’s also a halftone artifacts reduction slider, which is useful for images that were printed on a halftone printer (think old magazine ads, for example), as well as a JPEG artifacts reduction slider. Of these, the JPEG slider – at least in my test images – appeared to do the least, but could nonetheless be useful if you’re the owner of a folder full of orphaned, heavily compressed JPEGs. My advice for best results: start with the highest resolution scan you possibly can.

The test results

I tested Photoshop's 'Photo Restoration' filter on three of the TechRadar team's old photos. The results overall? Very impressive. Did I say that already? Impressive enough that my built-in skepticism of AI photo editing tools may have gone into terminal decline.

Photo 1

This is probably my favorite image from the series I tested. Grainy, faded, covered in scratches and stains and, apparently, at one point treated to a moderately severe scuffing from an orbital sander, the 'before' and 'after' difference is significant. 

I set the 'Photo enhancement' and 'Enhance face' sliders to 50 and 60, respectively, and scratch reduction to 14. Although setting the scratch reduction slider higher did remove more of the scratches on the image, it also had a tough time with the vertical damage running through the right hand side of the subject’s face. 

But the results are excellent. The face is far clearer thanks to the grain removal. And the skin detail, although perhaps just slightly smoother than it needs to be, is superb. There have even been some convincing details added to the eyebrows which, as far as I can tell, aren’t in the original. Incredibly impressive for a few minutes’ work.

Image 2

This image is highly representative of the type of image many people will be running through Photoshop's 'Photo restoration' filter. Faded, grainy, and the victim of a scanner error which has left a pair of horizontal tramlines running through the top quarter of the frame – this is the kind of image that might have once taken hours to clean up.

I started a stopwatch and, impressively, the ‘after’ image was generated almost exactly 60 seconds after I opened it in Photoshop. It’s sharper, clearer, the scanner tramlines are gone… it’s incredibly pleasing. It’s not quite finished, I'd argue – the face of the subject has a slightly unsettling, AI-style glow to it which isn’t hugely photographic. 

The problem is that the face has been subject to a fairly heavy degree of digital interference, while the rest of the subject – the child’s coat and hands, for example – have been left alone. While that means the face really pops, there’s a bit more work needed to give the image a bit more subtlety. Turning down the 'Enhance face' slider helps, but of course makes the effect a little less impressive.

Photo 3

What’s impressive about this output from Photoshop’s 'Photo Restoration' filter is that it’s started to correct problems that are present in the original image as it was committed to film, never mind problems that arose with the print over the years. 

The slight motion blur caught by the camera has been fixed, and the fading has also been caught with a healthy dose of contrast. The automatic scratch reduction (set here to 19) has ameliorated almost all of the wrinkles in the image – although it’s missed some residue over the drain grate towards the bottom of the picture, as well as removing the crease in the clothes of the subject on the left where his arm meets his body.

For clarity and face-fixing prowess, though, this is an amazingly impressive result for the time taken.

The verdict

There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that if you’re the family’s designated Photoshopper, you’re about to get a lot more work, because the results that the 'Photo Restoration' filter are capable of are really, really impressive. 

The good news is that you can achieve these results in a literal fraction of the time it would have taken you to laboriously clone out every crease, wrinkle and 'lens cap still on' sticker residue in the past.

For some, the 'Photo Restoration' tool’s results will be fine straight out of the box, and I can imagine loading it into a Photoshop action and setting it loose on a folder full of scans with excellent-quality results. 

In some cases, it may be worth paying closer attention – on some of the test images I tried masking out only the parts of the image that I wanted edited, and then manually edited the rest of the image later. This obviously takes longer, but produces more fine-toothed results. 

Even then, the 'Photo Restoration' filter provides a very good quality, fast starting point for image restoration. AI photo editing has finally come good.

Back in 1987, one of the most significant photos of the last century was shot on a Tahiti beach. It was taken by John Knoll, who'd later co-create Adobe Photoshop – and his 'Jennifer in Paradise' snap (below) would be used to demo the amazing tools that would soon democratize photo retouching. 

35 years on, we're seeing the next stage of that photo editing revolution unfold – only this time it's Google, rather than Adobe, that's waving a powerful new Magic Wand. This week we saw the arrival of its new Photo Unblur feature, the latest in an increasingly impressive line of AI editing tools. 

Just like 90s Photoshop, Google's tricks are opening up image manipulation to a wider audience, while challenging our definition of what a photo actually is.

As its name suggests, Photo Unblur (currently exclusive to the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro) can automatically turn your old, blurry snaps into crisp, shareable memories. And it's the latest example of Google's desire to build a robot Photoshop into its phones (and ultimately, Google Photos).

This time last year, we saw the arrival of Magic Eraser, which lets you remove unwanted people or objects from your photos with a flick of your finger. Parents and pet owners were also treated to a new 'Face Unblur' mode, which works in a different way to Photo Unblur, on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.

