Adobe Firefly 3.0 Is Next Level AI Image Generator

It’s been half a year since Adobe released Firefly 2.0, its Midjourney and Dall-E 3 competitor. A few days ago, they dropped Firefly 3.0 (currently in beta), their latest text-to-image AI tool, and it’s packed with some pretty cool updates. Before we dive into the details, here’s a quick information on what Firefly is.

What is Firefly?

Firefly is a family of generative AI models that let anyone, even if you’re not an expert, generate high-quality images, stunning text effects, and design templates in seconds with nothing but simple text descriptions.

The best part? Firefly is going to be built into some of your go-to Adobe apps, like Photoshop, Express, and Lightroom. How awesome is that?

What’s new in Firefly 3.0?

The key new features of Firefly 3.0 are the following:

• Auto-stylization: A new style engine delivers high-quality outputs with diverse styles, colors, backgrounds, and subject poses, enabling users to explore creative ideas more efficiently.
• Structure and Style Reference: Users can generate images that match the structure and style of reference images, providing next-level control and state-of-the-art visual quality.
• Improved image quality: Firefly 3 offers better lighting, positioning, and variety in people rendering, complex structures, and crowds.
• Enhanced prompt accuracy and detail: The model better understands complex prompts, resulting in accurate and detail-rich image generations, including clear text displays.
• Expanded illustration and icon styles: Significant improvements in illustration outputs enable the quick creation of icons, logos, raster images, and line art.

Okay, these all look good on paper, but do they really make a difference? Let’s find out.

How to try Firefly 3.0

Head over to the Adobe Firefly website and sign in with your Adobe account. Under the General settings, make sure to select “Firefly Image 3 (preview)” in the model dropdown.

You can play around with the customization settings, like aspect ratio, structure, style, and effects. Then, just describe the image you want to create. Here’s an example:

Prompt: A heavenly sky full with etherial, misty fluffy clouds with sparkles. Clear, bright blues, purples, pinks.

I gave it a shot with a hyperrealistic style, and each generation gave me four different versions to choose from. You can click on them to see an upscaled version and download the ones you like.

Comparing Firefly 3.0 and Firefly 2.0

Now let’s try to compare the image quality between Firefly 3.0 and Firefly 2.0.

Prompt: A beautiful Dutch lady, cosmetics model, on a simple solid color studio background in light pink and beige colors with white tones. Fair skin exudes a natural glow and reveals fine texture details. In one front-facing photo, she holds up a small ball of foundation and applies the cream to one cheek. Her hair gently covered half of her head, and her smile was gentle.

The results were pretty interesting. Firefly 2.0 kept generating younger-looking subjects, while Firefly 3.0 generated older ones. I tried it a few times, and the results were consistent.

But when you zoom in, you can really see how much Firefly 3.0 has improved the small details, especially when it comes to hands and skin texture.

Generation credits

Every month, you get 25 free credits to use on Firefly. You can check the remaining credits under your profile dropdown menu like below.

Here’s the Generative credits usage rate table (applies to individuals, teams, and enterprise users, unless explicitly specified otherwise).

• For paid subscribers, generative credits renew monthly based on the plan’s initial billing date.
• For free users, 25 generative credits are allocated upon first using a Firefly-powered feature. These credits expire one month from the allocation date. In subsequent months, credits are again allocated on the first use of a Firefly feature and expire one month later, giving users a full month for each allocation.

How much does it cost?

If the free credits aren’t enough, Adobe offers a Premium plan for $4.99 per month. The plan includes the following:

• Includes 100 monthly generative credits
• Provides access to Adobe Fonts Free
• Removes watermarks on images generated by Firefly
• Can be canceled anytime

Generative credits are also included in many other Adobe Creative Cloud plans.

Now let’s talk about commercial use…

While outputs from beta features in Adobe Firefly 3.0 can generally be used commercially, there may be exceptions. If a specific product or feature is designated as not suitable for commercial use, users should adhere to those guidelines.

Outputs from beta features can be used commercially unless otherwise designated in the product or elsewhere, but they aren’t eligible for indemnification while in beta.

Indemnification is a legal term that refers to protection against financial losses or legal consequences. In this case, it means that Adobe does not provide legal protection for any issues that may arise from using assets created with beta features of Adobe Firefly 3.0 in a commercial context.

Final Thoughts

It’s been weeks since the last time I wrote an article about AI image generators from big tech companies like OpenAI, Google, and Midjourney. I’m happy to see Adobe continuously improve its AI image models and integrate them more deeply into its popular software products.

I haven’t had the chance to dive into all the new features yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, the improvements are impressive. The images I’ve generated have better detail, accuracy, and overall quality compared to the previous version.

I’m also excited to try out Firefly 3.0 in the latest version of Photoshop. As a Photoshop user, I can’t wait to see how this AI tool can enhance my workflow and open up new creative possibilities.

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