This happened in the June 2026 Lightroom update, so that you can now use an AI Sharpen option powered by Topaz AI, and there’s an optional Topaz Denoise checkbox you can use alongside it. It shows Adobe’s determination to dominate the AI landscape, but at what cost? (Not to Adobe, of course, but to us.)
It seems so harmless. AI sky replacement is not even in the same league as generative AI, since it just uses AI masking and blending techniques to add in a new sky that’s also perfectly real and did exist, just not here. It’s just made something easier that needed a bit of Photoshop skill before. But it does cast light on some important questions about facts, representations and motives.
There are those who say that a photograph has to be good straight from the camera and, if it’s not, then you can’t make it good with editing. Some hardcore SOOC (straight out of camera) fans think you can make a picture entirely in-camera. What no-one really dares to suggest, though, is that you can make a picture work with editing alone.
RAW files offer huge technical advantages but can lead you into an editing limbo where everything can be changed and nothing is finished.
Depending on who you ask, either Photoshop or Lightroom is the world’s most popular photo editor. I’d be inclined to back Lightroom, given that it’s clearly photography-focused, whereas Photoshop is really a design tool that also does photography. But both miss a huge part of the photography style spectrum – what I’m going to call ‘organic’ photography.
I normally post editing techniques and ideas on Life after Photoshop, but this is slightly different. It’s about where we live and how we see it – or even IF we see it. The fashion in photography is to chase around the world looking for ever more spectacular subjects, sights and experiences. Now we take photographs for audiences and algorithms, not ourselves, and that’s our loss.
If you are in the creative industry as marketeer or a content provider or an advertising agency or a publisher, you will probably eventually unravel what Adobe is offering at Adobe Max 2025 and work out what will be useful to you and what will not. Good luck.
It’s a fake. Good, isn’t it? The reason I know it’s a fake is because I made it myself using Adobe Firefly Generative AI. In fact the only creative input involved was how I worded my text prompt. The trouble is, when AI generated images get this good, how can we tell what’s real any more?
I’m in the middle of writing a book about black and white photography, and one of the topics I wanted to cover was why black and white still exists in a world of color, and whether black and white images can sometimes work better. It’s a difficult argument to make, but I think I’ve found a good example.
As of January 2025, Adobe is no longer offering its regular 20GB Photography Plan subscription to new users at its old $9.99/month price tier. Existing subscribers can continue to use it, though at an increased cost of $14.99/month. But for new users, there is now only the 1TB Lightroom Plan (now $11.99/month) and the 1TB Photography Plan ($19.99/month – as before).