Adobe Max 2022, the annual one-stop Mecca for creatives, even ones that may have never used Adobe software, gather in Los Angeles in-person for a registration fee or virtually online for free, a winwin for all. There’s much Max happenings to share in Adobe software news, getting pumped up with creative keynote presentations, exchange ideas and dive into hundreds of how-to workshops and presentations.
The Keynotes are inspiring. Many of the keynote speakers like creative superstars, Siân Heder, Jeff Koons, Steve Aoki, and Cristina Mittermeier are not Adobe crtors but they will share their stories on how they launched their careers, what motivates them, and the takeaways for your own creative journey. But their frank talks will fire up your creativity. View all speakers here
Much of Max centers around Adobe’s Creative Cloud one-stop subscription based software suite for design, drawing, photo and video editing, web design and collaboration on projects from anywhere…and much more.
What’s new in all the Adobe photo apps for Mac and Windows PC’s, iPad, iPhone and Android? Lots!!!
Photoshop on the desktop
- Object Selection tool on steroids. Since 2020, users could detect and select an object in photos by simply hovering over it. Now the time-saving Object Selection tool recognizes complex objects and regions such as the sky, buildings, water, plants, different types of flooring and ground (e.g., mountains, sidewalks, streets). With these improvements, all with more precise and high-quality selections, while preserving hair details and edges.
- One-click Delete and Fill can remove unwanted an unwanted object from an image by clicking on it to select and then pressing Shift+Delete automatically filling in the removed area with using content-aware fill…all in a single action.
- Last year’s introduction of importing or pasting Illustrator layers, including vector shapes and paths, compound shapes and paths, and clipping masks into Photoshop – all the while maintaining visual fidelity, relative positioning, and layer structure. Today the feature is expanded to include copy/paste of live, editable type from Illustrator to Photoshop. Pasting live type as layers preserves type attributes such as font, font style, size, alignment, orientation, tracking, kerning, and color in Photoshop. Other more advanced typographic options such as area type, type on a path, and touch type are also supported. Additionally, Illustrator type layers work in Photoshop as editable type layers to make the two products work much better together.
- The new Photo Restoration Neural Filter can bring an old or damaged photo back to life using machine learning to detect and eliminate scratches and other imperfections in photos.
- Share for Review (Beta) lets you create a snapshot of your document and invite a reviewer to comment on it. Comments show up in real time in a panel within Photoshop where you can see and address them. You can continue to update the PSD with reviewers seeing those updates when the file is refreshed or reopened. You can share links in any application that supports link sharing. Reviewers can see your document in any browser-based interface without having to sign up or sign in.
- Guides Enhancements provide additional guide functionality at the document level to customize and streamline day-to-day work in Photoshop. Guides enhancements include adding the ability to customize and colorize guides, edit guide properties, access guides via new keyboard shortcuts, and use accessible guide options with a new right-click context menu. You can now also delete guides with the delete key, as well as multi-select to edit and move guides. here
- Content Credentials (beta) enable Photoshop users to attach attribution information to their image when exporting from Photoshop, helping to ensure customers get proper attribution for their work. This also establishes an edit trail for images that have been changed or enhanced. This secure metadata provides new transparency options for creative professionals and casual artists alike, while also reinforcing trust in digital content for the people viewing it. Anyone can inspect the overview and details of an image and its Content Credentials (beta) at the updated Verify site, which now supports search and recovery of attribution and history data when work has been published to the Content Credentials cloud.
- Substance materials for Photoshop desktop allows users to apply parametric Substance materials as layers in their projects. Substance materials work much like 2D patterns in Photoshop but offer a much greater range of customization. These “smart” materials give designers new ways to quickly explore ideas and enable near infinite creative iteration as they adjust and tweak parameters in their designs. Applied as smart filter layers, Substance materials mimic their real-world counterparts and include a range natural surface textures such as wood, marble, stone, or organic surfaces. The parametric nature of Substance materials allows for non-destructive editing of surface properties and lighting effects for each material layer, all within Photoshop. Photoshop includes a variety of Substance materials to start with, and users can import their own materials or access 1000s of photorealistic textures available as part of the Substance 3D Collection.
