At Adobe Max, researchers previewed new ways to reshape and retouch images, with a few early experiments available to try.
Disclosure: DPReview is attending Adobe Max, with Adobe covering travel and lodging expenses.
Editor’s note: The Adobe Max Sneaks presentation begins at 5:30 pm ET / 2:30 pm PT, and you can watch via livestream. We’ll be attending live and updating this story with new details throughout the event.
This week at Adobe Max, we’re getting a look at some of the experimental tools the company is developing during its annual Sneaks presentation. The session gives Adobe’s researchers a chance to show off works in progress, rather than announce finished products. These projects could eventually become features in Adobe’s applications (and, indeed, several things we saw at last year’s show are now available in Photoshop), though there’s no promise they’ll ever actually ship, or end up looking like what’s shown off. Think of it as a little glimpse into what Adobe teams are working on.
This year’s lineup includes 10 projects, ranging from experiments in sound editing, generated-video timing, character development, real-time video manipulation and vector design. Several are aimed at photographers, too, such as AI-powered brushes that account for a subject’s shape and lighting, a tool that adapts Photoshop edits across different images and a system that generates new viewpoints from a single photograph.
While most remain demonstrations, Adobe is, for the first time, offering early research previews to everyone of two projects, Deep Brush and Hands On, through its new Labs Playground. Users can experiment and provide feedback, rather than simply access finished tools.
Project Deep Brush: Retouching that follows the scene
AdobeFirst up is Project Deep Brush, which aims to make retouching respond to what’s in a photograph instead of simply sitting on top of it. In its blog post about the feature, Adobe explained that it wants creatives to “think of every photo as a real-world scene to explore, rather than a set of pixels to adjust.”
Adobe says the tool uses AI to infer properties such as shape, color and lighting from a single image, separating the image into what it calls “physically decomposed layers.” Those layers then provide controls for edits that respect the scene’s geometry, shadows and illumination.
For photographers, potential uses include changing hair color or applying makeup while retaining the effects of facial shape and lighting. Adobe also describes placing graffiti, signage, a logo or texture on a curved or angled surface — such as a bottle, garment or building — with the edit automatically following that surface’s contours and lighting.
The broader announcement also describes painting light directly into a scene. Rather than treating a brushstroke simply as color applied over pixels, Deep Brush explores how that stroke could interact with the surfaces and illumination represented in the image.
Project Rinse Repeat: Copy the retouching, not the pixels
AdobeProject Rinse Repeat could be particularly useful for photographers working through repetitive editing projects. Adobe frames it as a more intelligent, adaptive version of copying and pasting. It takes an edit made in Photoshop and adapts it to another target, using the context of that target to decide which adjustments apply and how they should change.
Adobe’s examples include refining the lighting on one product and applying the same look across a collection, or copying corrections from one person to others in a group photograph. It can also apply a visual treatment across different images, rather than being limited to repeating changes within a single frame.
The distinction from simply repeating a fixed sequence of operations, as the traditional copy and paste method does, is that Rinse Repeat selects and adapts the edits to suit the new subject. Importantly, it performs those changes using native Photoshop tools, layers and masks. The results remain non-destructive and editable, so users can inspect and refine them rather than being left with a flattened result.
Project Hands On: Drag instead of prompting
AdobeProject Hands On is designed to let you make edits, including ones using generative AI, without having to describe them in text to a chat assistant. It analyzes an image and creates controls directly on the canvas, allowing users to manipulate specific details by dragging. Adobe gives the example of control points on a mug’s handle that let users reshape it directly.
The researchers found shapes particularly suited to this approach because they can be difficult to describe in words. Adobe says that potential applications include adjusting a product’s proportions, helping photographers fine-tune specific details or refining an AI-generated image that needs a targeted correction.
While Photoshop already offers direct manipulation through tools such as Puppet Warp, Hands On creates content-aware controls from its analysis of the image rather than relying on a mesh and manually placed pins. It also stems from the existing ‘Edit Object’ tool in Adobe Firefly.
Project Sight Span: Move the camera after the shot
AdobeProject Sight Span turns a single image into a navigable environment, allowing users to explore new viewpoints and render still images or camera-controlled videos. Adobe suggests uses such as trying alternative angles for a product photograph or investigating possible views of a location before visiting it.
The system first creates a lightweight 3D scene for exploring compositions, then uses a separate image-generation step to render the selected view. Crucially, it must infer geometry and details that aren’t visible in the original photograph, so those new angles contain generated interpretations rather than additional photographic records of the scene.
Project Scene Sweep: One video edit, multiple shots
AdobeFor photographers who also shoot video, Project Scene Sweep aims to keep edits consistent across cuts. It identifies people, objects and locations throughout a sequence, allowing changes to follow their subjects across different shots.
Users can guide changes with a text prompt or an edited frame. Adobe’s examples include removing a distracting prop, replacing a logo or changing wardrobe across a sequence while preserving the original performance and pacing.
Project Custom Filters: Describe your own effect
AdobeAlongside the Sneaks projects, Adobe is offering an experimental preview of Project Custom Filters, which lets users create image filters by describing the effect they want. The company specifies that the tool makes it much easier to get a custom look, rather than relying on plugins, coding or enlisting someone else to build the filter.
With the tool, you use the AI Assistant to describe what you want. It will then build a filter with controls specific to that, and apply it to the image. Adobe gave examples such as “create a lens distortion filter” or “do a painterly effect.” Users can then refine the result through further instructions and adjustments.
Adobe says this isn’t a static AI-generated image: the filter runs in real time on the image’s actual pixels and works non-destructively, leaving the original untouched. Users can still modify any of the changes to the image, just as you can with other non-destructive filters.
Filters can also be shared, loaded onto other images using a reference number and remixed through descriptions and controls. It remains an early experiment, though, it is available for testing in the Labs Playground now. .
Which projects can you try?
Adobe’s new Labs Playground will include research previews of Deep Brush and Hands On, alongside Project Custom Filters. The Deep Brush and Hands On previews will be available when the Sneaks presentation begins at 5:30 pm ET / 2:30 pm PT. Adobe is inviting feedback on these early tools, which users can share by emailing labs@adobe.com.
As a reminder, these are still experimental tools at this point. Adobe hasn’t provided release dates for any of the features mentioned, and they may not ever make their way to the general public.
