With some ten thousand attendees flocking to experience the first keynote, the crowd’s excitement for Adobe MAX 2025 was palpable. The event was held at LA Live this year, transforming the campus into a vibrant, colorful collection of the world’s best and brightest in design, art, and printing technology. As we expectantly sat in our seats, the hype and electric energy rivaled that of a certain fruit-shaped keynote from year’s past. Far from a slightly updated camera, most of us had been waiting in anticipation for Adobe to drop launch these tools for a while – some, we didn’t even know we needed! Let’s dive into six of the most transformational features that were unveiled at MAX this year, as well as a pledge from the brand addressing concerns surrounding AI and originality.
Stick around through the end for some “Sneaks” as we look forward to a future of creation with Adobe.
Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe VP of product marketing for creative professionals \ Photo: Mark Von Holden/AP Content Services for Adobe
1. Generative Fill + Expand for Photoshop
One of the most popular tools in 2024, Generative Expand is utilized by over two thirds of Photoshop users in 2025. Image composition, up until very recently, was something that couldn’t be changed, or would require a physical photo reshoot. Instead, using your choice of generative model, you can extend the view of your lens to exacting specifications. Funky aspect ratios and strange crops are no match for Generative Expand, breaking down boundaries in more ways than one.
2. Harmonize with an AI Image Blender
Paul Trani, Principal Director, Creative Cloud Evangelist and Community Advocate for Adobe, led us through a demonstration of Harmonize, a quite useful feature that adds incredible lighting to any added image, grounding the people or art in your background with ease. Even when working with composite images, with a stellar mask, it’s hard to get things to blend easily, as the eye is trained to look for inconsistencies, especially in lighting. Save yourself hours of calculating bounce rates with Harmonize, blending your objects into your universe with a single click.
3. Upscale Images with Quality
Grainy, impossible to read PDFs and vintage family photos alike could benefit from a bit of a touch up, but this could take days to digitally remaster. Low-res is sometimes something you just cannot fix, until now – Upscale on Photoshop takes your images, and using the power of models like Topaz, can upscale your assets, no matter where they come from. Digitize with ease, and never have to worry about the last noisy picture holding your project up ever again.
4. Manage Boards in Firefly
Keep everything in one place with Boards on Adobe Firefly. Teams can share assets and concepts on an infinite plane, organizing photos and ideas, ensuring everyone’s on the same page. This AI-powered workspace allows you to upload or generate images, font styles, and color palettes, easily managing brand cohesion and adding a distinct flexibility to workflow.
5. Remix Images with Firefly
Ever had a concept that you still wanted to work out or a reference photo that just needed a little tweak? Remix has got you covered utilizing generative AI to combine reference photos, text, and prompts. A new feature now available in Boards, generate ideas across teams on an infinite spectrum of creation.
Allison Blais, VP of strategy and business operations \ Photo: Mark Von Holden/AP Content Services for Adobe
6. Adobe GenStudio within the Adobe Enterprise Platform
Those who have suffered from various pain points throughout asset management will understand how transformative this tool will be. Adobe GenStudio enables teams in all parts of the content lifecycle – from asset creation to planning and rollout as well as reporting and insights – to build upon one collective infrastructure despite previous distinctions. “Not only can you build together your custom workflow using all the features and APIs that exist in the full portfolio of creative applications we offer, you can package that custom workflow up as a capsule and share it with people,” shares Subramaniam,
The Promise of Protection
Most of these features, however groundbreaking, utilize AI models to generate incredible graphics in seconds, empowering us to create at a speed that is quite daunting, even for regular users. Some hold concerns about protections being put in place for creators, as AI use becomes more ubiquitous within the field. We had the opportunity to talk with Deepa Subranamiam, Vice President of Product Marketing for Creative Professionals at Adobe. “First off, using AI in our applications is absolutely a choice. Many of the workflows we showed have a different way of doing it that doesn’t have to use AI as an ingredient,” she explained.
Since AI’s debut in Adobe products via Firefly, the brand has worked on something called CAI, the Content Authenticity Initiative, which adds specific credentials in the form of metadata tags to all the content that’s generated using it. This provides clarity and transparency around the creation of assets in a new digital age. Subranamiam shares, “We think AI is a choice for creators to use, and we want that choice to be visible in the asset, because knowledge is a good thing, and understanding the provenance of content is very powerful.” What’s more, Subranamiam’s affirmation speaks to the fact that most users at the helm of designing these features are, in fact, creators themselves. As the gap of understanding widens between C-suite and worker in other industries, this feels more like a coalition for creation.
Sneaks
Project Light Touch
Lighting is notoriously difficult to recreate in Photoshop. With Spatial Lighting, part of Project Light Touch, you can take an image and turn a light source on and off, dim it, or change its temperature for a softer look. Even further, users can add light where there previously wasn’t: take a jack-o-lantern, for instance. To change the light source, simply click within the space – toggles will appear on each side allowing for the control over the source’s place in space. The light can also be brought into the foreground, placed in the middle ground, or sent background – in this case placing the light inside the jack-o-lantern to create its iconic glow.
Project Surface Swap
Interior designers, rejoice: Project Surface Swap changes the look of any surface or material – from wooden countertop to travertine – all from an image. This Sneak uses AI-powered texture recognition to select and swap the materials seamlessly, preserving original lighting and perspective. Before you rip out the countertop, take a second and see what it would really look like, saving time, money, and ultimately, your sanity.
To learn more about Adobe MAX 2025, visit adobe.com.
Photography by Mark Von Holden, courtesy of Adobe.