Photoshop on the iPad
Adobe on iPad has become popular for creatives on the go. Because all your subscribed Adobe apps run on all your devices it’s easy to switch devices, like an iPad to your Laptop of Desktop PC and pick up your project where you last left it.
- One-tap Remove Background saves time by using Select Subject technology to quickly isolate the main subject — people, animals, vehicles, toys, and more — by using only a tap, from the background and automatically apply a layer mask. This allows you to take the subject and place it within other images, replace backgrounds with other scenes. and moreand remove the background. This addition brings Remove Background, one of the most popular features of Photoshop to iOS, enhancing the editing experience for iPad customers.
- With One-tap make distracting objects in your background disappear or blend artifacts smoothly. With Adobe’s easy one-tap Content-Aware Fill, you can remove unintended bystanders in your photos, clear out unwanted items and dust, and more. Adobe’s AI technology allows you to fill any selection with content based on its surroundings.
- The one-tap Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color commands come to the iPad to quickly correct tonal issues or color imbalances, so that you can take the extra steps out of adjusting photos and accelerate your creative workflow.
- Improved Select Subject for Portraits Leverages Adobe’s AI technology, to identify photos of people, animals, objects and more, perfectly selecting and refining small details like wisps of hair and edges of clothes. And best of all, this is done in only one tap. When Select Subject is used on a portrait photo, it will automatically complete all the hair and edge refinements. Once selected, it’s easy to use masks and adjustment layers to quickly transform simple portraits into even more stunning images.
Photoshop on the Web (beta)
Last year, Adobe launched Photoshop on the web (beta). By bringing Photoshop’s power to the web, users will be able to enjoy Photoshop with a more approachable and intuitive user experience that makes accessing core Photoshop tools and features easier to use. While it doesn’t yet include all of regular Photoshop’s features, many of new features include Object Selection, Remove Background, Adobe Camera Raw’s image adjustments, and Content-Aware Fill. Adobe says this is still the beginning of re-imagining Photoshop for the web. Access to the beta is limited at this stage while Adobe continues to test, learn, and optimize the web experience. Photoshop subscribers can find and try Photoshop on the web by going to the All Apps section of Creative Cloud home
Adobe Camera Raw
Today, Adobe is also unveiling major new additions to the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) plugin that make it easier than ever to use masking workflows, remove unwanted elements from your images, and apply presets with AI masks inside ACR without using the main Photoshop app. Some of the new highlights shipping today include: select people, select objects, Content-Aware Remove and Portrait Adaptive Presets
Adobe Lightroom
Here are a few new features in Lightroom including mobile.
The latest updates will be rolling out to Lightroom on Win/Mac, Lightroom Classic, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), iOS, Android, iPadOS, ChromeOS, and Web starting today and will become available for everyone over the course of the week.
- More Advanced AI-Powered Masking since the first debut last October will now feature more AI technology. Editing and retouching portraits is now much easier with the new Select People. Powered by Adobe Sensei (Adobe’s AI and machine learning technology), Select People can detect and generate high-quality masks for individuals or groups in any portrait. Specific body parts like face skin, body skin, eyes, teeth, lips, hair, and more can also be selected. The expanded interface for Select People allows you to quickly create all the necessary selections with fewer clicks and brush strokes.
- Select Objects is now the quickest and most flexible way to mask objects in Lightroom that will help you make targeted edits seamlessly. Simply paint over the desired object with Brush Select or draw a rectangle around it with Rectangle Select, and AI will automatically refine the edges to create a precise mask.
- Previously you could select the background by inverting a mask of the subject. Now, One-Click Select Background you directly generate a mask for the background with a single click.
- In June 2022, Adobe introduced a new class of presets on desktop that allows you to access the power of AI masking with the ease of a single click. Today, users can enjoy the same AI-powered preset capability to portraits, now available for both desktop and mobile. You can now use this class of Adaptive Presets to quickly enhance an entire portrait, or target specific features with presets like Enhance Eyes, Whiten Teeth, Darken Eyebrows, and more with a single click or tap.