Collectively, these modes aren't yet as revolutionary as the original Photoshop. Adobe also has enough of its own machine-learning wizardry to ensure its apps will remain essential among professionals for many years to come. But the big change is that Google's tools are both automatic and live in the places where non-photographers shoot and store their photos. 

For the average user of Google's phones or its cloud photo apps, that'll likely mean never having to dabble with a program like Photoshop again.

Robot retouchers

Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser may look simple, but they're built on some powerful machine learning. Another related feature, Face Unblur, is so demanding that it can only run on Google's custom Tensor processor.

Both modes do way more than crank up a sharpening slider. The complex process of building noise maps and applying 'polyblur' techniques was explained recently by Isaac Reynolds, Google's Product Manager for the Pixel camera, in a chat on the company's new 'Made by Google' podcast.

When asked about Photo Unblur and Face Unblur, Reynolds said: "I think you've probably seen in the news all these websites now where you can type in a sentence and it produces an image, right?". If you haven't, those sites include the likes of Dall-E and Midjourney – and beware, they're a hugely dangerous weekend time-sink.

"There's a category of machine learning models in imaging that are known as generative networks," Reynolds explained. "A generative network produces something from nothing. Or produces something from something else that is lesser than, or less precise than, what you're trying to produce. And the idea is that the model has to fill in the details."

Like those text-to-image AI wizards, Google's new photo-rescuing tools fill in those details by crunching together a ton of connected data – in Google's case, an understanding of what human faces look like, how faces look when they're blurred, and an analysis of the type of blur in your photo. "It takes all those things and it says 'here's what I think your face would look like after it's been unblurred," said Reynolds.

If that sounds like a recipe for warped faces and uncanny valleys, Google is keen to stress that it doesn't go overboard on attacking your mug. 

"It never changes what you look like, it never changes who you are. It never strays out of the realm of authenticity," claims Reynolds. "But it can do a whole lot of good to deblur photos when your hands were shaking, if the person you're photographing is just slightly out of focus, or things like that," he adds.

We haven't yet been able to fully test Photo Unblur, but the early demos (like the one above) are impressive. And alongside Google's growing batch of tricks, it's all starting to make Photoshop look unnecessarily complex for photo edits. Why bother with layer masks, pen tools and adjustment layers when Google can do it all for you?

Restoring order

Of course, Google doesn't have a monopoly on machine-learning and Adobe has plenty of its own powerful tools. Adobe Sensei is a machine-learning tool that powers Photoshop 'Neural filters' like Photo Restoration, which automatically restores your old family photos.

Because the likes of Google and Samsung (which has its own 'Object eraser' tool) are now building these features into their phones, Adobe's machine learning is being pushed further towards professional creators. Google's Photoscan app already retouches your old photos while it digitizes them, so an automatic restoration tool for Google Photos is surely around the corner. Let's just hope it steers clear of slightly creepy 're-animation' effects like Deep Nostalgia. 

This increasingly wide distinction between Photoshop and new Google tools like Photo Unblur was neatly summed up nicely earlier this year by Adobe VP and Fellow Marc Levoy, who was previously the driving force behind Google's Pixel phones. 

In the Adobe Life Blog interview, Levoy said that while his role at Google was to "democratize good photography", his mission at Adobe is instead to "democratize creative photography". And that involves "marrying pro controls to computational photography image processing pipelines".

In other words, Google and others have now taken the baton of "democratizing good photography", while Adobe's programs use machine-learning power to improve the workflows of amateurs and pros who need the finer craft of manual photo edits. The death of Photoshop is a long way off, then, even if many of its mass market tools are being automated by phones.

AI openers

These are still early days in the AI photo editing revolution and Google's new tools are far from the only ones out there. Desktop editors like Luminar Neo, ImagenAI and Topaz Labs are all impressive AI assistants that can enhance (or rescue) your imperfect photos.  

But Google's Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser go a step further by living in our Pixel phones – and they'll surely migrate to our Google Photos libraries, too. This step would really take them to a mass audience, who'll be able to turn their holiday snaps or family photos into polished masterpieces without needing to know what an adjustment layer is.

As for Adobe and Photoshop, we'll likely see some new Sensei announcements at Adobe's Max 2022 conference from October 18. So while its recently updated Photoshop Elements app is starting to look a little dated, the full-fat Photoshop should continue to be at the forefront of photo trickery.

That's an impressive run considering it's now 35 years since Photoshop co-founder first started dabbling with his 'Jennifer in Paradise' snap. But given the rapid development of text-to-image generators like Dall-E, and Google's photo-fixing tools, it looks like we're on the cusp of another revolutionary leap for the humble photo edit. 

Learning how to restore old photos is a great, family-pleasing skill to have – and whether you're looking to do it for free or with Photoshop, it's never been easier. In this guide, we've picked out our favorite free options for web browsers and smartphones, detailing their strengths and weaknesses. And for Photoshop fans, we've also created a simple step-by-step guide to restoring old photos using Adobe's software.

