AI/ML SELECTIONS AND MASKING FEATURES
The Object Selection Tool is an AI tool that detects all objects and regions in an image or scene. The tool uses detection, segmentation, and refinement (portrait and hair) models for selection and masks.
• Select Subject and Remove Background (Device and Cloud models)
• Select Details in People (body segmentation model)
• Better Hair Selections (hair refinement portrait model)
INTEGRATION OF THIRD-PARTY MODELS INTO PHOTOSHOP
We just shipped BETA Google 2.5 (Nano Banana) and Flux Kontext Pro models into Photoshop's Generative Fill workflow. Integrating third-party models will be a huge strategic shift for Photoshop.
SELECTION BRUSH TOOL
The Selection Brush tool allows Photoshop Desktop users to create a selection using a brush-like tool (leveraging the "Brasso"—brush + lasso gesture) to adjust its hardness and opacity. The Selection Brush is frequently used with Generative Fill workflows, which apply the selection as a parameter input for generative technologies.
ADJUST COLORS & HUE/SATURATION ADJUSTMENT IMPROVEMENTS
April 2025, we introduced the Adjust Colors feature, which enables non-destructive, precise color adjustments of hue, saturation, and brightness via a predetermined prominent color theme. We modernized the Hue/Saturation adjustment, without disrupting Creative Professional workflows.
FREE STOCK PHOTO INTEGRATION
October 2025, we delivered the integration of Free Stock Photos, which includes 21 collections of royalty-free curated imagery. The search feature queries the 500K free Adobe Stock collection.
STAR TOOL + ON-CANVAS CONTROLS + CONTEXTUAL TASK BAR
In August 2025, we introduced a new Star tool that includes on-canvas controls to manipulate the inner, outer, and corner radius of the points of a star shape.
MODERN GRADIENTS TOOL IMPROVEMENTS
In 2024, the team expanded on the Gradients tool to create on-canvas controls for diamond and angled gradients, added a new Gradients Contextual Task bar, and massively improved Gradients on Artboards functionality.
TYPE TOOL
• Added Arabic, Hebrew, and Indic type support (Unified Text Engine)
• Designed and added Bullets and numbering to the Type tool
• Added more typography options (tracking, kerning, bold, underline, italic) to the Type contextual taskbar.
• Designed and added Bullets and numbering to the Type tool
• Added more typography options (tracking, kerning, bold, underline, italic) to the Type contextual taskbar.
IN-APP VIDEO PLAYER + NEW IN-APP TUTORIAL VIDEOS
The team created an in-app video player that enabled showing videos within the context of a user's actions. This accelerated learning, promoted earlier adoption of a deeper variety of features and workflows, and reinforced key concepts (four habits: using layers, masking and selections, adjustments, and retouching).
The In-app videos (I authored most video scripts, tracked all edits, produced keyframe art, and worked with Aaron Nace on the delivery of all videos) were wildly popular with 4 million views per year, and engagement is still growing 2.5 years after launch.
SHAPES CONTEXTUAL TASK BARS
In 2024, the team introduced new Shape tool context bars for the Rectangle, Line, Polygon, and Star shapes to provide simple and obvious ways to change shape properties on-canvas.
UPDATES TO SEVERAL ADJUSTMENT LAYERS
We made some highly requested updates to a few Adjustment Layer Properties. For Selective Color, we added color bars to each color adjustment. We also added gradients behind the color channels in the Curve Properties to help users visualize the color shift. We also enabled a resizable Curve histogram (a highly requested improvement!).
Another huge update was to the Hue/Saturation Panel. We fixed many bugs and improved the UX by adding swatches, before-and-after visualizations, an improved color ramp, more color shift details, and an inverted color ramp.
LAYERS PANEL IMPROVEMENTS
The team spent a year working to improve the usability of the heavily used Layers Panel. Improvements included:
Adding new layer colors (right click eyeball): Seafoam, indigo, fuchsia, and magenta.
Simplified right-click and flyout menus: The goal was to improve usability and reduce the vertical height of the menus by removing old inactive menu items (dimmed) - we reduced some menus by 50%! We reordered menu items according to usage, grouped like menu items, added missing menu items, and added sub-menus for better organization. We added a preference in case users wanted to go back to the old menus (99.8% of users keep the modern setting).
Updated all Layers Panel tooltips to help new users learn the UI.
We have added a panel option to hide the Layer Panel filtering UI and badges on masks. We have also added a new filter by groups option in the filter UI. We have updated the color themes and increased the drag-and-drop zone UI between layers.
We cleaned up bugs regarding layer thumbnails/badges and layer masks (solid instead of broken white line around which is selected, icons for various layer types.
IN-APP NOTIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK
The team spent a year enabling an In-app Notification framework as a single location for viewing personalized, targeted, relevant product information such as updates, collaboration invitations, and onboarding.
Photoshop introduced Paste as Layers support that enabled the import or pasting of Illustrator layers, including vector shapes and paths, compound shapes and paths, and clipping masks into Photoshop - all while maintaining visual fidelity, relative positioning, and layer structure.
GUIDES ENHANCEMENTS
Guides Enhancements provided additional guide functionality at the document level by adding the ability to customize/colorize and edit guides, access guides via new keyboard shortcuts, and create a new context menu. We also enabled guide deletion with the delete key and multi-select to edit and move guides.
