Generative ai now Matches your photo or sketch, Structure Reference in Adobe Firefly

Colin Smith

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How to use Structure Reference in Adobe Firefly

A new Edition has been added to Adobe Firefly. This is called Structure Reference. It allows you to upload a photo or a sketch to help guide the image generation. It works very well and helps us greatly in getting the ai to generate what we actually want.

Start by going to the Adobe Firefly website. You have to have a valid Creative Cloud or Adobe Stock account to use firefly.

Chose generate under Text to image

Adobe Firefly home page with the Text to image Generate button outlined

This will take you to the gallery page. You will see a box at the bottom that says prompt.

I’ll type in something very generic. “Woman taking selfies with phone”

You can see 4 images are generated.You will notice with Firefly Model 2, the people look a lot more realistic than before.  (Click on the top right to download any of them).

Firefly generations of a woman taking a selfie with her phone in a city and the mountains

Suppose we have a specific pose in mind?

On the left you will see Structure. A new option is the ability to upload a reference image. Click upload image.

Structure Reference panel with Upload image outlined above the gallery thumbnails

 

Lets choose this image from Adobe stock.

Adobe Stock photo of a woman in a yellow sun hat taking a selfie with a vintage camera

You will see the reference image in the prompt box.

Choose Generate

Reference thumbnail loaded with the Strength slider and Structure reference tag on the prompt

Notice now it generates images closer to the reference image.

There is a strength slider which is at the middle.

Strength slider outlined with new generations of women holding phones in similar poses

If we increate the strength, the reference image has more weight.

Noice the clothing and pose are the same, they are even holding a flower. There are different people and the colors are different. The structure copies the layout and composition.

Generated women matching the reference's clothes, pose and flower, labeled similar clothes, pose and props

First add “isolated background” to the prompt (to generate with a simple colored background).
Then reduce the strength to the minimum and choose generate

Notice the images are still similar to the reference, but not as close. The clothing and hair is different, the poses are slightly different and they aren’t holding flowers.

We also get the isolated background.

Generated women in sun hats taking selfies on a plain studio background

Concept are using a sketch

Here I typed in a prompt for a spaceship concept

Firefly concept art of a spaceship docked at a pier

Under structure, there is an option to browse gallery

Browse gallery button outlined in the Structure Reference panel

There is a small gallery of reference images supplied by Adobe that you can use. (Hopefully they will add more)

Choose the Line Drawing of the Cardinal

Structure gallery line drawings with a cardinal sketch outlined

Generate and now the spaceships look like birds. Very cool

Spaceships generated in the shape of the cardinal line drawing

Using a sketch as a reference for a photo real render

Now we know we ca use a drawing, let’s build on this.

I generated some castles with a prompt

Firefly photos of a medieval castle fortress on a green hillside

Load in a Structure reference

Here is sketch I made of a fictitious castle.

 

Pencil sketch of a castle with a tall tower and battlements

And look at that the generated images a photo realistic versions of my sketch.

Photo-realistic castles generated from the pencil sketch

See how the parts match

Red circles matching the sketch's tower section to the generated castles

Even the same number and shape of walls and battlements.

Red circles matching the sketch's walls and battlements to the generated castle

Creating a fantasy robot.

Let’s try another one. Here is a pen and ink Robot I sketched. I’ve been learning to sketch robots from a book called How to Draw Robots or something like that, I forget the exact name right now.

Pen and ink sketch of a spiky fantasy robot

When generating the robots in the art setting, it makes drawings of my robot.

Robots generated in an art style from the ink sketch

Change to Photo under Content type and modify the prompt a little and we get a very cool looking robot.

Photo-real blue steel robot with electric arms generated from the sketch, prompt outlined

That’s basically the new feature in Firefly. I think this is going to be very useful to make backgrounds and props for composites as well as helping with concept art.

I hope you found this tutorial useful.

Check out the 700 other free tutorials here at the CAFE

Colin


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4 comments

  1. Never used Fire Fly. You jumped into the middle of that app. Could not follow you. Start from installing Fire Fly. Does it cost anything?

    1. Colin Smith Author

      Its web based, nothing to install, so that is the beginning 🙂

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