Adobe Max 2024: All the major announcements around design and AI

Adobe has been working on some experimental tech that could help speed up concept and planning work for graphic designers and audio engineers. Some of the “sneaks” previewed during Adobe’s MAX event include tools that can turn sketches into a variety of polished designs, and a feature for rotating 2D art as if it were a 3D object.

“Project Turntable” is capable of the latter. The tool allows users to click a button and then drag a slider along to automatically view and snap a vector image into a different viewing perspective — something that would typically require an artist to redraw the image entirely from scratch. The examples demonstrated at the event retained their original designs when rotated without warping into a new overall shape. For example, the dragon’s yellow underbelly and tail remained in the same position throughout all the changes.

One of Adobe’s most notable experiments this year could help combat misinformation and ensure artists are credited for their work, no matter where it appears online or offline. Announced during the Sneaks segment at Adobe Max, Project “Know How’ is an in-development tool that can link ownership of an image or video across any online platform, and a multitude of real-world surfaces like posters, tumblers, and textiles.

Project Know How builds on Adobe’s Content Credentials tech, which applies a digital tag to track where a piece of content has been posted, who owns it, and if/how it’s been manipulated. Providing an image or video has Content Credentials applied, the tool can help creators establish ownership over their content even if that authentication metadata has been stripped out. The demo I saw, while early in development, managed to display the Content Credentials data on an image just by recording it on a camera, even on a texture-heavy object like a tote bag.

Adobe is previewing some experimental AI tools for animation, image generation, and cleaning up video and photographs that could eventually be added to its Creative Cloud apps.

While the tools apply to vastly different mediums, all three have a similar aim — to automate most of the boring, complex tasks required for content creation, and provide creatives more control over the results than simply plugging a prompt into an AI generator. The idea is to enable people to create animations and images, or make complex video edits, without requiring a great deal of time or experience.

Adobe is kicking off its annual Adobe Max conference today with the launch of new AI-powered features across its Creative Cloud apps. New AI features for Photoshop, like automatic background distraction removal and a more powerful Firefly generative AI model, are the biggest announcements, with Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere Pro also getting new features that can help to speed up traditionally labor-intensive design tasks.

For example, a new “Distraction Removal” feature has been added to the Remove Tool. Remove already works a bit like Google’s Magic Eraser feature on Pixel phones, allowing users to quickly remove unwanted objects from their images by brushing over them. The new Distraction Removal feature, which Adobe teased last year, makes it even more like Magic Eraser by automatically identifying common distractions for you, like people, wires, and cables, and removing them with a single click.

The latest version of Frame.io, Adobe’s review and collaboration platform for Video and photography, is rolling today, making it easier to manage sprawling creative projects in a single app. Available for all users on web, iPhone, and iPad, Frame.io V4 is the biggest update to the platform since it was launched in 2015, according to Adobe, and adds new tagging and collaboration features that make it feel more like a workflow management tool, such as Trello and Asana.

It includes the “metadata” tagging model that was introduced in beta earlier this year, which allows users to assign custom tags like media type, assignee, due date, social media platform, and more to their files, making them easier to manage and review. Projects can also be broken down into new “Collections” folders that automatically update to reflect any changes or comments made to work, creating a smoother collaboration process for teams or multiple users.