Illustrator's first Firefly-powered generative feature: describe a palette or mood in words and recolour vector artwork into variations.
- 13 Jun 2023, Adobe MAX London (Illustrator 27.6.1)
- 13 Sep 2023 (Illustrator 27.9)
- Adobe Firefly
- 100+ (today)
Generative Recolor brought Adobe Firefly into Adobe Illustrator. A designer selects vector artwork, types a mood or theme such as terracotta desert or neon lights, and Illustrator returns several recoloured versions of the same artwork to preview, refine and apply, while the original stays untouched. Up to five guide colours and a set of sample prompts help steer the result.
Adobe launched it in beta at MAX London in June 2023 (Illustrator 27.6.1) as Illustrator's first Firefly-powered generative feature, and it reached general availability in September 2023 (Illustrator 27.9), the same day Firefly became commercially available. Today it accepts prompts in more than 100 languages and suits packaging, brand, illustration and seasonal campaign work.
What I did
- I was a founding member of the Generative Recolor team.
- I ported the colour-mapping engine into Illustrator's native C++ code, so recolouring runs directly on the user's vector artwork.
- I built much of the in-app experience: the variations menu, colour tiles and first-run messages.
Sources
- Adobe Firefly powers first generative AI capabilities in Illustrator, Jun 2023 (Adobe Newsroom) ↗
- The future of Illustrator is here, Jun 2023 (Adobe Blog) ↗
- Generative Recolor product page (Adobe) ↗
- Recolor artwork with text prompts (Adobe Help) ↗
- Generative Recolor launch and GA posts (Adobe Community) ↗