Adobe Photoshop Completes 30 Years, Launches New AI-Powered Features

Adobe Photoshop, a synonym and often a verb for manipulated and edited images, has turned 30. After launching its app on iPad last year, the company said it's looking to expand its presence on more platforms in the near future. From a report: On this occasion, Adobe is bringing four AI-powered features to its desktop and iPad apps. On a call earlier this week, executives said they were looking to introduce more features powered by the company's Sensei engine, which was launched in 2016. On desktop, the company is bringing content-aware filling for multiple objects on one go. This feature lets you remove objects and fill the space with the present background, based on your selection. For instance, in the picture below, you can remove the leaf on the ice cream cone and fill it with pink-colored ice cream. Along with this, Adobe is also launching an improved lens-blur function that supports photos with the depth map. The new feature relies on GPU rather than the CPU for processing, and supposedly delivers a more realistic bokeh effect.

Photoshop has been getting steadily less useful

[weilawei]

Long time PS user here, since 5. Photoshop 7 was the last really, "you are in full control" version. Then they started adding constellation detection in CS, but it was unusable crap because they'd redone the interface code too. CS2 was reasonably stable.

Now that were into the CC era, and I have to have a subscription, I'm spending more time learning Krita. I still use it, but less and less.

Hey, Adobe, you shot yourself in the foot. It was inevitable that The GIMP would fix most of its interface issues, and new players, like Krita, would come along.

Re:

[ElectronicSpider]

Krita? Never heard of it, how cumbersome is it going from mainly using PS to using Krita, I have tried and I still am in the process of moving 100% of my image editing to GIMP, but I still get myself caught in the edges.

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[weilawei]

It's a Photshop clone. I think the first major thing that I stubbed my toe on was finding Curves. It's under Filter > Adjust > Color adjustment curves. It used to be named differently (Brightness?), but they've renamed it to curves.

It's very intuitive, and pretty much nukes the reason to use Photoshop from orbit. Because it might as well be Photoshop.

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[ElectronicSpider]

Sounds nice, I'll give it a try tonight at home.

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[cayenne8]

You might also look into Affinity Photo [serif.com] also as a PS replacement.

I use their desktop AND iPad versions and it is pretty good stuff.

In many cases, faster than PS, since they wrote their engine from the ground up.

I believe they have a free trial, and no rental model.

Oh..they also have Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Publish alternatives too. I bought it and have had every upgrade so far free....

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[omnichad]

7 was really good. CS2 was great - agree on that. But CS5.5 was the last relatively stable version that I dealt with - never got to try CS6.

As it is, CC is painfully slow. 16GB of RAM and a PCIe SSD and launching takes a ridiculous amount of time and it's not very responsive when it's running. Almost like the whole thing was rewritten in Java.

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[DNS-and-BIND]

I'm still on Photoshop CS4 and going strong. It does what I need it to do, and I don't see any reason to change. Who uses all the advanced features anyway? I got made fun of a couple of years back. "LOL you're still using that ancient piece of shit? Move into the 21st century loser!" Yeah I don't pay any subscription fees and never will. Some people just like new for the sake of new, but they're the fools who pay through the nose for everything. Who's the fool now?

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[bradley13]

CS4? Sure, why not. For almost everything you will ever need to do, it is sufficient. The same applies, of course, to just about any standard software. There's usually no reason to upgrade, except for forced obsolescence by the manufacturer. For example, Office-97 did everything you need - we hung onto that version for a very long time, until the spread of the new XML formats forced us to change.

In that sense, maybe the subscription models have an actual benefit: Since the manufacturers will be getting paid

Re: Photoshop has been getting steadily less usefu

[Malays Boweman]

"Move into the 21st century loser!" Yeah I don't pay any subscription fees and never will. Some people just like new for the sake of new, but they're the fools who pay through the nose for everything. Who's the fool now?" ----Time to laugh at them for becoming subjects to the King and being forced to pay tribute to Him. And now that they are renting and locked in, their King can abuse them per His Majesty's pleasure. I am envisioning an evil version of Clippy which cannot be disabled that pops up right in

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[Bobrick]

Don't know if you actually bothered to try the CC versions but I can't imagine going back to such older versions from the current one. Oh right, this is Slashdot, where the norm is to complain how everything was better "back then"... always!

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[ElectronicSpider]

Just for curiosity, what are those indispensable features you're going to miss? Or is it just the version number?

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[weilawei]

I have an active, current subscription. I use it at work. Thanks. The old versions aren't generally lacking the features I use day-to-day, but I'm not personally footing the bill and I also need other parts of their ecosystem (an absolutely up-to-date version of Acrobat for example) that come with it.

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[bussdriver]

Affinity Photo. not free but it is cheap and in some ways better than photoshop.

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[fustakrakich]

Theirs are business customers, where rentals make sense. They just shot the private consumers in the foot. Business is still good.

I believe CS6 is the last version to run locally on your own machine, but you still have to work around the activation bullshit.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Will Not Rent Software

[BrendaEM]

I will keep using 5.5, legally owned.

Buzzwords

[samwichse]

Now with AI! And fully Buzzword Compliant(tm)

Maybe they can charge an extra $10-15 per month software rent now that it says AI(tm) right on the box.

Sam

Re: Buzzwords

[Malays Boweman]

They likely will. It's like how certain words seem to make certain physical goods more expensive.

Title wording

[thegreatbob]

I, too, have completed 30 years. However, I did this first.

Photoshop is dead to me

[MpVpRb]

It died when they introduced the rental model
I was a loyal, paying customer, who paid for every update
I still have the last working version, but rarely use it

Photoshop's Ex-Wife Removal Tool

[Applehu Akbar]

Content-aware fill is already one of the most useful features in Photoshop. This advance should make it even better.