Adobe keeps shipping AI features into Photoshop at a pace that’s hard to track, but the most interesting addition in this latest release isn’t another text prompt box. It’s a tool called Markup, and it might be the most intuitive AI editing interface Adobe has built yet.
As reported by Engadget, the new Markup feature works alongside text prompts but lets you skip the guesswork of describing spatial relationships in words. Instead, you draw directly on the image. Sketch an arrow to indicate where something should move, brush in a rough shape to suggest a new element, or scribble over an area you want recolored. The AI, powered by Firefly Image 5, interprets your doodle and fills it in with photorealistic results. Adobe showed one example where a rough drawing of a cat and some wall tiles was transformed into a convincing, fully rendered scene. That’s a meaningful shift from how most generative tools work today, where users have to translate visual intent into precise language, often with frustrating results.
The other new AI feature, called Instruct Edit with Masks, is more familiar territory but still useful. You mask off the area you want to change, then describe the edit in plain language, things like “open the subject’s eyes” or “add a hat to this person.” The unmasked areas stay untouched. It’s a more controlled approach than Generative Fill, which can sometimes bleed into areas you didn’t intend to change. Both tools are part of a new beta called the AI Assisted Editor, which groups Photoshop’s AI capabilities into a dedicated interface with a natural-language prompt bar. It includes Remove Background, Generative Expand, Generative Fill, Generative Upscale, and the new AI Markup. You can still access all of these from the standard Photoshop interface if you prefer.
But the non-AI addition is arguably just as significant for working photographers. Adobe finally added a Light Adjustment Layer to Photoshop, bringing exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks controls into a non-destructive layer. These are the core sliders that Lightroom users have relied on for years, and their absence from Photoshop has long forced photographers to bounce between the two apps for even basic tonal work. Having them native in the layers workflow means faster edits without the round-trip to Camera Raw or Lightroom.
This matters because Adobe’s two flagship creative tools have historically served different workflows, Lightroom for photo management and tonal editing, Photoshop for compositing and detailed retouching. The gap between them has caused real friction. Adding Lightroom-grade lighting controls to Photoshop doesn’t replace Lightroom, but it does reduce the number of times you need to leave Photoshop mid-project.
The update also includes a few smaller but useful additions:
- Dynamic Text extended to custom shapes and paths, not just standard text boxes
- A dockable Stock Panel with access to more than 900 million Adobe Stock assets directly inside Photoshop
- Shapes and Paths improvements that broaden where Dynamic Text can be applied
All of these features are available now in the latest Photoshop update through Creative Cloud. Adobe hasn’t changed pricing with this release. For users already on a Creative Cloud subscription, it’s a straightforward update. The Markup feature in particular is worth testing early. If it works as shown, it closes a real gap that tools like Midjourney and Firefly’s standalone web app still haven’t solved: giving users precise spatial control without requiring them to write a paragraph to describe a picture.
