Adobe is celebrating one year of Firefly, and in this time we have seen numerous additions of features and improved capabilities to an almost scary level of AI generation.
Adobe Firefly ranks among the best AI image generators, creating mindblowing artworks and 'photographs' from the simplest prompts. What's more, Firefly is ethically trained on licensed images from Adobe Stock, and designed for safe commercial use.
To celebrate its first anniversary Adobe has added an exciting new feature called Structure Reference, which is set to become a hit with artists and photographers who wish to 'enhance' their images.
The major update enables users to easily use the structure of an existing image to aid in the generation of new images. By using an existing image as a reference, Firefly can generate a selection of new images with the same structural layout. This enables quicker and more specific generations without the need for lengthy and detailed prompts.
The new Structure Reference tool sits beside the already established Style Reference in the Text to Image module, and as a combination they can be extremely powerful. You can reference both the structure and style of an image to quickly bring ideas to life, as Adobe states: "These features combine to give deliver a new level of creative control and state-of-the-art visual quality."
Adobe's examples of how this new tool can be employed include redesigning an entire room with the click of a button, by uploading a picture or sketch of an existing room and hitting ‘generate’, or by turning a child's drawing into a digital art piece.
Above: Images that I have produced using my photographs in Adobe Firefly with the new Structure Reference tool. Reference images are on the left and generated images are on the right
Above: Images that I have produced using my photographs in Adobe Firefly with the new Structure Reference tool. Reference images are on the left and generated images are on the right
After finding out the news of the big update, I had to try it out for myself to gain a better understanding of the new capabilities. Intrigued by how both would render, I tried generating both illustrations and photographs to get a varied result while testing the program's versatility.
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The tool did exactly what it said it would, and generated a series of images that used the basic composition of my references. By adding an accompanying prompt (noted below the images above), I was able to create new images or enhance the original. This worked for photographs, by taking the composition or model pose and generating it in a new location or adding new clothing, and it even worked on my rough sketches, turning them into fully fleshed-out pieces of art.
Above: Images that I have produced using my sketches in Adobe Firefly with the new Structure Reference tool. Reference images are on the left and generated images are on the right
Above: Images that I have produced using my sketches in Adobe Firefly with the new Structure Reference tool. Reference images are on the left and generated images are on the right
Although Adobe Firefly is extremely fun to use, and the potential of this software is exciting, it's not ready to replace taking photographs just yet. The new update may even require taking more photographs as references to turn the everyday into something more creative.
Annie Leibovitz has recently given her view on AI, stating that it is simply another creative tool, and I am inclined to agree. Much like the birth of Photoshop, Firefly is a fantastic tool to aid in enhancing creative ideas and not a replacement for the medium of photography.
For more information and to try it out for yourself, you can head over to the Adobe Firefly web browser.
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