Old family photos can help to bring our family histories back to life. But unless you’re using archival methods to store your old photos, they'll probably have been damaged to varying degrees over decades of less-than-perfect storage. 

The good news is that there are now plenty of smartphone apps and websites using AI that will restore photos for you automatically, and in some cases, for free. And if you’re a Photoshop user, you can achieve professional results in just five easy steps once you’ve digitized your photos.

How do you digitize old photos before restoring them? There are three main methods, and all work exceptionally well. The easiest is to take a shot of the old photo using your smartphone using an app like Google Photoscan. Or if you’d like a larger, higher-quality version you can use a mirrorless camera or DSLR. A kit lens will work just fine, but if you have a macro lens this will be even better. 

The final way to digitize old photos is to use a flatbed scanner, but since these aren’t as popular as they once were, many people no longer have access to them. Once you’ve digitized your photos, it’s time to restore them using either free AI tools or by taking a more manual approach in Adobe Photoshop. Here are the best options for both routes, so you can get your photos ready to display on your laptop, TV or the best digital photo frames.

How to restore old photos for free online

VanceAI is an AI-powered photo editing website where you can take advantage of a wide range of editing tasks including image sharpening, noise reduction, portrait retouching, photo restoration and much more. 

There are limitations on its free version. Each editing task requires 0.2 credits, while downloading an image requires one credit, with three free credits available each month at a size limitation of 1996 pixels (16.9cm at 300dpi) on the long edge of the output file. A small VanceAI watermark is also added to the image.

To take advantage of higher resolution output files with no watermark, you have to subscribe to a credit plan. These include a pay-as-you-go option where 100 credits cost $26.99 or a monthly plan where 100 credits cost $9.90 and unused credits roll over for up to five months while subscribed. There's also an annual subscription where 100 credits cost $5.94 with the five-month rollover. So, quite expensive overall.

Still, the results of image repair and enhancement are good overall, with a focus on enhancing faces. They’re best, as you’d expect, with less damaged photos. With more damaged photos, the AI doesn’t always clone/heal well and important features can be lost, such as one of the toddler’s eyes in one of the photos tested. Colorization didn’t work with any images tested, but using the website is extremely easy since you only have a few options to consider.

• Visit VanceAI

How to restore your old photos with an app

Face Restore is an AI-powered photo restoration app (available for both Android and iOS) that can repair scratches and colorize black-and-white photos. And like VanceAI, there’s a focus on faces where the AI processes faces in the image more than other areas. You can then download the whole image or download close-ups of faces detected in photos. Restoration is easy to use and you’re guided through each step.

You can subscribe to remove ads, otherwise the app says that 5-30 second ads have to be viewed to perform processing steps. During testing, though, each task performed required viewing a 30-second advert. It’s not too bad because you can simply put your phone down and do something else while you wait. Alternatively, you can subscribe for $9.99 / £8.99 / AU$15.49 per month or $39.99 / £35.99 / AU$60.99 per year. With the free ads-based version, output images are limited to 1280 pixels (10.84cm at 300dpi) on the long edge.

Results are most effective with images that exhibit only minor damage/scratches. More prominent damage repair can, in some instances, result in pixelation and mismatched cloning in these areas. Like VanceAI, the results aren’t as good as what can be achieved in Photoshop (see below), but using the app is extremely easy and for less damaged and damage-free images it’s highly successful. Colorization, on the other hand, isn’t great and results here can be quite patchy.

• Download Face Restore for Android
• Download Face Restore for iOS

How to restore old photos in Photoshop

The best way to restore old photos is to manually clone and heal damage in Photoshop. There are currently a couple of useful automated tools such as the Dust & Scratches Filter which makes removing small cracks quick and easy, and the Colorize Neural Filter to automatically color black and white images.

The Colorize Neural Filter does a reasonable job but can leave patches of black and white. So, if you select the option to ‘Output as new color layer’, you can easily fill the uncolored patches by painting with the Brush Tool and sampling the correct color from other parts of the color layer. 

A Photo Restoration Neural Filter is due to be released in Photoshop soon, but it's currently only in beta. For now and possibly still in the future, manual restoration remains the best option for removing damage and blemishes alongside adjusting brightness, contrast and discoloration. Here's how to do it.

1. Crop & adjust
Take a shot of the photo you want to restore using your camera or a smartphone (for example, with the Google Photoscan app) and then import it into Lightroom. Here you can crop the area around the photo out and make basic adjustments such as increasing contrast with the Tone Curve and using the Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders if required. Output your photo as a 16-bit TIFF for the best quality for cloning and healing.

2. Use Dust & Scratches
Open the digitized photo in Photoshop, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to duplicate the Background Layer, then go to Filter>Noise>Dust & Scratches. Move the Radius slider to the right until fine cracks disappear, but don’t go too high. A Radius of five pixels was perfect for this photo. Next, use the Threshold slider to recover some sharpness lost by the Radius slider. For this photo, Threshold was set to 10 levels.

