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Photoshop's newest AI tool makes it easy to upscale old photos

Photoshop's newest AI tool makes it easy to upscale old photos

Engadget29-07-2025
Adobe is rolling out a series of new Photoshop tools in beta that it claims will eliminate "tedious steps, reduce friction, and make precision editing faster and more intuitive."
The new features include Generative Upscale for desktop and web, allowing you to enhance images by up to 8 megapixels before losing quality. This tool can be used for things such as improving photos you want to print or updating older files. According to Adobe, this feature has been one of the most requested among its users.
Then there's the updated Remove tool, courtesy of the new Adobe Firefly Image Model. It does all the tidying and erasing you would expect, but also should provide a more realistic image. As Adobe puts it, there should be "fewer artifacts" left of the thumb, background people or whatever else you removed from the photo. It's also available in beta on desktop and web.
Adobe is also rolling out the Harmonize feature, first discussed as Project Perfect Blend during the company's October 2024 Max conference. Powered by the Adobe firefly Image Model, Harmonize "intelligently analyzes the surrounding context, automatically adjusting color, lighting, shadows, and visual tone to create seamless, cohesive composites." Adobe claims this will reduce the time needed for manual adjustments. On top of trying out the beta on desktop or web, it's also available in Early Access for mobile iOS users.
You can now use the Gen AI Model Picker to move between the different Firefly Image Models, as they each offer something a bit different when using the tools. Plus, Photoshop is rolling out something else in beta called Projects which, well, manages your projects. It should keep all your files in one place and let you send out entire collections, rather than one version at a time. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
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Figma at 300x Earnings: Bubble Hype or the Next Great Compounder?
Figma at 300x Earnings: Bubble Hype or the Next Great Compounder?

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time5 hours ago

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Figma at 300x Earnings: Bubble Hype or the Next Great Compounder?

