Adobe Firefly enables creatives to design better assets with generative AI. Adobe Firefly is one of the components of Generation AI, Adobe’s generative artificial intelligence offerings. A previous article discussed the other Generation AI component, Adobe Sensei GenAI.

While Adobe Firefly is targeted for creatives who use Adobe Photoshop and similar creative products, it also benefits marketers because of its tightly coupled integration with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets.

The article first describes the benefits that Adobe Firefly brings to your creative workers. Next, it describes how creatives and marketers benefit by working together. The article concludes by describing how Adobe Asset Link helps foster collaboration between AEM Assets users and Adobe Creative Cloud component users, so that your team can create great content, save time, and save money.

How Adobe Firefly Helps Creatives

After a successful six-month beta period, Adobe announced on September 13 that its Adobe Firefly feature was now in production. Adobe Firefly is now integrated into Adobe Creative Cloud components such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Illustrator. Before September 13, creative users who wished to use Adobe Firefly features had to install the beta; they no longer have to do this.

Adobe Firefly brings generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) capabilities to creatives who use these and other applications. This complements other uses of generative AI in Adobe products.

Examples of new features enabled by Adobe Firefly include the following:

New Adobe Firefly-powered Features in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop now supports Generative Fill, Generative Expand, and other features.

Generative Fill lets you select an area of your image and use a text prompt to allow generative AI to add detail.

Generative Expand lets you use the Crop tool in reverse. Rather than reducing the content of an image, Generative Expand increases the content of an image by using generative AI to fill in the details.

New Adobe Firefly-powered Features in Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator now supports Generative Recolor, in which you can type text prompts such as “faded emerald,” “strawberry fields,” or “terracotta desert” and apply custom color variants to your vector artwork.

But how can marketers take advantage of the new capabilities that creatives have?

Benefits of Collaboration Between Creatives and Marketers

Creatives and marketers approach their work differently. You can say that creatives are from Mars, while marketers are from Venus.

In 2019, Simon Williams wrote an article with that title that observed the differences in how creatives and marketers work, and the benefits of having the two work closely together.

When creative pros learn to speak the language of business goals, they can channel their creativity into stronger results. And when marketers learn to trust the creative process, they’ll start to see fresh ideas and create higher-impact work.

From the Adobe Experience Cloud blog, “Creatives are from Mars, Marketers are from Venus.”

If creatives and marketers access tools that help them to work together, both parties-and their company-benefit. As you will see, Adobe strives to provide such tools.

A creative/marketing team that uses seamlessly integrated creative tools (Creative Cloud apps) and marketing tools (AEM) can achieve the following:

• Make IT people happy by reducing the need for custom integrations.
• Streamline workflows so that creatives and marketers can find what they need.
• Create great content faster.
• Save time and money.

How Adobe Helps Creatives and Marketers Work Together

If your creatives and your marketers are using Adobe products, then

• your creatives are using the industry-leading applications within Adobe Creative Cloud, and
• your marketers are using the industry-leading Adobe Experience Manager components.

Adobe has ensured that Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Manager are tightly integrated, allowing your creatives and marketers to realize the benefits of collaboration.

When the digital asset management (DAM) solution Adobe Experience Manager Assets is integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud, DAM users and creative teams can work together in a streamlined cooperative process.

• Creatives can check out and check in AEM Assets content directly from their creative applications, including Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator.
• Marketers can access, review, and approve the creative content.

Adobe achieves this integration between Adobe Creative Cloud components and AEM Assets by using Adobe Asset Link, which enables creatives and marketers to work together by speeding up content creation.

• Creatives don’t want to learn a new DAM platform just to get their work done. The time they spend learning a marketing system subtracts from the time that they can be creative.
• Marketers don’t want to understand the ins and outs of creative applications like Photoshop just to leave feedback. Again, the time they spend learning creative applications subtracts from the time that they can concentrate on marketing.

Because of Adobe Asset Link, the only native connection to Creative Cloud on the market today, creatives and marketers can remain in their native applications while interacting with each other. This gives them time to work together to create meaningful customer content.

They don’t even need new access credentials. Creative Cloud account credentials can use single sign-on to connect to DAM and Creative Cloud assets from Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or XD. Once they access an asset, they can check out files, version the asset, and integrate changes directly into the DAM with no fuss.

If you are using AEM 6.x Assets, you may need to install the adobe-asset-link-config package or perform manual configuration. For newer versions of AEM 6.x Assets, Adobe Asset Link may already work by default. AEM Assets as a Cloud service users need to perform a separate set of configuration tasks: for example, to manage and add users.

Let Us Help Your Teams Collaborate

Do you want your creatives and marketers to work together to create great content faster? To ensure that AEM Assets works seamlessly with Adobe Creative Cloud applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Illustrator, you need to work with an Adobe Certified Partner such as KBWEB Consult. You can learn more about me and about KBWEB Consult on our About Us page.

If you would like to learn how KBWEB Consult can get your creatives and marketers on the same page, schedule a free, confidential 30-minute consultation. You can book a meeting on our Let’s Talk page.