Adobe brings new lighting and editing tools to Photoshop and Lightroom

Adobe’s annual Max conference is underway, and this year’s Photoshop and Lightroom updates are largely about delivering on earlier announcements. Photoshop is bringing several tools out of beta, while Lightroom is picking up features from elsewhere in Adobe’s lineup. Here’s what’s changing.

Photoshop’s Relight and Generative Restyle leave beta

Adobe’s Relight tool is moving from Photoshop’s public beta into the main application. The concept also echoes Project Light Touch, which the company demonstrated during last year’s Max Sneaks presentation. The tool lets you use generative AI to change the lighting of a photograph after it has been taken, adding up to three virtual lights with controls for their position, color and size. The effect lives on a dedicated layer, so users can revisit their lighting setup and refine it rather than commit to a single generated result.

As a generative tool, it requires Adobe’s generative credits. It costs 30 credits to use, though Adobe specified that you can preview and tweak the lighting changes as much as you want without spending credits. You will only be charged once you hit “done.”

Generative Restyle is also leaving beta. It gives users a way to completely change the look of an image with a prompt, and then provides sliders to fine-tune the result. Like Relight, the effect lives on an editable layer, allowing users to come back and make adjustments as needed.

During Adobe’s briefing, the company demonstrated the Generative Restyle tool by changing a landscape photograph that was taken midday into a golden-hour scene with a pastel sunset. A slider then let the demonstrator move through variations in the effect, almost like choosing a moment from a sunset time-lapse. While it adjusts lighting, the tool goes beyond merely correcting the light captured in a photograph. Instead, it can reinvent the conditions under which the scene appears to have been taken.

Generative Restyle also requires generative credits, and a lot of them. It’s a processing-heavy feature and costs 80 credits per use.

Photoshop also gains Quick Compare, an on-canvas split-screen slider for comparing before-and-after edits without manually toggling individual layers.

Remove tackles more of what an object leaves behind

Adobe says it has improved Photoshop’s Remove tool so it will better address an object’s effects on its surroundings. In the briefing, Adobe demonstrated the tool by removing a trash can and its associated shadow. Users need only select the object; the tool automatically identifies and removes related elements. Adobe also said that other elements, such as reflections, water ripples, dust and fog, will be detected and removed alongside the selected object.

Shadows and reflections alone are not new territory. At Max 2025, Adobe demonstrated object removal that also cleaned up those elements in Photoshop and Lightroom. The latest update extends that approach to a broader range of disturbances, potentially reducing the manual cleanup needed after removing something from a scene.

This tool will also cost generative credits, though at 10 credits, it’s the lowest of the new features. You can also still use the original remove tool without touching surrounding things if you’d like, which does not use generative credits.

AI Assisted Editor leaves beta as AI Assistant expands

Another tool leaving beta is Photoshop’s AI Assisted Editor. First introduced in August, the optional editing mode offers a simplified interface for prompt-based edits and tools such as object removal, Generative Fill and upscaling. Users can switch back to the traditional Pro Editor for more detailed work and finer control. Adobe says that the AI Assisted Editor works on a flattened copy of the image, returning the result as a new generative layer while preserving the original layers.

Separately, Adobe is expanding Photoshop’s AI Assistant, a conversational tool powered by its Creative Agent that can carry out multi-step editing tasks and provide guidance. Unlike the AI Assisted Editor, it works through an assistant panel rather than a separate editing mode. Adobe first announced it for Photoshop on the web at Max 2025 and later brought it to the desktop beta app. The desktop assistant remains in beta; Adobe describes it as expanded, but it hasn’t detailed specific changes.

Flattened text becomes editable

Convert to Text Layers is also moving out of beta. The tool detects text in flattened artwork, identifies matching fonts and recreates the text on editable layers.

It could be useful when revising a graphic, such as a templated poster, without access to its original layered file. Instead of manually covering the existing lettering and rebuilding it, users can turn the detected text into something they can edit directly.

Lightroom adds Glow and expands retouching tools

Adobe is bringing Glow to Lightroom after introducing it in Adobe Camera Raw in August. In ACR, the tool offers diffusion, bloom and halation effects; Adobe says Lightroom’s version will have five style options, though it had not identified all five at the time of writing.

Adobe is also highlighting Blemish Removal, which provides one-tap retouching with fine-tuning controls. It demoed the tool at Max last year, and it was available as a Quick Action in the retouch menu of the mobile and web versions of Lightroom.

Adobe also says it is improving camera tethering in Lightroom Desktop and on iPad, with an emphasis on live review, organization and collaboration. It didn’t share many details on how things have improved at the time of writing, however, so we’re looking forward to finding out more.

Third-party agents get a route into Photoshop

Beyond the individual editing tools, Adobe is previewing local Model Context Protocol, or MCP, integrations that let third-party AI agents work directly in native Creative Cloud projects, including Photoshop files.

According to Adobe, layers and other project structures remain editable, so users can inspect and revise the changes rather than receive only a flattened result. The integrations are a preview, distinct from the Photoshop features moving out of beta.

We’ll be on the ground at Adobe Max this year, so stay tuned for demos of some of these features and previews of what we might see over the next year.