"A portrait of a female cyborg in a futuristic city"
and the results are pretty good.
This is Firefly, Adobe's new A.I. image generator.
It's like Midjourney,
but with some differences, both in how it works and also
in the roadmap and where Adobe is taking this A.I. platform.
Let's talk a little bit about it.
In terms of how it works,
you already saw that you can input a text prompt and generate images.
On the right hand side,
you have these parameters that can be used in the image generation process.
For example, we can change the Aspect Ratio.
Maybe you're looking for a widescreen
image, sixteen by nine, and Firefly will now generate images in that aspect ratio.
You can also select a Content Type, different Styles.
Here are some popular ones,
as well as Color and Tone, lighting, and composition.
For example, we can change the lighting to Dramatic Lighting,
and change the Composition to narrow Depth of Field,
and click on Generate, and we can see the results using those new parameters.
To access Firefly, you can go into firefly.adobe.com
at the moment, it is a beta release and you will have to join a waiting list.
Once you're in there, you can see the two things that you can do.
Text to Image, which is what you just saw, or Text Effects.
If you click on Generate, you can generate Text Effects that look like this.
How does this work? Very easy.
All you do is enter your text.
In this case, I'll enter my initials,
J and R, and I'll describe what I want my Text Effect to generate.
It could be something like Golden Ornaments.
In Firefly, will generate that text
effect using the reference text and the description.
From the right hand side, you can see Sample Effects.
You can expand them to see them all.
You can do flowers, color marvel, or cookies.
The advantage of using Firefly is that you
have access to settings such as Text Effect Fit.
So how closely is the effect fitting the text?
Is it going to be Tight or Loose?
You can also choose from the fonts on this list.
You can click on View All so you can see
all the fonts and you can click on the font that you want to apply.
In this case, I think it will be better off by going with a Tight fit.
And of course, you can experiment with any prompt you like.
For example, Grass and see what comes up.
You then can choose from the different Styles.
You'll see four styles below and you can
click on them to apply that style to your text.
And also another important feature that you should try is that you can select
a transparent background and when you're ready to export, you can click on this
Download button and it will export a PNG with a transparent background.
Or if you prefer, you can apply any color
you like and then export the image as a JPEG with that color background.
At the time of this recording,
Firefly is in beta release and you have access to those two options.
However, as you can see, Adobe is planning on creating more AI
tools, including a recoloring vector feature.
These tools are in the exploration process.
Perhaps the most interesting to me is the Text to Brush, where you can generate
brushes for Photoshop using a detailed description, which I think is fantastic.
Now, one of the questions you might be
thinking is really how is it different than Midjourney?
One of the biggest differences is that Adobe will, of course,
integrate Firefly into a lot of their creative application, such as Photoshop.
Another huge difference is how
the Adobe Firefly system is learning how to generate these images.
According to Adobe, Firefly will focus on commercial use
and the way that they will go about that is by training Firefly using
Adobe Stock, which is Adobe's royalty-free media library alongside other openly
licensed content, including content where the copyright has expired.
Now, to be very clear,
this is content on Adobe Stock, not your content in your Creative Cloud
libraries or your personal work or anything like that.
Adobe says that in the future, you'll be able to train Firefly with your
own content to generate images based on your own design and style.
Adobe also says that it's exploring compensation models for contributors
that will allow them to monetize from the content that trains Firefly.
There's no details on how that will work, but it's nice to know that Adobe is
thinking about sharing profits with the users training Firefly.
Now at this point, you're probably thinking, what's better?
Firefly or Midjourney?
There's no question about it.
Midjourney at the moment is much better.
It's trained under a lot more content,
partly because the content that is being trained on is copyrighted where Adobe is
only using content that they have copyright for.
Obviously, Midjourney has been around
for a little longer, but just for the purposes
of demonstration, I've used the same prompt on both Firefly and Midjourney 5.
And these are the results.
On the left, we have Midjourney and on the right we have Firefly.
Below you'll see the prompt that I use. For the most part,
I try to keep the prompt simple without any extra settings or any other aids just
to see what the A.I. would generate with a simple prompt.
But of course, you can get better results
on either of these application by using those extras.
In this first comparison,
I used a studio portrait of a cute monster with big green eyes,
and I think both Midjourney and Firefly did a pretty good job.
