The best creative AI tool for creators

Creativity used to require a blank canvas…now all it requires is a blinking cursor.

If you’ve ever opened Photoshop with an idea in your head and a pit in your stomach, you know the tension that prompted (if you will) Adobe Firefly. What do you do when your imagination says one thing but your skills say another?

Like most of us, you don’t have the time to attend YouTube University. Adobe Firefly takes those half-baked daydreams, your “what if” scenarios, even simple creative sparks, and turns them into actual visuals in seconds.

Firefly is Adobe’s leap into generative AI. I got to test it out and can attest that it’s as inviting as it is powerful. It may be newer (officially launched in October 2024), but it doesn’t feel like some technical experiment or a confusing beta; it feels polished and built for people who want to make something captivating quickly.

What makes Firefly different from other AI tools I’ve played with is that it feels less like a novelty and more like a creative partner. It’s built to fit into my workflow, whether I’m mocking up a poster for my vintage shop, creating B-roll for a video ad, designing text effects for a new brand logo, or moodboarding a shopping story for The Post. I can start with a random thought, generate variations, refine, and land on something polished enough to use.

The hook is simple: Firefly is a commercially safe, creative AI. That means everything I generate is trained on Adobe Stock, openly licensed content, and public domain work — it’s not scraped from things that already exist on the internet. As someone who creates professionally, that matters.

I don’t have to second-guess if a design element is going to land me in legal hot water. Adobe has built Firefly around the principles of transparency and authenticity, even letting me apply Content Credentials to flag when AI was used in a project.

Beyond that, the feature set is…ambitious. With Firefly, you can:

• Generate images, vector graphics, and text effects from prompts.
• Turn still images into video clips with customizable angles, motion, and style.
• Translate video clips into over 20 languages while keeping the speaker’s original tone, cadence, and voice intact.
• Use Generative Fill and Remove to swap out objects in a shot, or Generative Expand to resize an image into every dimension needed for different social platforms.
• Collaborate on Firefly Boards, a moodboarding and ideation space where teams can throw in text, images, and now video to refine concepts together.
• Use Firefly on the go via the new mobile app, generating images and videos anywhere, synced instantly with Creative Cloud.

This isn’t just about speed; it’s about flexibility, integration, and trust. Firefly is designed to be where ideas (safely) begin.

How we tested

I kicked things off with image generation and went straight for a New York classic: “A giant pizza rat riding the subway, shot like a moody editorial at golden hour.” 

In seconds, Firefly delivered four versions of a rodent that looked less like a pest and more like he was about to be profiled by Page Six.

Next, I tested video generation with the prompt: “A Mets baseball game in the 1970s where the baseball players are pigeons.” Firefly animated a surreal highlight reel and it looked like actual b-roll I could splice into an old sports broadcast.

That’s just the start. Firefly can translate clips into 20+ languages while keeping your voice, remove unwanted photo-bombers with Generative Fill, resize a single design for every social platform with Generative Expand, or spin up entire moodboards with Firefly Boards. Basically, if you can imagine it, Firefly will meet you halfway (and then some).

The verdict

Adobe Firefly makes creativity feel lighter, faster, and more fun. It’s intuitive enough for play but powerful enough for professional work. Instead of replacing creativity, it multiplies it — giving me more ways to experiment and more confidence to bring ideas to life.

If you’re already part of Creative Cloud, it’s a natural extension of the tools you use daily. Plus, if you’re new to Adobe, it’s one of the most welcoming entry points into design I’ve seen. I sat down intending to test a few prompts; I left with a portfolio of ideas I didn’t even know I had.

Go ahead, play around — start your free trial today and see how easy it is to turn your ideas into video, audio, images, and more. Your next big idea is a prompt away

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