- You can now also access the power of AI masks for Sky and Subject on mobile through Adaptive Presets. With one tap, Lightroom can detect and create an adaptive mask based on the contents of the image. Adjust the intensity of the edits applied to your local adjustments with Mask Slider for Lightroom on Win/Mac.
- Masking support for more Android devices with AI to more mobile devices than ever comes with the introduction of server-side support for Android devices. Now all Android users, no matter their device capabilities (e.g. less than 6GB of RAM), can take advantage of subject and sky masking in the cloud.
- Healing or removing distractions is easier in Lightroom with the addition of Content-Aware Remove. Utilizing the same Content-Aware technology as Photoshop, Lightroom will adaptively fill in removed blemishes based on surrounding content. This feature also includes a Refresh option and the ability to pick the sampled area with keyboard commands for finer healing control. For Lightroom for Win/Mac, Lightroom Classic, ACR, iOS, iPadOS, Android.
- In Lightroom on Win/Mac, use Compare mode while editing accessing full edit functionality easily with images side by side.
- Images now load faster when switching from one image to the next, and export times are now much shorter with the help of GPU acceleration.
Lightroom Classic
- Customize your Lightroom Classic workspace to fit your workflow needs with the new ability to swap the left and right panels for all modules or just for Develop.
- Faster import from portable devices (Windows)
- Experience faster preview loading and importing on Windows machines from connected portable devices such as phones, tablets, etc.
Adobe Camera Raw
- Achieve the perfect tones for your edits with the added ability to adjust Curves for your localselections. Now available in Camera Raw today and will be coming to Lightroom in the future.
- Make the most of the highlights in your images with new HDR support. Enabling HDR will allow you to visualize and edit your highlights in even greater detail on your HDR-compatible display. Now available as a Tech Preview in Adobe Camera Raw.
Adobe Fresco turns 3! It keeps getting better for artists and illustrators, including adding Liquify, Magic Wand, new pixel and vector brushes and much more. For all the details, head over to Bryan O’Neil Hughes’ blog about Fresco’s newest releases.
Lightroom Academy
- Last MAX Adobe launched Lightroom Academy, which helps you on your photography and photo-editing journey by offering unique, well-curated interactive and video content to engage, educate, and inspire the Lightroom community. There is now new content to explore for food travel and night photography as well as a fresh layout to make it easier than ever to find your topics of interest. In the coming months, additional articles will be released, including: Lightroom Essentials, Lightroom in Black & White, From Still to Motion with Lightroom, The Business of Photography, Photographic Essentials, and Visual Literacy.
Lightroom on the Web
- The same edit controls you use for your images can now be used for your videos. Now available for Lightroom on the web wherever you go.
- Adjust the intensity of a preset to your liking to achieve the perfect look for each image.
Check out more information on updates and improvements to each product:
Lightroom for Mac Windows iOS iPadOS Android ChromeOS Lightroom Classic
More Adobe Max 2022 news and briefs
- A major announcement at Max from the Frame.io Camera to Cloud (C2C) folks who have been working on an instant cloud-based workflow for video and still cameras, eliminating the need to physically transfer media for post editing and sharing. Launched 18 months ago, more than 5000 productions have used Camera to Cloud. Today new partner
- ships were announced with RED and Fujifilm removing the barrier of needing to physically move media. With the Camera to Cloud integration now built directly into the RED V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL RED cameras up to 8K cameras (later this year) and the Fuji H-S2X (in 2023) a next step toward the cloud-based workflow is becoming a reality—no additional hardware, and no hard drives required. This is more than just a technological first—it’s a snapshot of the way every creative will work in the future.
- Adobe Partners With Leica and Nikon To Implement Content Authenticity Technology Into Cameras
- Adobe Unveils Powerful New Collaboration and AI Capabilities in Photoshop powered by Adobe Sensei AI
- Adobe AI Innovation Maximizes Creative Power and Precision for Creative Cloud and Adobe Express Users
- Adobe Advances 3D, Immersive and Metaverse Experiences With New Products
- Bringing the next wave of Artificial Intelligence to Creative Cloud including the free Adobe Express
- MAX 2022: New After Effects features shipping and in public Beta
- Media Alert: Adobe Delivers Powerful New Creative, Document and Marketing Capabilities for SMB’s