Expand your creativity with Generative Fill

Photoshop's Al-powered feature brings revolutionary new tools to image editing. James Paterson reveals all...

- James Paterson

With the emergence of Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion and similar AI-powered image generators over the past year, it was inevitable we would eventually see a generative AI feature come to Photoshop. Powered by Adobe Firefly, the new Generative Fill and Expand features in Photoshop could be the most seismic update in the application’s history. The tools work like other prompt-based image generators. Select an area, type something and watch as it appears in your image. It’s equal parts dumbfounding, scarily intelligent and also somehow reassuringly disappointing.

There are some things it does brilliantly – the way it matches the backlighting in our original portrait is mind-boggling. The Expand feature works well and there’s much enjoyment to be had by cropping outside your original frame. But ask it to generate a new object and the results are hit-andmiss. Of course, the technology is still in its infancy but for now, it is reassuring to know that the low-res, smudgy fills aren’t a match for what you can create with a camera.

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