Photoshop's New Beta Lets You Draw on Your Photos to Tell AI What to Change

Adobe is testing a major update for Photoshop that gathers all of the app's AI tools into one place. The update includes a new optional interface called the "AI Assisted Editor" view, currently available in beta. It puts features like the prompt-based image editor, background remover, and AI image extender behind a single toolbar (The Verge).

The standout addition is a markup feature. Users can draw directly on an image to show the AI assistant what they want changed, without typing anything. They can circle an area to recolor it, sketch an arrow to move something, or brush in a rough shape to suggest a new element. For people who still prefer describing changes in words, Adobe is also updating a feature that lets users edit a selected part of an image using plain-language prompts.

Behind these changes is an upgrade to Adobe's Firefly Image 5 model, the AI system that creates and modifies images inside Photoshop. Adobe says the model now looks at the entire image to understand what is going on, so users no longer have to carefully mark every area they want edited. That big-picture awareness is what makes the markup feature work. A user can sketch something rough and trust the AI to figure out what they mean based on the surrounding image.

This update follows a year of gradual AI expansion in Photoshop. At Adobe MAX in October 2025, the company announced a Photoshop AI Assistant through a private beta waitlist (Adobe). By March 2026, Adobe had moved the AI Assistant into public beta for Photoshop on web and mobile, where it could remove distractions and change backgrounds (Adobe Blog; The Verge). In April 2026, Adobe confirmed the Firefly AI Assistant remained in public beta (Adobe Blog). By June 2026, Adobe had brought AI Assistants to Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and Lightroom in a public beta (The Verge). The Photoshop Beta had also previously added more AI models to its Generative Fill feature for more creative options (Adobe Blog).

What sets the AI Assisted Editor apart from those earlier releases is the design choice. Until now, Adobe's AI features in Photoshop have been spread across the existing toolbar and menus. The new view gathers them into one optional layout, which is a bet that some users will want to work in a mode where AI is the main way they interact with the app, not just an occasional tool.

The markup feature is the more interesting technical addition. Adobe has been steadily making it easier to go from an idea in your head to a finished edit. The path has gone from typing text prompts, to selecting specific areas to edit, to now letting you just draw on the image. Text prompts force you to put a visual idea into words. Selecting areas requires precision. Markup brings things closer to how people naturally work: point at the thing, sketch what you mean, and let the system figure out the rest.

The catch is that the markup feature relies entirely on how well Firefly Image 5 understands the full image. If the AI misreads a sketch or an arrow, the user has to go back to selecting areas manually. Adobe's claim that the model now processes the whole image is doing a lot of the work here. How reliably it performs in real editing sessions, not just controlled demos, will determine whether the markup tool becomes a go-to workflow or a passing novelty.

All of these features are currently in beta. Adobe has not announced a general release date for the AI Assisted Editor view.

The broader direction is clear. Adobe has spent the past year turning AI from an add-on feature into a core part of how Photoshop works. The new view, the markup tool, and the upgraded Firefly model together push toward a workflow where the line between manual editing and AI-assisted editing gets harder to see. Whether that becomes the default for professional users is a separate question, and one that depends on how precise these tools prove to be in everyday use.