Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate. Powered by Adobe’s new Firefly Image 3 foundation model, these new tools are available today via the Photoshop beta desktop app, and will be generally available “later this year” according to Adobe’s Press release.

The most notable tool is Reference Image, which uses user-uploaded images to inspire the output generated by Adobe’s AI, matching similar elements in style and color. For example, instead of repeatedly tweaking a prompt description like “a blue vintage truck with flower decals,” users can instead provide a reference image that Photoshop will use as a guide.

“Prompting is a pain in the butt,” Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer for Digital Media at Adobe told The Verge. “Why spend an hour trying to craft a three-paragraph prompt if you have an image that you’ve created that’s exactly the thing you want to reference? The saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ applies here.”

Users are expected to have the rights to use images they want to reference. Greenfield told the Verge that a message will flag this ownership requirement when the tool is first used, and that the company is working on a universal “do not train” tag for Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative that will also block images from being used as a reference. Images uploaded as reference materials won’t be used to train Firefly. Despite the ownership responsibility being placed on users, Adobe says this new referencing tool is still “safe for commercial use” — one of the most notable advantages that Adobe claims Firefly has over rival generative AI models.

Additional generative AI tools available in the Photoshop beta app include Generate Background, which replaces and creates new background images for things like product photography, and Enhance Detail, which increases clarity and makes images appear sharper.

Generate Similar is also available, which uses one of the three images generated by Photoshop’s Firefly tools as a reference to produce similar-looking content, while Generate Image allows users starting with a blank page to generate an entire image from a text description for the first time.

Adobe’s third-generation Firefly model, which has higher-quality image generation capabilities compared to its predecessor, is also available in a public, global beta for anyone to try outside of Photoshop via the Firefly web application. Adobe says its latest Firefly model delivers “photorealistic quality like never before with better lighting, positioning, and attention to detail.” Firefly Image 3 is more capable than the previous Firefly model at understanding long, descriptive text prompts, and can produce clearer text in the images it generates.

Outside of generative AI, Adobe is also adding some new, standard tools to Photoshop that can speed up creative processes. These include an Adjustment Brush that lets Photoshop users make non-destructive changes, such as color adjustments, to specific sections of an image. There’s also a new Adjustment Presets that can quickly change an image using filters, and an improved Font Browser that gives users real-time access to the over 25,000 fonts in Adobe’s cloud without leaving the Photoshop application.

Fortnite is rolling out an update on Tuesday that includes a new setting that filters out “confrontational” emotes. The v29.30 update will let players “choose not to see” the following emotes: “Laugh It Up”, “Take the L”, “Whipcrack”, and “Make it Plantain.”

The four emotes won’t exactly be hidden per se, they’ll appear as still images in the game — but players performing them won’t dance and they won’t play music. Players can opt to only see these emotes from friends, or hide them altogether.

Though Fortnite has hundreds of different emotes, this group of four are controversial because of how and when players will use them. Fortnite players will often play emotes like “Laugh it Up” and “Take the L” after killing another player or winning a match. Players over the years have complained that emote use has gotten toxic and overly aggressive on the game, with a few players using them to anger other players, or as a sign of disrespect.

Epic Games has taken some flak for its emotes in the past — but for a completely different reason. Many of the emotes mimic popular dance moves, and multiple dance move creators have sued Epic Games accusing the game developer of ripping off their work. Back in February, Epic appeared to reach an agreement with celebrity choreographer Kyle Hanagami that led him to dropping his lawsuit over the “It’s Complicated” emoji. 

Although emotes are a widely used feature in Fortnite, they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. This latest update appears to be a recognition on Epic’s part that, for at least some players, certain emotes just ruin the vibes. While those players won’t be able to block the emotes outright, they’ll certainly be able to make them less annoying.

On the theme of opening up, Meta is also pushing for more ways to discover alternative app stores. It’s making its experimental App Lab store more prominent and even inviting Google to bring the Play Store to its operating system, which is now called Horizon OS. In a blog post, Meta additionally said that it’s working on a spatial framework for developers to more easily port their mobile apps to Horizon OS.

Crucially for Meta, Horizon OS includes the Horizon social layer, a 3D, Roblox-meets-The Sims open-world platform. After a buggy and sluggish start on the Quest, Meta has been working to improve Horizon and recently brought it to the web as a 2D experience. Now, any hardware company that wants to build a device with Horizon OS will help extend the reach of Horizon the social network, which Meta wants to eventually monetize with ads and commerce. (Yes, this is approaching Google levels of naming confusion.)

Meta has yet to share more on the business terms of its Horizon OS license, aside from that social network tie-in and requiring the use of Qualcomm chips. “You can imagine a lightweight headset that pairs with your computer on your desk to provide the best work experience at home or anywhere you go,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the news. “Or imagine one that’s fully focused on watching immersive entertainment like movies and videos with the highest resolution OLED screens out there.” Spokespeople for Lenovo, Asus, and Xbox didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Zuckerberg has been clear that he wants his company to be a more open platform than Apple’s. Here, he’s firmly positioning Meta’s Horizon OS as the Android alternative to Apple’s Vision Pro. Given how Android was more of a reaction to the iPhone, an analogy he’d probably prefer is how Microsoft built the early PC market by licensing Windows.

Meta’s move has been a long time coming. “In the open ecosystem, basically you have much broader partnerships,” Zuckerberg told me in an interview in the fall of 2022. “So Microsoft didn’t build the chips; they didn’t build the PCs; they didn’t build the App Store. It was all this key stuff that was developed around the ecosystem. Similar to Android. And that’s basically what we hope to build here — is the open ecosystem for the next generation of computing around virtual and augmented reality in the metaverse more broadly, which means that there are going to need to be all these partnerships.”