Tools AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-28

Photoshop now has a mode where you scribble on the picture instead of describing it — and a toggle that hides the professional interface entirely

Adobe has put a beta mode called AI Assisted Editor into Photoshop: a stripped-down, prompt-first workspace reachable from a toggle in the menu bar, which can be hidden from Settings if you never want to see it. It carries seven functions — Prompt to Edit, Remove Background, Generative Expand, the Remove tool, Generative Fill, Generative Upscale and AI Markup. Markup is the genuinely new idea: rather than writing a paragraph describing where something goes, you scribble on the image — circle a region, draw an arrow, brush a rough shape — and attach a short instruction like "add more clouds" or "change this shoe." Firefly then makes the edit, which can be refined in either mode. The same release adds a Light adjustment layer that brings Camera Raw controls — exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks — into the normal non-destructive layer stack. The professional interface stays where it was, and the tools remain available in it.

Why it mattersThe interesting move is not the generative editing, which Photoshop has had for years, but the admission that typing is a bad way to say "this bit, here." Pointing was always how people edited images; text prompts made everyone give it up. Two things worth watching: Adobe is now maintaining two front doors to the same program, which usually ends with one of them winning, and every gesture in the simple one is a training signal about how ordinary people actually want to change a picture.

#Image Generation

✓ Verified · 3 sources

Photoshop now has a mode where you scribble on the picture instead of describing it — and a toggle that hides the professional interface entirely

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