How to use Generative AI in Photoshop. Adobe Firefly in Photoshop

Colin Smith

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How to use Generative Fill in Photoshop, powered by Adobe Firefly

Let’s start with something not as crazy, and we’re going to go down the rabbit hole from here.

Extending a Photo, uncropping

How many times have you shot a photograph and then afterwards you realize, Hey, I wish I’d gone a little bit wider.

Vertical photo of a bunch of green bananas hanging among banana leaves

Grab the crop tool. Let’s drag it out, make it a little bit bigger.

Crop box dragged wider than the banana photo, leaving white space on the right

Make a selection with the rectangular marquee tool.

Rectangular marquee selecting the empty canvas beside the banana photo

Press Generative Fill.

Generative Fill button outlined on the contextual task bar

Hit Generate.

Generate button on the Generative Fill prompt bar

Adobe sensei uses AI to build the rest of this image, as if I had shot it wider. Pretty amazing stuff.

Banana photo extended with generated leaves and stalk on the right

Changing Object and generating clothing

Another quick example.

Woman in a gold corset gown dancing in an ornate baroque hall

With the Lasso tool, make a quick selection.

Lasso selection around the woman's gold corset

Hit Generative Fill, and this time, type into the field.  Red T shirt and bingo.

Gold corset replaced by a red T-shirt with Generative Fill

Replacing a background

Let’s replace the background. We’re going to grab a Lasso tool and we’re going to make a rough selection around that background. I’m making a really rough selection just to show you how well this works. In fact, you don’t want it too tight. You want to give it some room.

Lasso selection around the background behind a woman sitting on a foggy rooftop

Now, we’re going to hit Generate a fill. And why don’t we put in city? Hit Generate.

Prompt city typed in the Generative Fill bar

And we actually get three options in the Properties panel.

Generated city skyline behind the woman with three variations in Properties

Each time we regenerate or change the prompt, it creates three more images. Choose the one you want to use.

City at night prompt generating a moonlit skyline behind the rooftop

Advanced Clothing change

This is the image I started with. Let’s give her some jeans instead of the skirt.

Make a selection with the lasso tool. (Watch this tip to see how important selections are, and how to make the right type of selections for better results in Generative Fill)

Woman in a leather jacket and striped skirt, labeled Lasso Tool

Lasso selection around the skirt with the prompt jeans

Hit Generative Fill, type in jeans. Let’s look at variations.

Three jeans variations shown in the Properties panel

To view the variations, We can either view the thumbnails in the info panel. or click the arrows in the toolbar. See this tutorial on mixing variations

Arrow buttons on the task bar to step through the jeans variations

These are brand new images that never existed before. Let me show you. Why don’t we change this jacket to a plaid shirt?

Make a selection with the lasso tool

Lasso selection around the leather jacket

Type in plaid shirt. And look at that.

Leather jacket replaced by a red plaid shirt

Some of the results you get here are not always perfect.

We could change this to something else, say a tank top. This one is looking pretty realistic. I mean, look at the arms and the shirt. Look how it’s even made the area for the sleeves and everything.

It has given us some extra hair. These are certainly, lots of bugs to fix and improvements to be made. If history of other Generative Models like Mid Journey  are anything to go by, these  improvements will happen very fast.

Jacket replaced by a white tank top, adding extra hair

Extend a street

Let’s look at one more example.

So let’s grab our crop tool, let’s extend this.

Now, we want to extend the street, so let’s grab the Rectangular Marquee tool,

Choose Generative Fill in the toolbar. Remember, if you just want to extend and you don’t want to add anything, don’t fill out any prompts here and just hit Generate

Empty selection on the left of a cobblestone street photo with Generate outlined

.And look at that. That’s pretty amazing if you ask me.

Street extended to the left with a generated building wall

Where do the images come from?

So where are these images coming from? These images have never existed before. They’re actually being generated by the AI.

What the AI is doing is it’s actually looking at the image and analyzing and knowing what it is. Now, Adobe didn’t just start with this last week. Adobe has actually been developing Adobe sensei for 10 years. So it’s actually had a little bit of training already on all the selections and different things that we’ve been doing throughout the years with the sensei tools. Firefly (name of the generative part of Sensei) Is looking at all the photographs inside of Adobe stock, and then it’s taking what it’s learning, and then it’s recreating these images or these parts of images from nothing. So it’s creating images that never existed before. Adobe have said they are going to find a way to compensate the contributors of Adobe stock. We will see what they decide to do.

I’m going to do a series on here where I’m going to go more in-depth and I’m going to show you more of the features and more things you can do. This is an introduction, so keep your eye out for my other tutorials. Signup on our mailing list, and follow me on soacial media, so you don’t miss any of these tutorials. Here are a few

My course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

Generative Fill in Photoshop course banner by Colin Smith

 

Extending a Picture with Generative Fill

How to get better results with Generative ai

Hack for getting high resolution and automating it

The generative Fill Variation Hack

Combine images with ai

Livestream, in depth look into Generative Fill

And until next time, I’ll see you at the cafe.

Colin


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12 comments

  1. ismail Ĺźeker

    Thank you so much for this video and text. Best. İsmail

  2. Gerard Giliberti

    Totally unbelievable! Can’t wait for more tutorials.

  3. Kevin Etherington

    Fantastic Colin but as a camera club member how will we know if images are created or taken in club competitions?

  4. Gabriel Pollak

    Hi . Smith !
    this video was great, please make more videos about AI in photoshop
    Thanks
    Gabi

  5. John Paul Jones

    It looks sort of convincing, but I have to say, on a closer look, the problems stand out. No shadows on the dogs for instance which would actually place them in the location. You pointed out the flaws with the limbs on the female model. And the satellite dish looked simply fake – the lighting bore no relation to the background. I found the same thing was true with the colorize filter as well – that the filter never does find the edges of clothing, thus, a jacket will start blue, and then devolve into browns and umbers because the AI mistakes changes in shade and tone for object edges. It apparently has no way to tell what different items of clothing really are and how the bodies underneath them distort the cloth. Plus, whoever designed the colorize filter only offers a variety of faded “retro” choices, which is annoying and rather silly. So I will hold my breath with the AI fill-in feature. Fascinating, but flawed.

    1. Colin Smith Author

      No, Its not perfect, this just a tool. Human work is still needed and always will be.

  6. Paul D Freedman

    Forget the issue of club competitions. Imagine the ramifications of AI generating pictures that can be used to blackmail someone. If you can change a jacket to a shirt can you have AI remove the shirt completely and create nude photographs of someone famous or otherwise. The statement, that who will you believe them or your own eyes is going to be rendored moot as you can no longer believe your own eyes.

    1. Colin Smith Author

      This has been true of Photoshop for many years. It’s just faster to do it now. Check out the Content Authehentication Inititive

  7. Lois Dickinson

    Amazing particularly adding those parts of a scene you chopped off when taking.

  8. Joan Hibbs

    I am enjoying every one of your lessons. So easy to understand. Thank you. JH

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