When I evaluate a company, I don't look at momentum charts or earnings surprises. I ask a more fundamental question: Would I want to own the entire business for the next 10 years? Not the stock. The business. In that spirit, let's talk about Figma (NYSE:FIG)the company that Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) tried to acquire for $20 billion in 2022, only to be blocked by regulators. The $20B Adobe acquisition wasn't just a headlineit was a validation. When the heavyweight in creative software offers a massive premium to eliminate a competitor, you know it sees something dangerous. And when regulators block the deal on antitrust grounds? That's not just a moat. That's a regulatory-confirmed threat. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with INFU. Right after being listed, it was trading publicly with a market cap around $60 billion, and after a recent pullback, now trades around a $40 billion market cap, Figma offers a rare opportunity to own a generational software business at a more reasonable multiple. Figma has emerged as the category king in browser-based design collaboration. But this story isn't about hype. It's about fundamentalsand whether this beloved product has the staying power and economic muscle to justify its price tag. Figma builds browser-based tools for digital product design. Designers use it to create wireframes, prototypes, and UI/UX flows. Developers use it to inspect designs and export code. PMs and marketers comment directly inside shared files. No downloads. No version control nightmares. Just a seamless, multiplayer canvas in the cloud. It started with interface design. But it didn't stop there. FigJam allows for collaborative whiteboarding. Dev Mode helps engineers ship faster. Figma Slides and Sites aim to replace presentation tools and even light web development. The roadmap is clear: become the operating system for digital product creation. The product's simplicity hides its depth. Over 95% of the Fortune 500 has adopted Figma. Its viral, bottom-up go-to-market strategy turns one free user into an enterprise contract over time. Design teams start for free. Product managers join in. Developers get Dev Mode seats. Eventually, IT upgrades to an organization-wide license. Figma monetizes by seat type: high-value creator seats for designers and discounted seats for collaborators and engineers. This tiered structure expands TAM and increases average revenue per customer. In Q1 2025, 70% of revenue came from Organization and Enterprise plansa clear sign that land-and-expand is working. And it's not just usage growth. Figma's plugin ecosystem (with over 10,000 community-built extensions) makes it more valuable the more you use it. Want to add stock images? Charts? Sync to Jira? There's a plugin for that. These integrations create lock-inand reinforce Figma's moat. Let's look under the hood. Figma's revenue has grown at an extraordinary pace: That puts Figma on a $900M+ annualized run rate. More importantly, its growth is efficient. Net revenue retention was ~134% in 2024, meaning existing customers increased spend by 34% before adding new logos. Gross margins stand at 88%. Operating margin hit 17% in Q1 2025. Net income reached $45M. That makes Figma one of the rare high-growth SaaS companies that's already profitable. Its Rule of 40 score (growth rate + operating margin) was 63 in Q1well above the benchmark of 40. This isn't a grow-at-all-costs story. It's a business with real earnings power. Capex is negligible. Free cash flow is strong. There's no debt. And the company exited Q1 2025 with $1.54 billion in cash. This is a self-funding, capital-light business with plenty of fuel. Of course, all of this doesn't mean Figma is cheap. When it reached $60B market cap and projected ~$200M net income, Figma traded at roughly 300x forward earnings and 65x forward revenue. Now at a $38B market cap Figma trades at ~200x forward earnings and ~44x forward revenue. Still priceybut more grounded after the recent pullback. That puts it at the upper end of high-growth SaaS multiples. So how does that compare? Adobe trades at ~15.9x forward earnings and ~6x forward sales. Gross margins: 89%. Growth: ~10% annually. Canva (private) was last valued at ~$26B with ~$2B in ARR. That's ~13x sales. Atlassian (NASDAQ:TEAM) trades at ~46x forward earnings and ~8x revenue. Gross margins: ~82%. Growth: 23%. Figma at the hype, trades at nearly 300x forward earnings and ~30x revenue. Gross margins: 88.3%. Growth: 48%. In plain terms, Figma is much more expensive than Adobe, Canva, or Atlassian. But it's also growing faster, with higher margins and earlier-stage reinvestment opportunities. WIX (NASDAQ:WIX) apears to be one of the closest comparablescapital-light, sticky, and widely used. But WIX's ARPU (Average revenue per user) remains low because users log in infrequently. Adobe and Figma, by contrast, are deeply embedded into daily workflows. Designers, PMs, and developers live inside the product for hours every day. That kind of engagement drives much higher ARPU and makes Figma more comparable to Adobe or Atlassian in terms of monetization potential. So how big is the market? Take the ARPU of Adobe's most-used cloud productaround $300400 per yearand multiply that by the estimated 300 million users across design, product, and engineering teams (a proxy drawn from Atlassian's global user base). Even if Figma captures just 10% of that market, you're looking at $912 billion in annual revenue potential. With a capital-light model and a path to 30% net margins, Figma could generate multi-billion-dollar earnings over time. The real question isn't whether Figma is expensive today. It's whether it can grow into that valuationand whether its competitive advantages are durable enough to sustain long-term compounding. What's stopping someone from cloning Figma? Technically, not much. But strategically? A lot. Figma's moat comes from a few intertwined forces: Network effects: The more people inside a company use Figma, the more valuable it becomes. Teams standardize on it. New hires already know it. Switching tools would be painful. High switching costs: Enterprise customers build design systems, component libraries, and workflows directly inside Figma. Leaving would mean breaking all of that. Ecosystem lock-in: Thousands of plugins, tutorials, community-created templates. No rival offers that breadth. Brand dominance: Designers love Figma. PMs tolerate it. Developers respect it. That trifecta is rare. Adobe failed to beat it with XD. Sketch has faded. Canva serves a different market. Miro, Notion, and others nibble at adjacent spaces but can't match Figma's depth in interface design. And while AI is a potential disruptor, Figma is leaning into it. Figma Make (prototype from text prompt) and other AI tools are being built in-house. The goal: automate the boring parts of design without replacing the designer. Dylan Field still leads the company. He owns ~50% of voting rights. His strategic moves post-IPO suggest discipline. Instead of splashy M&A, Figma doubled down on its core platform. It scaled responsibly. It expanded pricing tiers. It accelerated product cadence. The one wart? In 2024, the failed Adobe acquisition triggered a massive $889M stock comp expense. But this was a one-off to retain talent. Strip it out, and Figma would've been profitable in 2024 too. Field also brought in heavyweights like Bill McDermott (ServiceNow CEO) to the board. That blend of youthful vision and enterprise wisdom is a good sign. And he's not the only one leaning in. Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management has recently added to its position, purchasing 60,000 shares of Figma. That kind of vote of confidence from a high-conviction, innovation-focused investor tells you something. ARK isn't in the business of indexingthey're betting on exponential curves. If they believe Figma is still early in its compounding journey, it's worth paying attention. Dylan built Figma from scratch, rejected early buyout offers, and steered through the Adobe drama. He's not optimizing for short-term optics. He's playing a longer game. Another key signal? Only 10% of total shares were sold during the IPO, and 30% of the capital raised was reinvested back into Figma. The limited float has fueled some of the post-IPO volatility, but it also tells you something else: the insiders didn't cash out. They held on. That kind of convictionespecially from a founder like Dylan Field with majority voting controlshouldn't be ignored. They're still playing the long game. 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Mastering Photo Editing: The Best Lightroom Presets You Need to Try
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time8 hours ago

  • Time Business News

Mastering Photo Editing: The Best Lightroom Presets You Need to Try

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Morgan Stanley Reiterates Bullish $510 Target on Adobe (ADBE) Amid GenAI Momentum
Morgan Stanley Reiterates Bullish $510 Target on Adobe (ADBE) Amid GenAI Momentum

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Morgan Stanley Reiterates Bullish $510 Target on Adobe (ADBE) Amid GenAI Momentum

Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) is one of the On August 2nd, Morgan Stanley reiterated an Overweight rating on the stock with a price target of $510. The rating affirmation and positive outlook stems from the thesis that Adobe is poised to capture incremental value from several opportunities as generative AI capabilities boost Creative Cloud growth. According to the firm's bull case, Creative Cloud + GenAI will expand the user base and push pricing higher. This will in turn deliver a DM revenue CAGR of 13% over FY23-FY26. With improved integration and execution in Digital Experience, an 11% revenue CAGR will be delivered over FY23-FY26. This will take the total revenue CAGR to 12%. A quantitative analyst poring over many index tracking charts related to public obligations. The firm further talked about three growth drivers for Adobe. Its role in managing diffusion engines, its improving digital media ARR growth, and also an accelerated pace of buybacks. It believes Adobe is expanding its models with better capabilities for the end user. The firm particularly discussed how Adobe is adding abilities like better price and value matching, accelerating GenAI tool adoption into Adobe workflows. This will in turn help investors realize the value of being able to edit a broad set of images in a collaborative environment. The firm notices a potential for modest upside to 2H Digital Media ARR growth despite guidance including the latest price change. While we acknowledge the potential of ADBE as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 10 Must-Watch AI Stocks on Wall Street and . Disclosure: None.

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