For Adobe Max 2024, the tech giant is really pushing the success of their FireFly product. In fact, they’re stating that over 13 billion images have been created using FireFly. And most impressively, they announced that it’s going to be used by Gatorade and Mattel to let consumers make custom products. Much of what they’re talking about has to do with video: as video is what dominates on social media as it continues to fuel the brain drain. Lots of photographers, however, might not really care about this. And lots haven’t returned to using Adobe since their big problems with terms of use. And so the only changes that Adobe has made for photographers specifically are to Lightroom. Trust me when I say that those are minor.
The New Lightroom Changes Announced at Adobe Max 2024
Here’s what was announced for Lightroom at Adobe Max 2024:
- New Quick actions
- Generate Remove: using FireFly, it will remove things from a frame
- Lightroom and Frame.Io work better together as Canon, Nikon, and Leica join the camera-to-cloud exosystem.
And truly, that’s really it for photographers. We know that some of you use Photoshop as well, but these days, you can do most of what’s needed in Lightroom and don’t even need Photoshop.
We’re Really On Our Own Now
Admittedly, I stopped using Lightroom a while ago because of the terms of use changes and the fact that I work often with images that are under NDA. Instead, the Reviews Staff here uses Capture One because manufacturers tend to recommend it over Lightroom. We consistently get better colors and output from it — and Capture One seems to be more focused on assistive AI than Generative AI. Therefore, it’s not trying to replace photographers in many ways.
Most readers of this website don’t come to us through social media, either. Instead, they come to us through news apps, Google, Google Discover, etc. So truly, I don’t shoot for social media and therefore I’m not primarily creating assets for it. At least, that’s for the work that I do for the Phoblographer. For my other paid work, I shoot photos in a way that other people can’t really mimic. When folks have asked me if I shoot video, I tell them pretty bluntly that what I do can’t be done in video. And they tend to agree. However, I let them use my photos to make their own reels and stuff on social media.
I think, at this point, the entire photo industry really just is telling photographers that we’re all on our own. It’s truly up to us now to make images that Generative AI can’t make and that stand out from what everyone else creates. With that said, we need to develop a signature style.
How do we do that in a world where it seems like everything has been done already? Well, I encourage you to look at photo books and stop looking at photos online. Then, I encourage you to dive deep into your own emotions and thoughts. From there, you should do an exercise where you write down what you really want to say to the world. Then make metaphors of this, and make those metaphors into images that don’t involve Photoshop. Build your own sets and do everything in-camera.