3. Fix cracks, tears and blemishes
Larger cracks, tears and blemishes will need to be cloned manually, so press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N to create a New Layer and name it ‘Spotting’. Select the Healing Brush Tool and set the Hardness to 50% and use the left and right square bracket keys to adjust the size. Hold down Alt/Option and left click to sample close to a problem, then left mouse click and paint over cracks, tears and blemishes.

4. Levels and Sharpen
Create a Levels Adjustment Layer and drag the black-and-white points inwards to increase contrast, then adjust the midpoint to control brightness. Next, press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt/Option+E to merge visible Layers to a New Layer, then go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. You’ll need strong settings, so for this image Amount was set to 255%, Radius to 3.5 Pixels and Threshold to 10 levels. 

5. Colorize with Neural Filters
Go to Filters>Neural Filters>Colorize. Make sure Auto color image is checked and Photoshop will colorize the photo. You can then use the sliders to adjust the color balance if it’s not quite right and can also use the Color artifact reduction and Noise reduction sliders if required. If you check Output as new color layer, the colors will be added to a Layer that can be touched up if necessary.

For photographers, designers, and content creators looking for a capable, portable machine to edit and refine their photos, the best laptops for photo editing are a must. After extensive testing of the latest models, I've selected the top performers for every budget that will make perfecting those images seamless.

With a focus on photo editing in Adobe Photoshop and Affinity, and using Lightroom for batch processing, the laptops my team of experts and I have selected deliver the performance needed to handle creative workloads, including AI tools. This, and color-accurate displays that cover sRGB or DCI-P3 gamuts for pinpoint color correction.

Right now, our top recommendation goes to the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5 Pro), with its outstanding performance in Photoshop and Lightroom, along with its superb display boasting a wide P3 color gamut for rich, accurate colors. It's a hard one to beat, but for Windows fans, the Dell XPS 16 takes the win for its outstanding Intel Panther Lake performance and exceptional OLED touchscreen for crisp details and colors.

If taking photos is part of your daily life, you'll want one of the best laptops for photo editing by your side to help you edit, design, retouch and manipulate those images – and my team and I have selected just the machines to buy.

Best laptop for photo editing overall

The MacBook Pro has long been the go-to laptop for creators of all kinds, and now with M5, it's better than ever. Specifically, we're big fans of the MacBook Pro with M5 Pro, hitting the sweet spot between performance and price – and it's a powerhouse for photo editing.

As our reviewer, Matt Hanson, rightfully claims, the 14-inch (3024 x 1964) Liquid Retina XDR display is still one of the best screens you'll find on a laptop, and that's a huge perk for photographers. Yes, its gorgeous display and design haven't seen any changes from past models, but considering its compact, premium-looking chassis and life-like colors with smooth 120Hz visuals, it's still a winner for on-the-go editing jobs.

The true highlight is the M5 chip. Now, the base M5 already offers plenty of power to breeze through photo edits, but for a seamless creative workflow that flies through the likes of Photoshop and Premiere Pro, the M5 Pro chip reigns supreme. While the M5 Max is the ultimate option, to keep the cost lower, the M5 Pro model has the performance any creator could want.

Without a major redesign, meaning port selection is still limited, there's little reason for those with a MacBook Pro with M4 to upgrade, as that still offers plenty of power. However, when it comes to editing photos, videos and everything in between, I'd recommend the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro in a heartbeat.

Read our full Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5/M5 Pro/M5 Max) review

• Back to top

Best budget laptop for photo editing

For the cost, the HP Victus 15 is better than it has any right to be. It comes equipped with up to a 14th Gen Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, but what's impressive, considering the now budget price, is that this laptop sports a dedicated GPU. That's going to make creative workloads like AI photo editing or video editing a lot smoother.

The design is nice – it's an uncomplicated laptop, really – and with gaming as its main focus, the dual fans and extra air vent mean it keeps cool when you're pushing it a little harder in your workloads. We found it performed well across a range of gaming and non-gaming tasks, including photo editing, without any issues.

We clocked battery life at a little over four hours in tests, but in every other respect, we felt it was a very well-balanced and well-priced machine.

As an alternative, I'd look at the MacBook Neo, considering it's more affordable and has enough performance to handle light photo edits (and much longer battery life). But with only 8GB of RAM and fewer GPU cores on its A18 Pro chip than its iPhone 16 Pro counterpart, it can struggle to get to work on heavier workloads. The HP Victus 15 has more room to grow with more RAM and a dedicated GPU here, so it's well worth looking at.

Read our full HP Victus 15 review

• Back to top

Best mid-range laptop for photo editing

In case you're not in the know, gaming laptops make for capable photo-editing machines thanks to their graphics power, and the Acer Nitro V 15 delivers this in spades without emptying your wallet. For its sub-$1,000 cost, it's hard to ignore.

