Adobe Firefly Feature Deep Dive

Adobe Firefly

Adobe Firefly is a new set of generative AI tools which can be accessed via https://firefly.adobe.com/ by anyone with an Adobe ID. To learn more about Firefly… have a look at their FAQ.

Image 1: Adobe Firefly

For more information about Firefly, have a look at the previous articles in this series:

In this article, we’ll be exploring some of the more detailed features of Firefly in general. While we will be doing so from the perspective of the text-to-image module, much of what we cover will be applicable to other modules and procedures as well.

Before moving on to the visual controls and options… let’s consider accessibility. Here is what Adobe has to say about accessibility within Firefly:

Firefly is committed to providing accessible and inclusive features to all individuals, including users working with assistive devices such as speech recognition software and screen readers. Firefly is continuously enhanced to strive to meet the needs of all types of users, including individuals with visual, hearing, cognitive, motor, or other impairments, and is designed to conform to worldwide accessibility standards.
-- Adobe

You can use the following keyboard shortcuts across the Firefly interface to navigate and control the software in a non-visual way:

Tab: navigates between user interface controls.
Space/Enter: activates buttons.
Enter: activates links.
Arrow Keys: navigates between options.
Space: selects options.

As with most accessibility concerns and practices, these additional controls within Firefly can benefit those users who are not otherwise impaired as well – similar to sight-enabled users making use of captions when watching video-based content.

For our exploration of the various additional controls and options within Firefly, we’ll start off with a generated set of images based on a prompt. To review how to achieve this, have a look at the article “Exploring Text to Image with Adobe Firefly”.

Choose one of the generated images to work with and hover your mouse across the image to reveal a set of controls.

Image 2: Image Overlay Options

We will explore each of these options one by one as we continue along with this article.

Rating and Feedback Options

Adobe is very open to feedback with Firefly. One reason is to get general user feedback to improve the experience of using the product… and the other is to influence the generative models so that users receive the output that is expected.

Giving a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down is the most basic level of feedback and is meant to rate the results of your prompt.

Image 3: Rating the generated results

Once you provide a thumbs-up or thumbs-down… the overlay changes to request additional feedback. You don’t necessarily need to provide more feedback – but clicking on the Feedback button will allow you to go more in-depth in terms of why you provided the initial rating.

Image 4: Additional feedback prompt

Clicking the Feedback button will summon a much larger overlay where you can make choices via a checkbox as to why you rated the results the way you did. You also have the option to put a little note in here as well.

Image 5: Additional feedback form

Clicking the Submit Feedback button or the Cancel button will close the overlay and bring you back to the experience.

Additionally, there is an option to Report the image to Adobe. This is always a negative action – meaning that you find the results offensive or inappropriate in some way.

Image 6: Report prompt

Clicking on the Report option will summon a similar form to that of additional feedback, but the options will, of course, be different.

Image 7: Report feedback form

Here, you can report via a checkbox and add an optional note as part of the report. Adobe has committed to making sure that violence and things like copyrighted or trademarked characters and such are not generated by Firefly.

For instance, if you use a prompt such as “Micky Mouse murdering a construction worker with a chainsaw”… you will receive a message like the following:

Image 8: Firefly will not render trademarked characters or violence

With Adobe is being massively careful in filtering certain words right now… I do hope in the future that users will be able to selectively choose exclusions in place of a general list of censored terms as exists now. While the prompt above is meant to be absurd – there are legitimate artistic reasons for many of the word categories which are currently banned.

General Image Controls

The controls in this section include some of the most used in Firefly at the moment – including the ability to download your generated image.

Image 9: Image options

We have the following controls exposed, from left to right they are named:

Options
Download
Favorite

Options

Starting at the left-hand side of this group of controls, we begin with an ellipse that represents Options which, when clicked, will summon a small overlay with additional choices.

Image 10: Expanded options

The menu that appears includes the following items:

1. Submit to Firefly gallery

2. Use as a reference image

3. Copy to the clipboard

Let’s examine each of these in detail.

You may have noticed that the main navigation of the Firefly website includes a number of options: Home, Gallery, Favorites, About, and FAQ. The Gallery section contains generated images that users have submitted to be featured on this page.

Clicking the Submit to Firefly gallery option will summon a submission overlay through which you can request that your image is included in the Gallery.

Image 11: Firefly Gallery submission

Simply read over the details and click Continue or Cancel to return.

The second item, Use as reference image, brings up a small overlay that includes the selected image to use as a reference along with a strength slider.

Image 12: Reference image slider

Moving the slider to the left will favor the reference image and moving it to the right will favor the raw prompt instead. You must click the Generate button after adjusting the slider to see its effect.

The final option is Copy to clipboard – which does exactly as you’d expect. Note that Content Credentials are applied in this case just the same as they are when downloading an image. You can read more about this feature in the Firefly FAQ.

Download

Back up to the set of three controls, the middle option allows you to initiate a Download of the selected image. As Firefly begins preparing the image for download, a small overlay dialog appears.

Image 13: Download applies content credentials – similar to the Copy to clipboard option

Firefly applies metadata to any generated image in the form of content credentials and the image download process begins. We’ve covered exactly what this means in previous articles. The image is then downloaded to your local file system.

Favorite

Clicking the Favorite control will add the generated image to your Firefly Favorites so that you can return to the generated set of images for further manipulation or to download later on.

Image 14: Adding a favorite

The Favorite control works as a toggle. Once you declare a favorite, the heart icon will appear filled and the control will allow you to un-favorite the selected image instead.

That covers the main set of controls which overlay the right of your image – but there is a smaller set of controls on the left that we must explore as well.

Additional Manipulation Options

The alternative set of controls numbers only two – but they are both very powerful. To the left is the Show similar control and to the right is Generative fill.

Image 15: Show similar and Generative fill controls

Clicking upon the Show similar control will retain the particular, chosen image while regenerating the other three to be more in conformity with the image specified.

Image 16: Show similar will refresh the other three images

As you can see when comparing the sets of images in the figures above and below… you can have great influence over your set of generated images through this control.

Image 17: The original image stays the same

The final control we will examine in this article is Generative fill. It is located right next to the Show similar control.

The generative fill view presents us with a separate view and a number of all-new tools for making selections in order to add or remove content from our images.

Image 18: Generative fill brings you to a different view altogether

Generative fill is actually its own proper procedure in Adobe Firefly… and we’ll explore how to use this feature in full - in the next article!

Author Bio

Joseph Labrecque is a Teaching Assistant Professor, Instructor of Technology, University of Colorado Boulder / Adobe Education Leader / Partner by Design

Joseph is a creative developer, designer, and educator with nearly two decades of experience creating expressive web, desktop, and mobile solutions. He joined the University of Colorado Boulder College of Media, Communication, and Information as faculty with the Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Media Design in Autumn 2019. His teaching focuses on creative software, digital workflows, user interaction, and design principles and concepts. Before joining the faculty at CU Boulder, he was associated with the University of Denver as adjunct faculty and as a senior interactive software engineer, user interface developer, and digital media designer.

Labrecque has authored a number of books and video course publications on design and development technologies, tools, and concepts through publishers which include LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com), Peachpit Press, and Adobe. He has spoken at large design and technology conferences such as Adobe MAX and for a variety of smaller creative communities. He is also the founder of Fractured Vision Media, LLC; a digital media production studio and distribution vehicle for a variety of creative works.

Joseph is an Adobe Education Leader and member of Adobe Partners by Design. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Worcester State University and a master’s degree in digital media studies from the University of Denver.

Author of the book: Mastering Adobe Animate 2023