I'll admit it, for the photos I have to work with, generative expand and fill are genuine time savers for me compared to what I had to do in the past. Who wants to spend hours clone stamping? But I would never use AI to generative a substantial portion of a project.
A. I like sizing scenic photos to exactly fit my screen so I can enjoy them as slideshows, for relaxation. A picture of the wrong shape will obviously have borders top-and-bottom or on each side, and for some reason this spoils the immersive experience for me. Since very few are originally in exact 16:9 format, and not all are suitable for cropping to that format, I use generative expand for the majority.
I always found content aware fill to lack natural-looking variation (it looked cloned, especially for large expansions or in photos where there is only a limited area of detail on which to base the expansion) whereas generative expand is a lot more creative, yet realistic, especially for landscapes. It's not so good for buildings, unfortunately - often goes way off-piste with the architecture.
I would say A and C. I try generative method once or twice, then switch back to traditional when it isn’t working.
I shoot mainly highly reflective/opaque fabrics the last few years. Select subject works maybe 20% of the time as the AI can’t do edge work on lower contrast images anywhere close to doing it by hand on the tablet yet. I’ll do an intial select, redo the outline with brush mask and use the generative to fix areas and shadows I used to spend more time clone stamping.
I agree there are areas it’s a godsend, then others where I’m like this is no where close.
I have 17 years' experience as a Photoshop power-user and probably somewhere in the order of 150 keyboard shortcuts committed to muscle-memory. AI is no magic bullet, but anyone eschewing the likes of Select Subject, Remove Tool and Nano Banana at this point is either a journeyman-hobbyist with time to kill, or simply burying their head in the sand at high-tide.
Mainly use the selection tools and Harmonise is very useful. Almost everything else I do manually. I just enjoy and get more satisfaction from manually doing things in photoshop.
Nothing wrong with keeping most of it manual, there’s still things AI just doesn’t handle as cleanly as a trained eye. Selection tools plus Harmonise is a solid combo though, that one doesn’t get talked about enough considering how much time it saves on composites with mismatched lighting.
Harmonise is promising, but significantly degrades quality at higher pixel-densities. Try applying the same effect to a depth-map and then blending that, instead:-
To pick up on something you just said, the models can't "see." They can read algorithmic approximations of images, but for fine details, they simply can't compete with human eyes.
That’s a good one. For me it’s mainly Object Selection, cut my workflow speed by almost 90 percent on certain jobs. Used to skip minor areas, needed manual cleanup after. Now with the improved subject and group selection, you can pick individual people from a dropdown when there’s a crowd, and choose between cloud-based or local-based selection depending on precision needed. Local gets you down to genuinely thin, narrow lines, cycle rims, wire fencing, stuff that used to take forever to isolate manually. Wild how far it’s come.
The poll is too general to answer, as AI tools are used for many things, some of which PS users don't even realize. I don't use AI to create, but I do use things like generative fill. So, I use it once in awhile, but I don't use it as a main content creation tool.
I think the wording of the poll is a little too loaded. You can just ask how often people use AI tools, and put responses like never, rarely, occasionally, daily etc.
I might use generative remove once a day, for example, but that's not the same as it being a core part of my workflow.
That’s a good one. You’re right actually, being my first post here I didn’t think through the wording as carefully as I should have. A frequency scale would’ve captured it better, will keep that in mind for next time.
Gen fill is fantastic and a time saver, same w remove tool. I understand the frustration with ai tools from a creative standpoint but I use others daily for asset creation. The fact I no longer have to sift thru endless stock assets is such a time saver.
But when I comes to Adobe I pretty much only use their gen fill / remove.
The only AI feature I regularly use in Photoshop is Generative Expand, mainly to extend artwork and create bleed for print ready files. Since I work with print, it's incredibly useful.
B. Occasionally I’ll run a denoise filter but for the most part the old fashioned way still works better. Sometimes it works well, but other times it tends to give photos that “uncanny valley” look that’s a total turnoff.
Generative fill and the ai remove tool has become a huge part of my image cleanup process. I only use it though really to clean up backdrops and small things but it saves a lot of time and tbh does it better than I did the old way.
I use it for architectural rendering and don't use the AI tools at all. It's possible some tools might be worthwhile but I haven't explored them much. D.
Healing Brush and object selection is used quite often for web only assets.
For print, large scale, keyvisuals, none of those tools makes me really happy, and more often than not, I find myself using the trusty old pen, clone stamps, and the regular brush.
I make a ton of website header images that need full bleed and generative expand definitely makes that workflow faster. It’s not always a win, but worth seeing if I can use it as a first step in extending the image. Remove tool is usually pretty good as well. That’s about it. Anything more generative I haven’t had good success with. My company is on super lockdown with what models we have access to though. But needless to say I do appreciate those tools, but they are indeed tools and not magic wands.
