Adobe Creative Cloud unleashes AI-powered updates across Lightroom, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

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Adobe released sweeping AI-powered updates to Creative Cloud this week, introducing tools designed to cut editing friction across Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Illustrator. The updates focus on workflow improvements like Assisted Culling, Photo to Video generation, and enhanced Reflection Removal, promising to save photographers and video editors significant time on tedious tasks.

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Adobe Creative Cloud Delivers Major AI-Powered Updates Across Core Applications

Adobe is rolling out a comprehensive set of AI-powered updates to Creative Cloud this week, introducing time-saving AI capabilities across Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Illustrator

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. The updates target photographers and video editors specifically, addressing tedious workflow bottlenecks that consume hours of creative time. "Have you ever spent hours manually reviewing thousands of photos from an event or portrait shoot to find the selects your clients will love?" Adobe asks, positioning these AI-driven innovations as solutions to exactly that problem

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Lightroom Gains Assisted Culling and Photo to Video Features

Lightroom and Lightroom Classic receive some of the most substantial workflow improvements in this update cycle. Assisted Culling, first previewed at Adobe MAX last October, is now fully available with enhanced capabilities developed through close collaboration with users

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. The tool evaluates each person in a photo independently, checking whether everyone has their eyes open and if those eyes are sharp. It automatically stacks similar images into groups and suggests the strongest one, though users retain full control to overrule the AI's decisions

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. Customizable filters let photographers dial in how aggressively the system operates, balancing automation with creative control

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Photo to Video represents another significant addition, exclusive to Lightroom desktop. This feature transforms still images into polished B-roll or social reels using AI-generated motion powered by Adobe Firefly and Google Veo

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. Users write prompts alongside their photos, giving the software creative direction for the generated video content

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AI Features in Lightroom and Photoshop Expand User Control

AI Sharpen now integrates Topaz Labs' acclaimed Noise-Aware Sharpen model directly into Lightroom, eliminating the need to export to third-party applications

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. This promises to recover fine details more effectively, particularly useful for image enhancement workflows

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. Lightroom Classic gains duplicate detection using pixel data to identify and delete duplicates, plus an improved Denoise tool optimized for Apple silicon Macs that delivers performance up to 3.6 times faster

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. Select Subject version 5 brings smarter masking capabilities for challenging subjects like bicycle tire spokes or hair

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Photoshop's Reflection Removal tool receives a critical upgrade. Previously, the tool simply removed reflections entirely. Now reflections are isolated on a separate layer, giving users control over opacity for more natural-looking results

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. The Remove Tool, which uses generative AI to erase selected objects and replace them with realistic pixels, can now operate offline using an on-device AI model, eliminating the previous requirement for an active internet connection

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Premiere Pro and After Effects Streamline Video Editor Workflows

Premiere Pro introduces several AI-powered tools designed to reduce friction for video editors. Global Audio Mute lets users silence audio across the entire application at once, while Marker Search quickly pulls up markers by color and name across open projects

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. New effects include Channel Blur, Gradient, and Noise FX with sliders and fine-tune controls, plus 3D spinback and slide transitions

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. Stock Panel Checkout enables previewing and licensing Adobe Stock assets without leaving Premiere

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. Single-word captioning allows precise, word-level accuracy for social content creation

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After Effects completely reimagines rotoscoping with its new Object Matte tool, replacing the old brush-only Roto Brush with four AI-powered tools: Object Selection, Quick Selection, Selection Brush, and Refine Edge

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. The application now supports adding real surface depth with Displacement Maps, applying cinematic Depth of Field across models, meshes, text, and shape layers, and finally supports SVG importing as editable shape layers

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Illustrator and Cross-Platform Enhancements Round Out Release

Illustrator introduces Concept to Vector, a feature likely to replace Live Trace for many users. It offers a refined, controlled toolset to turn sketches, concepts, or bitmap art into vector graphics

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. This addresses a longstanding need among photographers and designers who work with mixed media workflows.

Adobe has also quietly added support for Sony a7R VI RAW formats across Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Camera Raw, including the tricky Compressed HQ format that proved challenging for many photo editors when Sony introduced it in the a7 V late last year

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. Object Masking in Premiere Pro now delivers softer, more natural masks, and if media goes offline and gets relinked, users can regenerate the mask without starting over

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These updates arrive as the creative industry continues debating AI's role in professional workflows. Adobe's approach emphasizes user control and handling tedious tasks rather than replacing creative decision-making, a strategy that may prove critical as professionals evaluate which AI-powered tools genuinely save time versus those that introduce new complications.

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