If I had to pick a winner, I think I would pick Midjourney just because
some of the details of the depth of field and other elements are a little bit better
than Firefly, but Firefly also did a fantastic job.
Then I did a golden hour photo of tacos
with Avocado on a wooden table with the New York City skyline in the background.
I assume that Firefly would do better in this case because there's a lot
of stock photography of food on Adobe Stock, which is where Firefly is trained.
But again, I think that Midjourney did a much better job.
I think that the background looks better
and the foreground itself is so, so better.
In some cases, Firefly did struggle
with the background, as you can see on this top left photo.
Then I tried realistic 1980s Polaroid of a man standing in front of a muscle car.
Again, Firefly struggle with that.
I assume that Firefly has not had a lot
of training with Polaroids, whereas Midjourney has,
these Polaroids actually look very realistic.
So I think that Midjourney takes it in this case.
I'm not really sure why this guy is
wearing a suit and the scaling is a little bit off in this photo.
Next, we have close up of an ant's head.
And in this case, Midjourney and Firefly both did a fantastic job.
I think that Midjourney gave me more of what I wanted, the actual head of the ant.
But Firefly did generate some pretty cool macro images.
Then I thought about a prompt that Firefly
could probably do well in, and that is product photography.
There's a lot of products shot up against solid backgrounds in Adobe Stock.
So no surprise, the prompt blue headphones
up against the yellow solid background did much better in Firefly than Midjourney.
Midjourney did a good job,
but I feel that Firefly actually gave me more of what I wanted.
The blue headphones up against a solid background.
And again, this was no surprise,
there's a lot of this type of content in Adobe Stock.
Then I try to get a little crazy with the prompts.
So I did night time photo of a muscular cat wearing a tracksuit and lifting
weights on a rooftop with the San Francisco skyline in the background.
And in this case, I don't think either of them did that well.
I think that Midjourney overall did the better job.
However, I do think that this type right
image is more of what I had in mind when I typed in that prompt.
So if I had to pick an image out of the eight, I would pick the firefly image.
But overall, I think that Midjourney did a better job.
Then I tried another crazy random prompt, steampunk man wearing goggles and red
shorts waving at you while riding a unicycle.
And in this case, I think Firefly probably did a little bit better.
The images look like their stock photos, which again, it makes total sense.
And I did get a couple of waves in most
images, whereas with Midjourney, I think I only got one wave and no red shorts.
Everybody's wearing red but no red shorts.
And in terms of unicycle,
I think I only got this one image of a Midjourney with a unicycle.
And in Firefly, maybe two,
we have one for sure.
And then maybe this one.
But we at least got red shorts on all images.
Then I tried a group of cute dogs smiling
while taking a selfie at the park during a sunny, golden hour sunset.
And there is no question, midjourney is a clear winner in this case.
The results in Firefly have issues
and distortions that I wasn't very happy with.
And for the most part, all the images that Midjourney generated looked pretty good.
Then I tried a flat design logo
for a towing company featuring a tow truck, used gray and orange as the primary
colors, and they both did a good job in terms of fulfilling my prompt.
I guess at the end of the day, they both have one design I like.
I just happened to like the Midjourney design a little bit better.
Midjourney is famously bad at generating
hands, but that improved with Midjourney 5.
And in this case, Midjourney did a really
good job with the prompt single human hand against a solid white background.
I think only one of the hands has
more than five fingers, which is this one here in the top right.
Whereas with Firefly, we got a pretty good result on all four images.
However, Midjourney did give me a white
background on all photos, whereas Firefly gave me a gray background.
And finally, I asked Midjourney and Firefly
to show me Artificial Intelligence creating art.
I think they both did a pretty good job.
These AIs are not necessarily creating art, but I do find the images intriguing
and I do like the variety better on Firefly.
Even though the images on Midjourney are also good, they're all the same style and have
a similar subject, so I'm going to have to give this round to Firefly.
But as I mentioned earlier, by using modifiers and different options,
you can get better results with either of these applications.
Let me know in the comments down below
what you think about this comparison and the results.
There's no doubt that A.I. is very
controversial, but Adobe is in the game now, which was to be expected.
Let me know down in the comments below
what your thoughts are and what you think about Adobe Firefly.