By pairing a dedicated RTX 5060 GPU with a surprisingly crisp and vibrant 1080p display, this gives photo editors reliable hardware for demanding tasks without overspending. In our testing, it's able to handle heavy editing tasks and big files with ease, minimizing workflow slowdowns. Plus, thanks to its combination of an Intel i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, it has enough muscle for multi-layer retouching, batch processing, or juggling large RAW files.

There are trade-offs. The keyboard area gets noticeably warm when put under pressure, and battery life only lasts up to five hours, so it’s hard to squeeze a full workday unplugged. As a gaming laptop at this price, these aren't too surprising, but worth noting for photographers who require a portable machine for working on the move.

For editors who want more graphics power and aren’t chasing pro-level screens (just connect it to one of the best monitors for home working instead), the Nitro V 15 strikes a practical, wallet-friendly balance.

Read our full Acer Nitro V 15 review

• Back to top

Best photo editing laptop for portability

Looking for an ultra-sleek, powerful laptop with long-lasting battery life to let you edit photos no matter where you are? The 13-inch MacBook Air is hands-down the machine for you - now made even better with its mighty M5 chip.

From its bright and vivid 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display to its excellent M5 performance across the board, you can expect to blaze through heavy-duty photo edits and file transfers. It's now more than capable of blitzing through complex edits in photo-editing apps like Photoshop, and with advantages like 512GB base storage, Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, and stronger AI capabilities (unlike the M4 model), it's hard to beat at its price.

Speaking of, while it is $100 more expensive than the previous M4 model, you'll still find the MacBook Air for a lot less during a sale, even going under the M4 MacBook Air's starting price. Even better, in our battery tests, it lasted over 15 hours, meaning this machine can get you through a whole workday of heavy edits, and beyond.

The 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 was already an ultraportable triumph for photographers, so anyone who already owns one won't see the huge benefit the M5 chip delivers (considering there's no real design change, too). But for those who have yet to get their hands on Apple's popular laptop, the M5-equipped MacBook Air is as good as it gets when it comes to ticking all the right boxes for on-the-move creative power.

Read our full Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M5) review

• Back to top

Best Windows alternative to MacBook for photo editing

The Dell XPS 16 steps confidently into the role of Dell’s flagship all-rounder, offering creative professionals a truly impressive package. In hands-on workflow tests, the 3K touch OLED display is an absolute wonder, as its color accuracy and deep contrast make photo editing and video work a pleasure, with images that actually pop off the screen.

Beyond the screen, the XPS 16 backs up its premium feel with high-end hardware. The Intel Core Ultra X7 processor and 32GB of fast RAM keep Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop running snappily, even with heavy multi-layer edits and batch exports. Even better, our battery test showed it last a whopping 17 hours, which is more than enough to keep your worry-free of charging during those long photo-editing sessions.

This is a premium machine, through and through, so you can bet you'll be paying a large chunk of change for it. It's certainly worth it, as it will last photographers years to come, but be prepared to pay. It's also a shame that port selection is streamlined: you get three Thunderbolt 4 ports, but there’s no built-in SD card reader or HDMI, which means carrying a dongle or dock for some workflows.

Despite that, it's hard to deny the XPS 16 is an accomplished creative laptop, delivering a beautiful 3K OLED display and robust performance that make it a top Windows pick for photo and, yes, even video work. For most creators wanting a MacBook alternative with proven hands-on results, Dell's XPS 16 is a very easy recommendation.

Read our full Dell XPS 16 review

• Back to top

Best photo editing laptop for creative professionals

We were already big fans of the previous iteration of the Asus ProArt P16 – and it's still worth picking up if you want a laptop suited to photo editing and video editing. But the latest version is even better, now sporting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, ideal for mixed media content creation.

In fact, it's so good that our avowed Apple fan and creative professional, Alastair, loved it so much he seriously considered making the switch from MacBook Pro to the ProArt P16. And it's not hard to see why, given that, like Apple's content creation machine, this one is targeted to anyone professionally editing photos and videos.

In our own tests, we organized photo files using Adobe Bridge, and while rendering thumbnails from a Sony Alpha 7 IV wasn't as fast as we'd like, opening images in Photoshop was. We experienced no problems with auto-alignment and blending for focus stacking, and packing and transferring those images was also pretty speedy.

All things considered, it's a powerful laptop – although I'd recommend using the DialPad, which offers a much better experience when adjusting brush size, dodging and burning, and similar tasks.

Of course, what really stands out here is that 4K OLED display with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and Pantone Validation. A 3K model is also available, but for photo editing, opt for the 4K version. Overall, if you're working across mediums, this is an ideal laptop for Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, as well as Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

Read our full Asus ProArt P16 H7606 review

• Back to top

Best laptop for AI photo editing

Gaming laptops are always a good pick for multimedia creators, and the Razer Blade 16 (2025 edition) is the pick of the bunch. Thanks to its dedicated GPU, which runs from the RTX 5060 up to 5090 depending on configuration, it's going to breeze through creative workloads, particularly if you're using AI tools like Denoise and Generative Fill in your photo editing workflow.