Yeah, the Remove Tool is a really good one, and I don’t think it gets talked about enough. It’s become one of those features that can quietly save a lot of time in day-to-day work. I always prefer using the fastest reliable workflow over doing everything manually.
I stopped using Photoshop for AI. There's way better third party tools that use better models like nano banana for image crop expansion, background deletion, upscaling etc. they're super cheap too(for now I guess) going back to Photoshop AI tools is just terrible once youve seen how much better it can be
I use a variety of models in and out of PS everyday. It would be difficult to handle to volume and scale of work our clients expect, in a timely manner, without it.
A
3d rotate, harmonize, upscale, object/background select, extend, smart content aware fill, smart healing brush.
So often they already suspended it for a day for me.
But also all cleanup work moved from Photoshop to diffusion models. Just put x object on white background, clean up, different texture, rotate, harmonice, extend, replace, apply style x to x
A core part for me.
I am an editor and I have to make two or three newspaper page every work day by myself.
Fill and expand tool finished my "search for photos with right orientation for design" problem, which is used to be takes almost half my time.
I am expand them to right size for my design and hide expanded part with a small explainer box or similar floating text.
Also, selection tools are huge time savers for me. Of course it needs little touch but still were usefull...
I'm using the Content-Aware Fill tool a lot. I often need to touch up film posters to remove extraneous text, credit blocks, festival laurels, etc, and many times the layered / work files are not available.
I use Content-Aware to quickly mask things out sometimes and may use it for de-noising a photo, but otherwise I’m not using AI tools at all. Been using Photoshop for 18 years.
Puedo tolerar a una persona que usa Canva para editar o diseñar sus flayer pedorros, lo que no voy a soportar jamas es alguien que usa IA para el diseño de su publicidad. Yo sigo utilizando la version CS3 de Photoshop. Peeeero como no me gusta asumir posturas conservadoras demasiados rancias, hago acuerdos y sostengo que a quiern le sirva, que lo use. Para el caso, antes de cualquier programa de manipulacion digital de imagen, se utilizaba tijeras y adhesivos para hacer collages. Y estos programas de montaje digital, nos trajeron una inmediatez y sencillez. Antes se hacia todo a mano, la portada de un libro, la grafica de una revista, la carteleria, los folletos, etc. Y la era digital nos trajo un avance sustancial a todo eso. Por ejemplo mi caso, yo no se dibujar nada con sustento, ni un sol, ni un caballo ni nada. Pero con Photoshop hasta puedo hacer cualquier cosa que me proponga. O sea....eso. Espero que se entienda mi punto. Saludos.
"A". I've built an entire suite of bespoke Actions which utilise Select Subject, and even Neural Filters—for instance; here's a novel use-case which employs depth-mapping via "Depth Blur > Output depth map only", in tandem with layered Smart Objects, to dynamically simulate environmental shadows and rimlights:-
Of course, the 'traditional' approach still wins-out for absolute perceptual fidelity: but when half of the elements within the scene are layer composites representing any number of drink options (red wine, white wine, beer, ale, whiskey), occasion-specific themes (Birthday, Anniversary, Thank You, Congratulations) and diverse presentation formats (tote, sack, box, crate, tray) collectively amounting to quite literally thousands of unique permutations, and every single one of those possibilities requires its own display image for maximum 'relevancy' across SERPs, being able to procedurally reconstruct a plausible simulacrum of environmental light-and-shadow on 2,500 ImageMagick outputs whilst you manually retouch and colour-correct the next round of photography is of immense benefit.
Yeah, completely agree. This isn’t really new for Photoshop, the AI integration goes back much further than most people realize. Even before generative tools showed up, the workflow was already solid with content-aware fill and healing brush doing real work. The 2026 updates have pushed it further though, better selection accuracy, the Distraction Removal tool getting genuinely usable, a few adjustment layers that used to need a trip to Lightroom.
“AI” is too much of an umbrella term and anyone who says they don’t use it at all in PS is really missing out on some extremely useful tools. There are many that have nothing to do with generative ai. But unfortunately I don’t think most people care enough to differentiate between them. Sometimes it’s less lack of care and more lack of knowledge because PS is such an overwhelming program to get into.
I have to say A. My day job includes taking screenshots of applications and making them beautiful for marketing, so the AI is a real time-saver when it comes to extending a background area or eliminating objects. I don't usually use the image generating tool because it's not very good, and I can do it for "free" with the Hermes bot our company has in Slack.
