Quick LinksPhotoshop's Generative Fill Photoshop's Select Subject and Object Selection Tools Illustrator's Intertwine Tool Illustrator's Retype Tool Illustrator's Mockup Tool Illustrator's Recolor Tool Illustrator's Text-to-Vector Tool Canva's Grab Text Tool Canva's Magic Morph Tool Adobe Express' Text Effects
AI tools are found in nearly every design software, from Adobe products to Canva, and all the apps in between. While AI design tools are fun to play with, some may feel like they take away the seriousness of creative design, but there are a solid number of creative AI tools that are actually worth your time.
1 Photoshop's Generative Fill
One of Adobe Photoshop's first generative AI tools, Generative Fill, provides a quick and accurate way to remove pesky and unwanted elements in images.
As a photo editor or manipulator, this tool comes in handy and rarely makes mistakes. Traditionally, removing elements is done by painstakingly cloning, blending, and re-selecting areas. Generative Fill uses AI to map out the image and replace your chosen area with three choices of similar textures and colors. It works so successfully, that you often cannot even tell.
Generative Fill is non-destructive, which helps you make editing decisions throughout your project without committing to specific imagery ideals.
2 Photoshop's Select Subject and Object Selection Tools
Photoshop's Select Subject and Object Selection tools aren't obvious AI features, but they use Adobe Sensei AI technology and is one of the most helpful AI tools you can find -- and that you'll actually use often.
Any Photoshop user understands the painstaking process when trying to perfectly select around a subject in a photo. Magic Wand often picks up the wrong color sections or unanimously misses an entire arm, for example.
Using any selection tool, you can then select the Select Subject button. You can also use the Object Selection tool, which shows a red highlight over the newly intended selection before you confirm it. They both have similar results, with Select Subject typically being more accurate.
While the tools are very helpful, they may make some minor errors in the selection, which can be fixed with other selection tools. It's still much quicker and stress-free than the manual method.
3 Illustrator's Intertwine Tool
Illustrator's introduced its Intertwine tool in 2023 as a non-destructive way to intertwine layers in your vector drawings and artwork. It works effortlessly to add depth and entanglement to your illustrations.
Previous to the introduction of Intertwine, you'd have to use multiple layers, finickety erase tools, and deal with the horror of there being no way to backtrack if you make a mistake. Intertwine makes all of that quick and easy with a little AI genius.
4 Illustrator's Retype Tool
Illustrator's Retype tool uses AI to read text and decipher fonts in your artwork, whether they're live digital pieces or flattened images -- including scans, photos, and PDFs.
While there are plenty of places online where you can identify fonts, Illustrator's Retype tool scans the font directly in the software for you to select and add to your live project.
At the time of writing, the Retype tool only works for Adobe fonts rather than all fonts, but it's a game changer when you've used an Adobe font and created outlines in an older project and can't remember which font you've used.
5 Illustrator's Mockup Tool
Using Adobe software means there are many great ways to create mockups for various products, but Illustrator introduced its own AI mockup tool that lets you juxtapose your vector directly on a set of product mockup models.
Typically, you'd have to save your vector design, then open it in another program like Photoshop, and play around with layers, blending, and displacement maps for realistic results. The Illustrator AI Mockup tool does it all for you, and you just have to drag your design into the shot.
6 Illustrator's Recolor Tool
Adobe Illustrator's Recolor tool was one of the first AI tools introduced to the software through Adobe Firefly. This tool takes the guessing out of creating new color schemes or colorways for your vectors.
Whether you're writing a text prompt for the new color scheme or choosing a pre-set color option, you can quickly recolor your vector drawings for new inspiration. This tool takes the guesswork out of matching colors in your designs. The results are editable too, if you need to tweak them slightly.
7 Illustrator's Text-to-Vector Tool
With so many text-to-image AI generators, it's a designer's worst nightmare when most of the results are non-editable and non-vector images. Adobe Illustrator's generative vector tool fixes all those problems. It's similar to Kittl and its text-to-vector and other vector tools, but your results are ready to edit in your project like any other Illustrator-made vector.
Designers shouldn't rely totally on generative results, but using a prompt to start your vector design lets you hit the ground running, take some inspiration, or just have a bit of fun in Illustrator.
8 Canva's Grab Text Tool
Canva's Magic Studio provides a whole host of AI tools. The Grab Text tool is one of my favorite Canva AI features. It's helpful for identifying and removing gibberish text from AI images, as well as removing text from photos or flattened designs so you can rewrite it in the same font. It retains both the font style and the background behind the text, whether you want to remove the text entirely or rewrite it.
Despite Canva being less of an image manipulation app compared to the likes of Photoshop, the Grab Text tool is the best way to manipulate text within images while retaining the image's integrity.
9 Canva's Magic Morph Tool
Another Canva AI tool worth your time is the Magic Morph tool. While Magic Morph is quite fun to use, it can really benefit your designs by adding a sense of playful depth that is difficult to achieve manually.
Magic Morph lets you select any element or text in your design and turn it into whatever texture you write in the prompt box. It retains the shape of the original object, allowing you to make elements like realistic chocolate teapots or donuts made of metal.
10 Adobe Express' Text Effects
Similar to Canva's Magic Morph tool is Adobe Express' 3D AI Text Effects tool. This tool only works on text, but it's a great way to add depth to your Express designs while utilizing other Adobe features. With great options like adding realistic honey drips, metallic shine, or tree vines to your lettering, you can also choose how tightly or free-flowing the text effect sits on the letters.
The best thing about this AI feature is how easily it can be integrated into other Adobe projects and designs, not just within Adobe Express, but using the Creative Cloud, you can open and edit the project in Photoshop, Illustrator, or more -- and vice versa.
This effect is best used on graphic design projects like eye-catching posters, adverts, or social media content. Adobe's powerful AI systems in Adobe Sensei and Adobe Firefly will boost your 3D text to new heights.
With a slew of AI image generators, AI editing tools, and other AI features, it can be hard to know which features and tools are worth using, helpful to your design process, and don't make it obvious that your designs are AI-edited or AI-created. This list isn't full of fad AI tools, but ones that can truly benefit your creativity in different ways.
