Adobe Launches Free AI-powered Photoshop Camera App

Most people working in marketing communications roles have, at some point, used Adobe’s Photoshop.

Or, at minimum, if you haven’t used for work, you may have used to touch up personal photos. Perhaps editing out drunk bogans from your classy Melbourne Cup “Birdcage” photos.

However, all editing tools, whether photo or video, are to some extent a bit like bolting the gate after the horse has fled (no pun intended).

If content were shot better to begin with, that naturally reduces editing time later in the workflow.

And, this is where Adobe’s new Photoshop Camera app comes in.

Photoshop Camera is a new, AI-powered mobile camera app that brings the power of Photoshop directly to the point of capture.

Think, what Instagram or Snapchat gives you when taking snaps, and even editing, but now multiply that by 100, because you’re using Photoshop directly.

Sounds a bit tasty, doesn’t it?

Save Time Editing While Shooting

Photoshop Camera allows users to capture, edit, and share photos and moments, both natural and creative, using real-time Photoshop-grade functionality right from the viewfinder.

The app uses Adobe’s artificial intelligence platform, Sensei (Srsly, who comes up with these names?), to recognise photo subjects in real time, whether it’s a selfie, portraits, landscape, or food, etc.

In a way that would make Mr. Miyagi proud, the app can then provide recommendations for the subject, and automatically apply sophisticated, unique features at the moment of capture, while also preserving an original shot. In case Sensei goes rogue, a bit like the guy who ran Cobra Kai.

It also understands the technical content (i.e. dynamic range, tonality, scene-type, face regions) of the photo and automatically applies complex adjustments.

Visual Content Increasingly Dominating, Causing Headaches

The growing dominion of visual content and the steady demise for the written word online is hardly a secret.

Open your social app(s) of favour and look at the ratio of text to images/video.

With every passing year, social content shifts away from copywriting towards design.

Former Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox laid it bare over 18 months ago at Facebook’s F8 Developer conference.

While back in 2016, Facebook's European VP, Lady Nicola Mendelsohn, told a packed conference in London that by 2021 Facebook “will be definitely mobile, and it will be probably all video”.

Even Google, which skews massively towards the written word, given the complexities of interpreting search queries, is dialling up its multimedia game.

Google Images is back in business after an extended hiatus, while podcasts are now ranking in search results beginning a slow assault on copy, via the spoken word.

For marketers, both agency and client-side, production will likely become a massive bottleneck as we head into 2020 and beyond. With marketing creative volumes mushrooming.

This is even before we take into account the proliferation and variation in online placements, and the respective design requirements for each, i.e. Instagram Stories vs. Feed vs IGTV vs. DMs + yet to launch features we are oblivious to…

Any tool or software which can speed up design implementation and ease the creative burden will be worth its weight in gold.

Adobe, Canva, Mailchimp, Unbounce or other.

Adobe’s Photo AI Is A Bit Good

Despite it’s absurd name, Adobe’s AI should be pretty damn smart, given its rich and deep photography editing datasets. 

Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis, in an interview with The Verge

“I would say the biggest platform companies have done a great job in pushing the limits on hardware [Edit: iPhone 11 Pro and Pixel 4].

But we think we can do way better on software. The goal isn’t to replace the default phone camera, but to add more “software magic” that’s unique to Adobe. That’s where Photoshop comes in.”

The AI-driven photo-editing app will be available on iOS and Android and is live now for a select group of users, ahead of a 2020 roll out for all.

Users who want to try out the app and create lenses can sign up for the limited preview here.