Live from Adobe Max: A Glimpse at Photoshop's Future Features
Exploring Adobe's Future Innovations at Max 2024
At this year’s Adobe Max conference, the company once again held its highly anticipated "Sneaks" show. This event gives engineers a platform to showcase experimental features that might eventually find their way into Adobe’s software products. One such feature from last year, "Perfect Blend," which aimed to automatically match lighting and color between layers in Photoshop, has now officially launched as "Harmonize." While these demos are not guaranteed to become official features, they offer a glimpse into the future of creative tools.
Project Surface Swap: A More Context-Aware Selection Tool
One of the standout projects presented was "Project Surface Swap." This tool is designed to be more context-aware when making selections in Photoshop. During the demo, the presenter used it to change the color of a car, even though the vehicle had reflections and shadows that made traditional selection methods challenging. The tool also demonstrated the ability to select a wooden countertop in a photo, despite being covered with other wooden objects like a sushi rolling mat and a cutting board.
Additionally, "Surface Swap" could load a reference image and use it as a texture, applying it with the correct perspective and tiling. It considered factors like varying opacity and could be used for creating masks, much like other selection tools in Photoshop.
Project Light Touch: Relighting a Scene
Another intriguing project was "Project Light Touch." This tool allows users to "relight" a scene, imagining what a photo would look like if the lighting conditions were different. For instance, the presenter demonstrated adding a virtual candle to a carved pumpkin, showing how the light would interact with the scene, taking depth and occlusion into account.
This feature could be particularly useful for photographers and video editors who want to enhance or modify the lighting in their work without needing to reshoot.
Project Trace Erase: Simplifying Object Removal
"Project Trace Erase" appeared to be one of the most promising demos. It builds on the existing Remove Tool, allowing users to select an object from a photo with a single stroke. This eliminates the need for multiple passes to remove an object, its shadows, and reflections.
During the demo, the presenter removed a person walking down a sidewalk, along with their shadow and reflection in a glass wall. Even more impressively, the tool was used to remove a stove and the smoke it emitted, a lamp and its light, and a lens flare that was washing out the entire frame. The tool showed impressive contextual awareness, automatically removing footprints left by a person in the snow and a jet skier’s wake.
Project Clean Take: Enhancing Video Audio
On the video side, Adobe showcased "Project Clean Take," a demo focused on improving audio in various ways. The presenter demonstrated fixing incorrect dialogue by editing the transcript and then regenerating the speech with a convincing simulation of the original voice. The software could also replace an entire audio track, changing the presenter's voice to sound more enthusiastic or like a whisper.
Additionally, the tool could break down a single audio track into separate components, such as the presenter's voice, background sounds, and music. This allowed for muting unwanted noise or replacing copyrighted music with similar tracks from Adobe Stock, while automatically matching reverb and acoustic properties.
Project Frame Forward: Applying Edits Across Video Frames
"Project Frame Forward" was another exciting demo that many have longed for. The presenter took a video, made an edit to the first frame in Photoshop, and then brought the edited frame back into the tool. The software then applied the changes to the rest of the frames in the video.
This feature relies on generative AI rather than tracking and masking, making it capable of handling complex edits like removing a car ripping around a track with billowing smoke. It could also handle multiple edits, such as replacing the sky, adjusting white balance, and removing people from the background.
Final Thoughts
While these features may not be coming to Photoshop, Lightroom, or Premiere anytime soon, they provide an interesting look at the innovative projects Adobe’s engineers are working on. These demos highlight the potential future of creative software and the direction Adobe is heading in terms of AI integration and user experience improvements.
Post a Comment