In our tests, this laptop showed best-in-class performance pretty much across the board. Computing Editor, Christian, noted in his review that "if you're hoping to use this laptop for professional creative work, it won't let you down."

The design is pure Razer – all black and sleek – with a stunning OLED QHD+ display that reaches 100% DCI-P3 with Calman Verified color profiles for greater color accuracy.

It's an expensive laptop, as you'd expect considering it's armed with top-end specs like the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. But if your budget allows, the Razer Blade 16 is perfect for creative work and play,

Read our full Razer Blade 16 (2025) review

• Back to top

Best laptop for photo editing and retouching

The Asus Zenbook Duo is a superb two-in-one that's perfect for creators looking for extra screen real estate (it has two 14in touchscreen OLED displays), and the stylus makes it ideal for more hands-on retouching of photos. There's also a clip-on wireless keyboard if you need the more traditional setup.

It's powered by the H-series Intel Core Ultra 9 chip (the 185H or 285H, depending on configuration), which means it'll cut through more complicated workloads like AI editing and batch editing. Testing this machine out, we found it excels at all but the most demanding tasks – expect some thermal throttling if you're performing heavier CPU-based workloads. For day-to-day photo editing, though, this shouldn't be an issue.

The big issue here is two-fold. One, Windows 11 isn't really built for touch – although software like Photoshop will be fine. And learning the quirks of the touch gestures does prove a slight learning curve. Still, overall performance was great, and even the battery lasted over eight hours on a single charge, which is a surprise for a dual-screen OLED with a high-performance CPU under the hood.

Read our full Asus Zenbook Duo review

• Back to top

Best laptops for photo editing compared

Frequently asked questions

How to choose the best laptop for photo editing

Choosing the ideal photo editing laptop requires navigating through a maze of technical jargon to identify key features that align with your creative workflow. Whether you're using Adobe Creative Suite or one of the best Adobe Photoshop alternatives and the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives, the specifications of your laptop should support intensive photo editing software without compromising performance.

Like graphic design laptops (and generally unlike video editing laptops), photo editing laptops need a robust processor, as most photo editing tasks are CPU-intensive. A durable mobile workstation or business laptop can serve well, provided it has a high-quality FHD display with excellent contrast and brightness, along with appropriate color gamut coverage like DCI-P3.

RAM is crucial for handling complex photo editing projects, and while the GPU might not be as critical for photo editing alone, it becomes essential for tasks like 3D modeling and running the best video editing software, which can sometimes find itself in your workflow when you least suspect it.

A color-accurate IPS display with high contrast, brightness, and a wide color gamut is ideal. Fast SSD storage is necessary for quick file access and ample storage space, and a sufficient number of ports ensures you can connect all your devices without needing an additional docking station.

While MacBooks are popular among photographers for their performance and display quality, Windows laptops offer competitive features and better upgradability at similar price points.

How we test the best laptops for photo editing

We've tested hardware built for a range of creative industries and professions. This includes the best video editing laptops, best laptops for graphic design, best laptops for writers, and best laptops for music production.

When we test laptops that are good for photo editing, we're assessing factors such as performance, portability, display type, value for money, and overall design. And using Photoshop and Lightroom are key parts of any laptop test we undertake - alongside other creative software, such as Premiere Pro and Da Vinci Resolve. This allows us to see how well each device handles day-to-day photo editing, and whether they're suitable for inclusion in this guide.

Photo editors can often be resource-intensive, especially when working on large, complex projects. So, we test each to see how well they perform when running photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop. Laptops designed for photographers should have no trouble with the industry-standard editing tool.

Creative workflows are unique – so we evaluate each on the individual merits and how well they meet the expectations of their intended users. For example, the Dell XPS 13 will be ideal for users editing images on the go, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro is much more suited to those who need a creative powerhouse.

See what goes into our tests in how we test laptops and desktops: our reviewing process explained.

Get in touch

• Want to find out about commercial or marketing opportunities? Click here
• Out of date info, errors, complaints or broken links? Give us a nudge
• Got a suggestion for a product or service provider? Message us directly

Today's deals on the best photo editing laptops

A new update for Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom Classic is giving users the power to make image edits to videos. 

The tool lets users adjust the image, then paste those edits across other videos and photos for consistency. It works using the same controls found in the tool’s built-in photo editor, meaning those familiar with Lightroom can immediately get started. 

Keen to improve workflows for photographers, the software giant has also rolled out a range of AI-powered presets and tools that simplify photo editing across desktop, mobile, and web.

What’s new in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic?  

Improving video support isn’t about to turn Lightroom into a video editor - although users will now be able to trim the start and end of clips. Adobe has Premiere Pro for ‘proper’ editing. 

Instead, it offers, for the first time, the option to toy with a video’s brightness, contrast, and more, using Lightroom’s Photoshop-lite style sliders. Presets can also be applied to videos.

Outlined in its blog, Adobe also revealed a series of artificial intelligence tools available for the photo storage and sharing site, including:

+ Adaptive Presets let photographers make rapid changes to targeted areas of an image, such as the sky. 

