Big ambitious NEW features in Photoshop 2025 July 29 update

Colin Smith

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NEW features in Photoshop 2025 July 29 update

Today Adobe dropped an update to Photoshop with some features we haven’t seen before. Some are in Photoshop beta and some are in the shipping version.

In order to make sure you have the latest update, launch your Create Cloud app. Click on Check for updates in the top right before updating, to make sure you have the newest, “latest” version.

Creative Cloud app with the Check for updates button

Lets look at the features.

1. Harmonize (Photoshop beta)

This was first shown at Adobe Max in Miami 2024 as”project perfect blend” I was speaking at the event, so I happened to catch this “sneak” in person.

What is does is Blends a layer into the photo, matching the color, lighting and adding shadows and reflections. This uses Generative ai.

Start with an isolated layer. (the video shows how I extracted the woman in the dress). Notice it doesn’t match the scene very well.

Woman in a long yellow dress and sun hat cut out on a cobblestone street in Gdansk

 

This is where we usually match color and then add shadows.

Click on the layer (not the mask). In the Task Bar, click on Harmonize

Harmonize button outlined on the Photoshop contextual task bar

 

Now it matches the color, lighting and adds shadows to fit ino the scene.

Woman in the yellow dress harmonized into the street with matching light and shadows

 

How this works:

What it does is generate the entire image onto a new layer and then masks out just the areas that have changed.

Harmonized layer generated as a full image and masked to the woman

 

The downside is it’s still limited by resolution because it uses Gen Fill. Here Im showing the entire generative layer (easier to see on the video)

Close-up of the harmonized woman showing softer, lower resolution detail

 

Here is the original resolution on the background.

Close-up of the original street background at full resolution

 

Another disadvantage, because it generates the whole image, you can’t move the subject without running harmonize again.

Harmonized woman moved, leaving a duplicate figure in the scene

Let’s look at another example.

Here we have a person, one foot on the sidewalk and another in the air. Lets harmonize.

Breakdancer in a black hat leaping on a cobblestone street, one foot in the air

First glance, it looks good.

I think it did a decent job of color and lighting, although I think it’s a bit dark.

Also there is a clear loss of detail on the man. The shadows look good and accurate, although it looks like both feet are planted on the ground. I tried a few examples and it doesn’t seem to allow things to be hovering.

Harmonized dancer with matching tones and shadows but some loss of detail

At this point, I think it does a decent job, but with the resolution, its not ready for large scale production work. It works well with smaller objects and images where resolution isn’t a problem. This tool uses Generative Credits.

2. Enhanced Remove Tool – Mainline Photoshop Version

This one is in the regular Photoshop.

Lets make a selection around our yogi.

Select Subject outlined on the task bar above a yoga pose in a studio

Choose Generative Fill, leave the prompt blank and click generate.

Selection around the woman in a yoga bridge pose in the studio

Sometimes, especially with a tight selections, you get these weird artifacts instead of completely removing an object.

Leftover artifacts circled where Generative Fill tried to remove the woman

Lets undo and try this again. This time, notice there is now a remove button in the task bar, Click Remove.

Remove button outlined on the Generative Fill task bar

And we get a great removal with nothing left over.

Studio backdrop after the woman was cleanly removed

Using the Remove Tool.

Choose the remove tool from the toolbox. Paint over the tag

Remove tool brush over the Happy Thanksgiving tag on a pumpkin

Notice the results aren’t very good.

Poor Remove tool result on the pumpkin stem, labeled not good

 

This time, change the mode to Generative AI on. Also notice there is now a box for “create new layer”. This saves us making a layer (and turning on Sample All Layers) to work non destructively.

Remove tool options with Generative AI on, Sample all layers and Create new layer

 

Apply the remove tool again

Remove tool stroke painted over the Thanksgiving tag again

 

Much better result! Another thing, The remove tool doesn’t use any Generative Credits.

Pumpkin with the tag cleanly removed by the Remove tool

3 Projects Photoshop Beta

Choose the house Icon to go to the Splash Screen.

Home icon outlined at the top left of the Photoshop toolbar

 

Go down to Projects.

Photoshop home screen sidebar with Projects outlined

 

This is where you can create a project and add assetts and invite people to share. Now you don’t have to keep emailing images to people, you can all work from the same set of project assets.

Projects page showing a Colin Test project

 

Click Create Project

New project dialog asking to type a project name

 

Add the people you want to work with.

Invite people to the project dialog with a Can edit permission menu

 

Add the images to the project.

Empty project page with Add and Move files options

 

Grab them from Creative Cloud Storage

Move in Adobe cloud storage dialog with a motorcycle artwork selected

 

And we have a project. I’ll make amore in depth tutorial on this and the other top features.

Test project showing the motorcycle artwork file

4 Generative Ai Model Picker – Mainline Photoshop Version

When you choose to generate, you now see “Fi” where you can change the version of Firefly. This is very common with ai,m where you can change the model, because certain models do some things better than others. I’m glad we have that option in Photoshop now.

Let me demonstrate.

Make a selection and type “hat” into the prompt.

Lasso selection over a woman's head with hat typed in the Generative Fill prompt

Click fi and choose Version 3, the default.

Adobe model picker with Firefly Image 3 selected and Firefly Image 1 below

 

Have you ever had this happen? Its very reproducible on this example.

Generated sign reading HA6 instead of a hat on the blonde woman's head

 

Let’s try that agaon, but use Version 1.

Firefly Image 1 chosen in the Adobe model picker

 

Now, we get perfect hats. While Version 1 couldn’t count fingers, it was good at this kind of thing.

As I said, it’s good to have this option.

Blonde woman with a white cowboy hat generated by the Image 1 model

5. Generative Upscale

There is a generative Upscale added to Beta, this enlarges images and generates the new result up to 4 times larger.

Here’s is the test and tutorial on Generative Upscale in Photoshop Beta. 

Other new feature tutorials in this Photoshop update

I hope you found this overview useful! Keep checking out my weekly tutorials. I’m also dropping daily Photoshop shorts on youtube, Instagram and Tik tok.

Thanks

Colin


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