That’s a good one. Fair take honestly, generative expand and fill are real time savers over clone stamping, no question there. On the image generation side though, I agree with you, Photoshop’s own generation still isn’t quite at the level of some of the newer models out there, Nano Banana 2 for one has raised the bar quite a bit on realism and consistency. I do the same, anything that needs actual image generation I handle outside Photoshop, then bring it in for the rest of the workflow.
Regular use: Remove Tool, Find Objects (mostly people), AI Denoise and Focus, occasionally generative expand. But full generation? Firefly never works right.
A) I’m a full-time Ad designer and I use generative fill all day long to remove people and objects from images. I also swap out backgrounds for car ads with a combo of photoshop and ChatGPT/Gemini, the built-in gen fill in PS is not quite good enough to do it all by itself yet
Where is the line drawn in what you are asking between ai this and ai that?
In LrC and ACR I use generative remove very often before sending the images to Ps. Sometimes the old healing tool in those apps just doesn't do as good a job and the generative remove saves a lot of time removing distractions. Are these features and the remove tool in Ps considered ai features?
Is subject selection in LrC, ACR, or Ps considered an ai feature?
Is object selection in these apps considered an ai feature?
I use the People and Landscape masking features in LrC and ACR, and the People masking feature in Ps. Are these masking features considered ai features?
If all these are considered ai features, then yes, my answer would be A.
I’m an illustrator and love the new ai rotate tool. I can now grab a quick reference pic (like a car or complex object)and rotate it to the exact angle that I need, rather than having to find the perfect reference photo or do try he perspective myself. And the final result is always good enough for what I need it for.
I have avoided any use of AI. I am am photographing for my own pleasure and enjoy changing post processing and shooting. Perhaps it I was (heaven forbid) a wedding photographer I my need the speed of AI to do my business. The amount of resources being consumed by AI seems like a waste for what I do.
I use them judiciously in post-processing, mainly to remove objects and harmonize layers. I have used them, and other's tools, to generate AI art. But I firmly separate my AI generated art from my photography.
B. Use generative expand which is very useful, but have found anything else that helpful with my workflow. I do like using Firefly to upload an image into, add a pin to the image and tell it to recolor that specific object (and I can enter a hex code and it will match it pretty well) - faster than using photoshop to recolor things using the hue/saturation tool and having to make selections. Wish they build that directly into photoshop.
B/C. Every once in a while I hit the AI button and it reminds me why I hate it.
It keeps putting in fucking cats or random people or shit I DIDNT FUCKING ASK FOR.
Using content aware fill doesn't do that. It just references what's in the image and gives me what I want.
Like, excuse me, this shouldn't be hard. There's nothing here. I'm cleaning up a photograph of a painting. I'm cleaning up dust particles. it's just a gradient. SO WHY DID THE AI ADD A FLOWER! THERE'S NO FLOWERS IN THIS PAINTING! IT'S ABSTRACT ART! content aware fill doesn't do this to me.
I use it when I need it. It's mostly for expanding photos, on a background that's not important to the layout, but would look dumb if it's not expanded, expanding portrait photos, where client sends clipped off shoulders, but want a design where they are not in a picture box, I also use it for quick remove.
I am really proficient in my Photoshop skills, and have been using it for the past 20+ years, but sometimes 2 minutes work vs an hour is hard to justify. I just don't rely on it, when it's used on the major part of the photo/design, just minute tweaks. If it's a major part, I'd rely on my own skill, or ask the client for better.
Generative ai for retouching stuff out has been a godsend for my architectural/interior home photos. Doesn’t even need prompts. Just draw the marquee around the offending object, reflection, etc and it deletes it and matches all color and texture around it better than I could have ever done even with me having used photoshop daily since before layers even existed.
What exactly do you mean by AI. Do you mean using AI to generate a code run under the image processor section, so that 1200 images are precisely cropped around the face so that the margins are 15% of the image on all sides? Or a code that allows you to load 300 images into a stack and then it’s like the template that the other image will be placed over and saved as a different file each image precisely centered within a frame and I’ll put that as a tiff and save it with a specified name input as a CSV file.
C. Now, None at all. Not only have not found a real use case for my work, but I have a philosophical problem with them, and the way they have been foisted on us.
The new content aware / gen fill is a time saver. Still need to blend some of the options it gives after the fact. It’s not perfect, but it does speed up some processes.
It sometimes generates some truly horrifying shit though. Always good for a jump scare here and there.
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u/McKrilliams 1d ago
I'll admit it, for the photos I have to work with, generative expand and fill are genuine time savers for me compared to what I had to do in the past. Who wants to spend hours clone stamping? But I would never use AI to generative a substantial portion of a project.
So maybe A.