Generating images using Adobe Firefly

Adobe Firefly is a generative AI tool that enables you to create images, video, audio, and vector graphics by using text prompts. 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 create and edit images, apply text effects, recolor images, and create vector graphics based on text prompts and reference images. You can also make use of additional tools and features to help refine generated images to match your desired look and feel. Firefly connects to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Express so you can use the images you generate in other projects.

Logging in to Adobe Firefly

To start generating images with Adobe Firefly, you’ll first want to make sure you’re logged into your Adobe account. You can do that from the Firefly homepage.

The Adobe Firefly homepage will load, and 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. We also see the navigation bar - the left side of the navigation bar contains the Firefly menu, and the right side includes the What’s New button, options for reporting issues and sharing feedback, and a link to your Adobe profile. Underneath the navigation bar, in the banner image, is the prompt bar, with a drop-down on the left side that allows us to choose what type of media we want to create – the prompt bar is set to generate images by default. Below the prompt bar, there are examples and options for creating images, video, audio, and vector graphics.

A note about generative credits in Adobe Firefly

Generative credits are provided as part of IU’s agreement with Adobe, allowing you to use generative AI features in Adobe Firefly and other Adobe applications. These credits reflect the additional computational costs associated with generative AI functionalities, enabling everyone to create content more efficiently. 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 you’ll want to make sure you log into Adobe Firefly with your IU account in order to have access to the higher generative credit allotment.

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. When writing prompts for image generation, it's important to include information about the subject, description, and style you want included in the generated image. For the image's subject, this means information about who or what the focus of the image should be. The descriptionshould include information about what's happening in the image, or what the subject is doing. The styleshould indicate what artistic style the generative AI tool should use when creating the image – this can also include colors, emotions, and other stylistic elements you want incorporated into the image.

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.

Let’s practice generating images. We'll do this using the prompt bar on the Adobe Firefly home page. If you have an idea of what 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 follow along using the example prompts.

Once Firefly has generated some images based on a prompt, we may find that we want to generate them in a different style, with different lighting, or using a different color palette. We can easily make refinements to the generated images if desired.

Refining a prompt’s generated results

Once the images have been generated, you can make refinements to the results using the settings panel on the left side of the Firefly interface:

We can change many different aspects of the generated images, including the aspect ratio, content type, composition, style, and effects. However, any changes made to the images won’t immediately be applied – 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 click the Generate button to generate new image results using the original prompt and additional attributes.

Let’s see how to adjust the results of a prompt using the options in the settings panel. We’ll use a visual effect to make the image look like it was constructed from layered paper, and change the color and tone to use pastel colors. Once we’ve changed the desired settings, we’ll generate new images.

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 or to your Adobe Creative Cloud library in order to use it in other projects.

When we point to one of the generated images, we see the following options appear at the top and bottom of the image:

In the upper left corner, we see the Edit options menu. This gives us many options for editing the image, including opening the image in Photoshop Web or Adobe Express, generating similar images, and using the image as a style or composition reference.

In the upper right corner, we see buttons for opening the image in Photoshop Web and downloading the image. Across the bottom of the image, we see the Rate Results buttons, the Share options button, and the Save to Favorites button. Save to Favorites saves the generated images displayed to your favorites collection, which you can access from the Files menu option in the menu 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.