Adobe turns Firefly into an agentic creative studio

Adobe has expanded Firefly into what it calls an AI creative studio, combining image, video, audio and design tools with third-party models and a new generation of agentic features. The announcement was made Tuesday at Adobe MAX in Miami Beach, which runs through Thursday.

The central addition is an expanded Adobe Creative Agent, available through the Firefly AI Assistant beta. Users can direct the agent in natural language across tools, models and workflows, while retaining approval over creative decisions. It can select Creative Cloud tools for multistep work, including tools from Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere, without requiring users to move between applications or menus.

The assistant creates an execution plan before running a task, allowing users to review, edit and approve it, and later refine the plan. Plan Mode can alternatively be permitted to run independently. Users can also supply preferences and brand guidelines, while a Model Selector offers either a chosen model or an Auto-Select option in which the agent selects one based on the requested output.

Adobe said the Creative Agent had already been used this year for batch portrait retouching and turning product photographs into short social videos. New capabilities include saving formats, colours, brand rules, characters and products for reuse across projects. The agent is integrated into Firefly’s multimedia editors and Firefly Boards, where it can help develop mood boards, storyboards and other concepts through conversation.

Firefly AI Assistant also includes prebuilt Creative Skills for Portrait Retouch, Social Media Assets and Mockup Studio. Adobe has put always-on agents into preview for recurring background work, including asset organisation, quality checks and preparing material for different channels.

The company also introduced Quick Actions, a gallery of guided workflows for defined tasks such as product shots, social-media thumbnails and captions. They combine tools, prompts and steps, and can carry out work such as background or people removal, image upscaling, thumbnail and caption generation, and cartoon creation.

Firefly Graph, now in beta, is a visual canvas for constructing and sharing repeatable AI workflows. Its connected nodes can generate, edit, transform and prepare creative assets, passing each output to the next action. The system integrates Creative Cloud tools with models from Adobe, Google, OpenAI and other providers, allowing creators to compare outputs; it also has an AI Assistant for building and optimising workflows in natural language.

Several media-specific tools accompanied the workflow features. Firefly Video adds tools to develop stories from narrative arcs into scenes and shots, assemble clips on a simplified timeline, generate transitions and b-roll, and add captions. Firefly Design, in beta, puts illustration, image editing, animation, 3D and print on one canvas for uses including brand identities, packaging and campaigns.

For image work, Firefly has added Edit Object, Edit Text, Relight and Retouch, which allow a selected part of an image to be changed while preserving the remainder. Adobe also previewed Firefly Builder, a private-beta, no-code tool for making interactive, on-brand website, presentation and app prototypes from natural-language prompts. Its canvas supports direct editing, with a design system intended to maintain consistency.

Adobe said Firefly now brings together its own tools and models from Adobe and Topaz Labs, alongside partner models from ByteDance, Google, Kling, OpenAI and ElevenLabs. Newly available models include Dreamina Seedance 2.5, Kling 4.0, GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst, GPT Image 2.6 Flare and Nano Banana 2.1.

Edit Text, Retouch, Relight and Quick Actions became generally available Tuesday. The other announced capabilities remain in beta, while Firefly Builder is accessible through a private-beta waitlist.

Adobe framed the release as a response to creators increasingly having to juggle tools, models and costs across image, video, audio and design projects. In its latest Creators’ Toolkit Report, 78% of surveyed creators said creative AI had accelerated growth in their business or following.

Beyond Firefly, Adobe said it had expanded the Creative Agent across Creative Cloud, including Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects and Frame.io. It also previewed local MCP integrations designed to let third-party agents edit native Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects project files while keeping their layers, vectors, bins and sequences editable.