Curiosity · AI Model

Adobe Firefly Image 3

Adobe Firefly Image 3 is the third-generation image foundation model from Adobe, announced at MAX London in April 2024 and integrated across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Express. Adobe positions Firefly as commercially safe: it is trained on licensed Adobe Stock, openly licensed content, and public-domain material rather than an unfiltered web scrape. Image 3 adds photorealism, better prompt understanding, richer style control (Structure / Style Reference), and stronger in-image text. It powers Generative Fill, Generative Expand, and Generative Shape Fill across Adobe Creative Cloud.

Model specs

Vendor
Adobe
Family
Firefly
Released
2024-04
Context window
1 tokens
Modalities
text, vision
Input price
n/a
Output price
n/a
Pricing as of
2026-04-20

Strengths

  • Commercially safe training data with indemnification
  • Deep integration across Creative Cloud
  • Structure and Style Reference controls
  • Content Credentials (C2PA) metadata on every output

Limitations

  • Absolute quality slightly behind Midjourney v6 / Imagen 3 on aesthetics
  • Paid only — no open weights
  • Generation credits limit heavy automation
  • API access gated to enterprise plans

Use cases

  • Photoshop Generative Fill / Expand
  • Illustrator Generative Shape Fill
  • Express and Firefly web app creative work
  • Enterprise campaigns requiring content provenance (Content Credentials)

Benchmarks

BenchmarkScoreAs of
Adobe internal human preference (vs Firefly 2)preferred ≈70% of the time2024-04
Text-in-image legibilitymaterially improved over Firefly 22024-04

Frequently asked questions

What is Firefly Image 3?

Firefly Image 3 is Adobe's April 2024 generative image model, trained on licensed Adobe Stock and open/public-domain content, and integrated across Creative Cloud apps.

Is Firefly commercially safe?

Adobe indemnifies enterprise customers for Firefly-generated content, since the model is trained on licensed and public-domain data rather than scraped web imagery.

How do I access Firefly Image 3?

Through Photoshop's Generative Fill, Illustrator, Express, the standalone Firefly web app, or the Firefly Services API on enterprise plans.

Sources

  1. Adobe — Firefly Image 3 announcement — accessed 2026-04-20
  2. Firefly Services docs — accessed 2026-04-20