+ The Preset Amount Slider streamlines workflows by letting users tweak the intensity of an existing preset - increasing brightness, for example.

+ AI red-eye removal, an oft-requested feature, calls on Adobe Sensei AI to remove the red eye from haunted subjects.

+ Compare View is designed to let creatives pick their best pictures by comparing images side-by-side. 

+ 5 Premium Preset packs have been released for adding hand-crafted presets to photo and video.

Rounding out the updates are enhancements to Lightroom Discover, batch copy-pasting of AI masks, and Mask Group Invert for more efficient editing. Forward and back buttons, and local storage management for control over your hard drive photo storage has also been included.

The latest Lightroom release follows Adobe’s unveiling of a Photo Restoration Neural Filter in Photoshop, alongside improvements to Photoshop on the web.

However, while users will have to wait for the impressive new neural filter to hit Photoshop on desktop (and its web-based brethren remains in beta), Lightroom and Lightroom Classic users can start using video editing tools and AI-powered presets right now.

“These innovative, AI-driven features for desktop, web and mobile make it fast and easy to create great images anywhere with Photoshop and Lightroom. We’re continuing to add new capabilities to Photoshop on the web, making it not only a great way to collaborate on projects but also to facilitate key edits in your browser,” said Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Restoring old family photos can be an enjoyable time-sink, but an impressive new Photoshop tool has just arrived to speed up the task for those who'd rather do it with a single click.

Photoshop's new Photo Restoration Neural Filter effectively automates a lot of the program's tools, like Content-Aware Fill, to help restore your old photos in a few seconds.  

'Neural Filters' are the collective name for Adobe's AI-powered editing tools, which also include effects like Depth Blur (for artificially creating shallow depth-of-field effects) and Colorize, which colorizes black-and-white photos.

But the new Photo Restoration tool looks particularly handy if you've recently digitized a bunch of dog-eared portrait photos. As you can see in the demo below, it can detect and fix scratches, while also working its magic on the contrast, noise and color in the image.

All of these things are already possible in Photoshop, but the leap forward is the ability for the program to spot a photo's issues and automatically fix them for you. This opens up photo restoration to those who don't know Photoshop's often arcane menus.

Because most of Photoshop's Neural Filters run locally on your computer, though, you'll need a relatively recent machine in order to use Photo Restoration and those other tricks. Adobe says you need either a Mac running macOS 10.15 Catalina (or later), or a Windows computer running Windows 10 (or later).

Adobe hasn't said exactly when the Photo Restoration filter will be available to download, but we've asked it for an estimate, and we'll update this story when we hear back. When Photoshop updates are available the program usually prompts you to update your filters – so look out for a nudge soon.

Analysis: Robot Photoshop is learning fast

Photoshop's Neural Filters only arrived in 2020, but these AI-powered tools have already grown significantly in both number and versatility. The new Photo Restoration tool, though, might be one of its most useful ones yet.

It isn't the first program to tackle the growing demand for digitizing old snaps. Google's PhotoScan app lets Android and iOS smartphone users bring prints into their digital library, and applies automated fixes like removing glare. There are other cloud-based services around too, like VanceAI.

But the power of the Photoshop brand, and its ubiquity, means its photo restoration tool has a good chance of being used more widely, particularly among beginners who aren't familiar with all of its tools and are looking for a one-click solution. The only downside is that you need the full version of Photoshop in order to use the feature – it's not available in Photoshop Elements.

If you don't want the program to be too heavy-handed with your photo, there are adjustment sliders and check boxes for tools like Enhance Face and Scratch Reduction that enable you to customize the look. 

This is good news because, while the Photo Restoration demos are impressive, some may find the finished result a little too bold and artificial. Still, there's no doubt that the feature will improve with time, and it's just the start of a new 'robot' Photoshop for those who don't know their Curves from their Smart Objects.

The dazzling new iPhone lock screen designs in iOS 16 may have grabbed all the headlines at WWDC 2022, but behind them lies a new feature that's also a highly unusual one for Apple – Photoshop-style editing skills.

Apple's AI tools have traditionally been focused on helping you take great iPhone photos, rather than edit them. But a new 'Visual Look Up' feature, which you'll be able to find in the Photos app and across iOS 16, lets you tap on a photo's subject (for example, a dog) then lift them out of the snap to be pasted somewhere else, like in Messages.

That may not sound too spectacular, but the unnamed feature – which has echoes of Google's 'Magic Eraser' for Pixel phones – will be a significant addition to iPhones when it lands in the software update later this year. Apple usually leaves these kinds of tricks to the best photo editing apps, but it's now dabbling with automated Photoshop skills.

Just a few years ago, cutting out a complex subject in a photo used to be the preserve of Photoshop nerds. But Apple says its Visual Look Up feature, which also automatically serves up info on the subject you tap on, is based on advanced machine learning models. 

