Adobe Max Sneaks: Ten Experimental Tools, Two You Can Test Today

Adobe used its annual Max Sneaks presentation this week to preview ten experimental projects, and for the first time it's opening two of them — Deep Brush and Hands On — plus Project Custom Filters to public early testing through a new Labs Playground. The Deep Brush and Hands On previews went live when the Sneaks session kicked off at 5:30 pm ET / 2:30 pm PT. Feedback goes to [email protected].

The framing matters for working photographers: Sneaks is research theater, not a product roadmap. Several projects shown at last year's event did land in Photoshop, but Adobe has given no release dates for anything in the current lineup, and the company says these tools may never ship or may look different if they do.

What does Deep Brush actually do?

Project Deep Brush treats an image as a scene rather than a pixel grid. Adobe says the AI infers shape, color and lighting from a single photo and splits it into what the company calls "physically decomposed layers" — controls that respect geometry, shadows and illumination. Adobe wants creatives to "think of every photo as a real-world scene to explore, rather than a set of pixels to adjust."

The pitch for commercial work is concrete: change hair color or apply makeup while keeping facial shape and lighting intact, or place graffiti, signage, a logo or texture on a curved bottle, garment or building with the edit following the surface's contours. Adobe also demonstrates painting light directly into a scene, where a brushstroke interacts with surfaces and illumination rather than just covering pixels.

Can you port edits between images?

Project Rinse Repeat targets the repetitive bulk edit — catalog work, group shots, multi-image treatments. It copies an edit from Photoshop and adapts it to another target, using that target's context to decide which adjustments apply and how they change. Unlike a fixed copy-paste of operations, it selects and modifies the edits to fit the new subject.

Adobe's examples: refine lighting on one product and apply the look across a collection, or copy corrections from one person to others in a group photograph. Critically, it works with native Photoshop tools, layers and masks. Results stay non-destructive and editable — no flattened output.

Drag-based editing and post-shot camera moves

Project Hands On replaces text prompts with direct manipulation. It analyzes an image and generates on-canvas controls — Adobe's demo shows control points on a mug's handle that let you reshape it by dragging. The team found shapes especially suited to this because they're hard to describe in words. It differs from Puppet Warp by deriving content-aware controls from image analysis instead of a manual mesh and pins, and builds on the existing 'Edit Object' tool in Firefly.

Project Sight Span turns one photograph into a navigable 3D environment, letting users explore viewpoints and render stills or camera-controlled video — Adobe suggests testing alternative product angles or scouting a location before visiting. The caveat is real: the system must infer geometry not present in the original, so new angles are generated interpretations, not additional photographic records.

For hybrid shooters, Project Scene Sweep tracks people, objects and locations across a video sequence so one edit — removing a prop, replacing a logo, changing wardrobe — follows subjects across cuts while preserving performance and pacing. Users steer it with a text prompt or an edited frame.

What's testable now?

Project Custom Filters, also live in the Labs Playground, builds image filters from descriptions. Tell the AI Assistant "create a lens distortion filter" or "do a painterly effect" and it generates a filter with dedicated controls, refined through further instructions. Adobe says it runs in real time on the image's actual pixels, non-destructively — not a static AI generation. Filters can be shared via reference number and remixed.

None of it carries a ship date. Last year's Sneaks graduates, though, are the reason to watch: if Deep Brush's physics-aware retouching follows the same path, Photoshop's retouching workflow — and the time billed for it — changes substantially.