From agents to retouching tools: the announcements at Adobe MAX 2026

Agents, retouching, video, and partnerships: Adobe MAX 2026 spans creative tools, beta releases, and projects scheduled for 2027.

Applying an effect to every shot in an edit or adjusting a sequence’s exposure through a written instruction: these examples illustrate the expansion of AI assistants presented at Adobe MAX 2026. The conference announcements cover workflows across tools, along with retouching, color grading, page layout, and campaign production.

The event brings creative professionals together in Miami Beach from November 10 to 12. Its program combines available features, public and private betas, and integrations scheduled for 2027. Access for third-party agents and agreements with Google, Microsoft, and Disney extend the announcements beyond desktop applications. Delegating tasks while preserving editable project files

The Adobe Creative Agent rollout takes place through the beta AI Assistants in Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and Frame.io. For Photoshop, the assistant remains in the Photoshop beta application. Users describe an operation involving several steps, then refine the changes with their usual tools. Examples provided for Premiere include tracking masked subjects and applying corrections across a sequence.

A second approach is planned through local MCP integrations for Creative Cloud. This protocol is intended to give a third-party agent access to Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects on the user’s computer. Changes are intended to take place in native files: layers, vectors, bins, and sequences remain editable. Access is scheduled for private beta in early 2027.

The aim is to preserve the project’s structure when part of the work is delegated. An agent connected to other MCP-compatible tools could retrieve a brief from Google Docs, work in an Adobe application, and then send the result to a team. This is an announced example, dependent on the available connections and access. Bringing design, generation, and reusable workflows together in Firefly

The expanded Firefly environment brings together image and video editors, generative models, and the Creative Agent. In the beta Firefly AI Assistant, Plan Mode lets users review and modify a plan before execution. Preferences for formats, colors, or brand identity can carry across projects. The Model Selector offers a choice between selecting a model and delegating that decision to an automatic mode.

Conversational work extends to Firefly Boards for mood boards and storyboards. “Always-on” agents, still in preview, are intended to handle recurring tasks such as organizing incoming media, identifying duplicates, or flagging quality issues. Their beta is scheduled for early 2027, with a monitoring dashboard and requests for user decisions.

The new Firefly Design workspace, in beta, combines illustration, retouching, animation, 3D, and print preparation on a single canvas. Design, collaboration, and client review are intended to continue within one file. Meanwhile, Firefly Graph, also in beta, connects Adobe tools and models in reusable, shareable node-based workflows. An assistant helps build and adjust these sequences.

The private beta of Firefly Builder, available through a waitlist, targets prototypes of websites, applications, and interactive presentations. A text description produces an initial version that can then be edited directly on the canvas, with a design system maintaining consistency. The announced scope is prototyping, without a promise of a production-ready service.

For individual operations, the Quick Actions gallery includes object removal, thumbnail creation, and product ad preparation. The image editor adds Edit Object for changing a specific element. Edit Text, Retouch, Relight, and Quick Actions are announced as available, while the other Firefly additions remain in beta. The press releases refer readers to subscription offerings without detailing the cost of each workflow combining tools and models. Retouching images and adjusting the intensity of changes

The Photoshop updates combine generation with manual adjustments. With Relight, users add light sources and then change their position, color, and intensity nondestructively. Generative Restyle turns a variation requested through text into a layer with a slider for adjusting the effect, without rewriting the prompt for each change.

Object removal now accounts for associated elements, such as shadows, reflections, or footprints. Quick Compare provides a slider on the image for before-and-after comparisons. An AI Assisted Editor interface puts generative features up front, with the option to return to the professional editor and its layers.

Several other tools remain in Photoshop beta. Mockups applies an image or design to a surface; Camera Angles explores other viewpoints; Generative Recompose adapts the composition to another format. Other additions include converting text in a flattened image into editable text layers, recording the process as a timelapse, and removing ambient effects such as haze or certain reflections without removing objects.

For photography, Lightroom additions include Glow, with five lighting styles, and Blemish Removal, which combines quick retouching with fine adjustments. Tethered shooting workflows are improved on desktop and iPad. The Open Eyes public beta replaces closed eyes using another photo of the same person, selected manually or found in the library.

Following the acquisition of Topaz Labs, two image enhancement models round out the announcements. Wonder 4 combines upscaling, denoising, deblurring, and sharpening. Image HDR converts standard images to an HDR rendering. The press release directs users to purchase through Topaz Labs, without announcing automatic inclusion in every Creative Cloud subscription. Editing, color grading, and audio processing in the timeline

Color Mode becomes available in Premiere. The Generative Media tool brings video, sound effects, soundscapes, and music generation directly into the timeline, using Firefly models and partners including Google, Kling, Runway, and Luma. The Premiere release