Simply lifting a French Bulldog from a photo's background is, Apple says, powered by a model and neural engine that performs 40 billion operations in milliseconds. This means it'll only be supported by the iPhone XS (and later models). 

Beyond the Photos app, the feature will apparently also work in Quick Look, which lets you quickly preview images in apps. There are also echoes of it in iOS 16's new customizable lock screens, which can automatically place elements of a photo in front of your iPhone's clock for a more modern look.

Right now, the feature is limited to letting you quickly cut out and paste subjects in photos, but Apple clearly has an appetite for building Photoshop-style tools into its iPhones. And iOS 16 could just be the start of its battle with the likes of Adobe and Google when it comes to letting you quickly tweak and edit your photos. 

Analysis: The AI-powered editing race heats up

Photoshop and Lightroom will always be popular among pro photographers and keen hobbyists, but we're starting to see tech giants bake automated equivalents of Adobe's most popular tools into their operating systems. 

Just last month Google announced that its Magic Eraser tool, available on Pixel phones, now lets you change the color of objects in your photos with just one tap. This new feature joined the tool's existing ability to remove unwanted objects or people from your photos.

Apple hasn't quite gone that far with Visual Look Up's new feature, which is more like Photoshop's 'Select Subject' tool than Google's take on the healing brush. But the iOS 16 upgrade is a significant one in the context of the wider race to build the ultimate mobile editing skills for point-and-shoot photographers.

There's no reason why Apple couldn't extend the concept to let you, for example, select and replace a drab sky with a more dramatic one. This 'Sky Replacement' feature is one we've recently seen come to Photoshop and other AI desktop photo editors, and today's smartphones certainly have the processing power to pull it off.

Of course, Adobe won't idly stand by and let Apple and Google eat its editing lunch, even if Apple appears to be coming at it sideways. By baking these technologies into core features like the new iOS 16 lock screen, Apple makes them part of not just an iPhone stock app, but the core OS. That's trouble for Adobe but good news for anyone who doesn't want to learn, or pay for, Photoshop.

• Looking to master your iPhone's Photographic Styles? Check out our in-depth guide

The Google Pixel 6a may have been a relatively unsung part of Google I/O 2022, but one of its new camera features shows that Google clearly has Photoshop-rivaling ambitions.

We've seen its nifty Magic Eraser tool, which lets you quickly remove unwanted people or objects from a photo, previously on the Google Pixel 6. But now Google has announced that the tool is getting a new feature that'll let you change the color of objects in your photos with a tap.

The example Google gave at Google I/O 2022 was a beach photo with a garish, green icebox in the background. Rather than removing the object and ruining your composition, the enhanced Magic Eraser instead made the object's color and shading blend in naturally with the whole scene.

This might seem like a minor update, but it means that one tool now lets you do some pretty major photo edits – ones that a few years ago would have involved dabbling with masks and eyedropper tools – with one tap. And that means Magic Eraser, and its cousins Face Unblur and Motion Mode, and rapidly turning into Photoshop who people who don't like, or need, real Photoshop.

The updated Magic Eraser tool will also no doubt spark some 'photography vs digital art' debates, ones that prospective Pixel 6a owners likely won't care about. For traditionalists, the line between the two is crossed when you start adding light or elements to a scene that weren't there at the point of capture – removing objects is one thing, but letting AI and its digital paint brush loose on your snaps is quite another.

But what Google is doing is clearly aimed at the point-and-shoot crowd. The Magic Eraser is a next-generation healing brush, one that outstrips rivals like Snapseed and PhotoShop – and that 'healing' now includes the color palette of your photos.

Google has taken its aim even further by recently adding Magic Eraser to Google Photos for anyone who subscribes to its Google One plans. This make Magic Eraser no longer a Pixel phone exclusive, and iPhone users can join in the fun. 

Google vs Adobe

This means Photoshop is something of an arm's race with built-in tools like Google's Magic Eraser, which explains why Adobe recently hired the person who was the driving force behind Google's Pixel phones, Marc Levoy.

In a fascinating recent chat with Adobe's own Life blog, Levoy revealed that Adobe is working on a "universal camera app" that'll have some of the computational "sorcery" that we saw in those early Pixel phones.

But Adobe is actually taking the opposite approach to Google's Magic Eraser. Levoy said that while his role at Google was to "democratize good photography", his goal at Adobe is instead to "democratize creative photography". And that means "marrying pro controls to computational photography image processing pipelines".

Instead, Google's enhanced Magic Eraser falls firmly into that "democratizing good photography" camp, and it's something that the tool is becoming increasingly adept at. Keen photographers often spend hours pondering the color palette of a scene or waiting for an opportune moment, but with Magic Eraser you'll soon be able to do it with a tap. And that's likely just the start of its talents.

Which weapon is mightier, the Magic Eraser or Photoshop? It depends which side of the photographic fence you're on, but there's no doubt that Google is winning the point-and-shoot side of the battle.

• Photoshop Camera tips: 9 ways to master Adobe’s AI camera app