Generating images using Adobe Firefly

Adobe Firefly is a generative AI tool that enables you to create images and video clips by using text prompts, as well as perform some basic image editing tasks. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Adobe Firefly to create images using a text prompt.

With the image generation tools in Adobe Firefly, you can generate images based on text prompts and reference images, and use additional tools and features to refine generated images to achieve your desired results. Adobe Firefly is considered commercially safe - in short, their models are trained on content they have permission to use (such as licensed content and public domain content) and doesn’t train their models on user content or content collected from the web. Additionally, Adobe doesn’t claim ownership of your content, and that includes content you create with Adobe Firefly.

To learn more, visit Adobe’s page Approach to generative AI with Adobe Firefly.

Signing in to Adobe Firefly

To access all of the options available for generating images with Adobe Firefly, you’ll need to log in with your Adobe at IU account. You can do that from the Firefly homepage.

Once you’re logged into your Adobe account, you’ll be returned to the Adobe Firefly homepage, which will look similar to the following image:

Across the top of the screen is the application bar, which includes links to web versions of other Adobe Creative Cloud applications. On the left side of the screen is the site navigation panel, where you can create a new file and access various Adobe Firefly features, as well as access files and previously generated images through the Your stuff option. In the banner near the top of the Adobe Firefly homepage is the prompt field, which includes options for generating content.

A note about generative credits in Adobe Firefly

All users of Adobe Firefly are granted an amount of generative credits monthly. Think of these credits as tokens that you can use to generate images with. IU users have a monthly generative credit allotment of 1000 credits – in comparison, a free Adobe Firefly account has a monthly limit of only 25 credits, so make sure you use Adobe Firefly with your IU account so you have access to the higher credit limit.

NOTE: Some features in Adobe Firefly require premium credits, such as generating videos, using boards, and using partner models. Adobe will sometimes grant complimentary premium credits so you can try out new features, but aside from the complimentary credits, premium features are not available to users with Education licenses.

For more information about generative credits in Adobe Firefly, check out the Generative credits FAQ on the Adobe Help website.

You can check how many generative credits you have at any time from the Adobe Firefly website. The following accordion contains instructions on how to do this.

Generating images

Generating an image using Adobe Firefly is as simple as typing up a description of what you’d like Firefly to create an image of. The following tips come from Adobe’s guide to writing effective text prompts, and will be helpful when crafting your own prompts for generating images:

• Be specific. Use at least three words in your prompt, and use natural language in your prompt. Including a subject and description will help ensure the generated image will meet your needs. Avoid using words like “generate” or “create” in your prompt.
• Be descriptive. The more detail you can provide about what you want to generate, the better your results will be.
• Be original. Go beyond simple descriptions by including style, emotions and feelings, lighting elements, colors, and more in your prompt.

If you’d like a little more structure when putting together your prompt, a prompting framework that may be helpful here is the Subject, Description, Style framework:

• Subject: Indicate what the main focus of the image is, whether it’s a person, a building, or an animal. You can also include details about the subject, such as what the person is wearing or what the building looks like.
• Description: Include information about what the subject is doing, or what’s happening in the image.
• Style: Add information about what artistic style should be used when generating the image - this can include specific artistic movements, colors, or emotions you want the image to evoke.

Before generating an image, let’s take a closer look at the prompt area and the options included in it.

The top portion of the prompt area contains the text entry field where you’ll write your prompt. Underneath the text entry field are drop-down menus where you can choose what type of content to generate, what model to use when generating an image, what aspect ratio the image should be generated using, and additional options that may appear based on what image generation model you use. By default, the options are set to generate an image using the Firefly Image 5 model.

NOTE: As of April 2026, the Firefly Image 5 and Firefly Image 4 Ultra models are considered premium models, and require premium credits to use.

Let’s practice generating images. As part of this process, we’ll change the image generation model to Firefly Image 4 and set the aspect ratio for the generated image. If you have an idea of what type of image you want to generate, substitute the example prompts in the following instructions with a prompt that’s related to what you want to make. Otherwise, feel free to practice generating images using the prompt in step 1, which will have us generating an image of a squirrel on a college campus.

Firefly will move to the Generate image workspace and generate four different image variations based on your prompt, as shown in the following screenshot:

On the left is the Settings panel - we'll explore that in more detail shortly. On the right is a list showing thumbnails of generated images and the prompt that was used to make those images. Under the list of generated images is the prompt field, where the most recently used prompt is visible.

Once Firefly has generated images based on your prompt, you may find that you want make some changes to the results, such as using different lighting or a different color palette. This can easily be accomplished using the Settings panel.

Refining the results of a prompt

You can make refinements to a prompt’s results using the Settings panel on the left side of the Generate image workspace:

Here, you can adjust the aspect ratio of generated images, change the content type from Photo to Art, change the composition and style of the images, and apply a wide range of visual effects to the generated images. However, any changes you make in the Settings panel won’t immediately be applied to the images you generated – as you change the different options available in the settings panel, those attributes will be added to the prompt field at the bottom of the screen. When you’re done adjusting the attributes, you’ll need to click the Generate button in order to generate new images with the additional attributes.

Let’s see how to adjust the results of a prompt using the options in the Settings panel. To practice, we’ll apply an effect, change the color and tone, adjust the lighting, and choose a camera angle. Once we’ve changed the desired settings, we’ll generate new images.

At this point, the prompt field should look similar to the following image:

At this point, you're ready to generate new images based on the updated prompt.

Adobe Firefly will then generate a new set of images based on the settings we chose in the Settings panel.

Feel free to experiment with the options available in the Settings panel to achieve different results from your image generation prompts.

Saving a generated image

Once you’ve generated an image you like, you’ll want to save it to your computer so you can use it in other projects.

When we point to the thumbnail for one of the generated images, we see the following icons appear at the top and bottom of the thumbnail:

In the upper left corner of the thumbnail is the Edit options menu button. This menu provides many options for editing the image using generative AI tools. In the upper right corner of the thumbnail is the Open in Photoshop Web button, which opens the image in Photoshop Web in a new browser tab, as well as the Download button, which downloads the image to your computer.

In the bottom left corner of the thumbnail, the Rate Results buttons are visible, which you can use to give feedback on the results you received from Adobe Firefly. The Share options button is located on the bottom right of the thumbnail, and can be used to open the image in Photoshop Web or Adobe Express. To the right of the Share options button is the Save to Favorites button, which saves the generated image to your favorites collection - this is accessible from the Your stuff option in the navigation on the left side of the Adobe Firefly home page.

If you want to edit an image on your computer, you’ll need to download it. Let’s practice downloading an image generated in Firefly to our computer.

The chosen image will download to your computer, and you can edit the image using an application like Photoshop.