Adobe kicks off 2025 with the long-awaited new Photoshop feature. Adobe announced Tuesday that its newest Photoshop beta feature will be live co-editing, a tool that lets you and your team work together on a project at the same time. Live collaborative editing will make it easier to collaborate with multiple people, organize feedback, and implement changes without having to save and share the same file over and over again.
“We knew it was going to be a big technical challenge, and we wanted to make sure we did it the right way,” said Steven Nielson, senior director of product management for Photoshop, in an email interview exclusively with CNET. “We've heard from many of our customers that they want collaborative editing capabilities so they can better collaborate with their teams, clients, students, teachers, and more.”
Two or more designers can actively edit a project at the same time and see changes being made in real time. (Nilsson said there is no “hard limit” on how many editors can work simultaneously.) This feature increases Photoshop's collaborative capabilities; other editing software like Canva and Figma have had similar multi-user editing functionality for some time.
When editing with multiple people, it looks similar to Google Docs, where each user has a different colored avatar that lets you know where other users are and what they're editing. You can see a full log of changes made by each user in the History panel. A small group of Photoshop users have already tested the feature, with Adobe reporting that they've enjoyed easier collaboration.
You can sign up join the private beta now to test it and provide feedback before a future release.
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The tool is intended to help creators streamline their work, especially when they have multiple people providing feedback and recommendations on a project. You can adjust file permissions to limit who is allowed to edit—a useful caveat for creators who need to solicit feedback from large groups of people. For example, creators can share projects in progress with clients and allow them to view and leave comments (not edits) even if those clients don't have a Photoshop subscription.
Last year, Adobe went all-in on artificial intelligence through its Creative Cloud programs, and Photoshop received a large number of generative AI tools and updates. While AI won't be behind every update this year (including live collaborative editing), AI will “absolutely” be an ongoing trend, Nilsson said. He also hinted that one particular AI-powered tool, project perfect match demo presented at Adobe Max last fall, is one of the AI innovations they'll be working on this year.
“We have really exciting plans for 2025, with some incredible capabilities enabled by generative AI. We're always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, which will drive what we release this year and for years to come,” said Nilsson.
“This year, we're committed to continuing to make Photoshop the ultimate creative design app and making it more intuitive, accessible and powerful than ever before.”