Adobe previews 10 creative AI projects at MAX 2026

Adobe previewed 10 research projects at Adobe MAX 2026 Sneaks, spanning video, audio, photography, 3D, imaging and design.

The projects reflect the company's ongoing research into creative tools and workflows. Some are also available for hands-on testing through the Adobe Labs Playground.

Video tools

Four previews focused on video creation and editing.

Project Scene Sweep is aimed at editors working across multiple shots in a sequence. It identifies characters, locations and scenes so an edit can be applied consistently across cuts and camera angles, rather than repeated manually.

Another project, Screen Test, focuses on character development. It lets creators build a fictional character's appearance, voice and personality, then use natural language dialogue to explore how that character might respond in different scenes.

Live Set explores real-time changes within a moving scene. Users can alter a subject, change an environment or redirect the camera while a video continues to play.

On Cue addresses the timing of events in generated video. Creators can direct when an action takes place, such as a flash of light, using an editable timing signal drawn by hand or extracted from existing video or music.

Audio work

Adobe also highlighted a project focused on sound editing.

Sound Bender is designed to pull a described sound from a finished mix and let users explore variations on an interactive canvas. Creators can then shape a sound in real time, align its movement with video or generate a new sound from a text description.

Image editing

Five previews focused on images and design workflows.

Deep Brush uses AI to interpret the shape, colour and lighting of an image. This allows brushstrokes to follow surfaces, enables colour changes that preserve shadows and lets users paint light directly into a scene.

Sight Span turns a single image into a navigable environment, letting creators move within the scene, find new angles and compose shots beyond the original frame.

Hands On uses object segmentation and vision-language models to place controls directly on the image canvas. This lets users manipulate elements of a scene by hand rather than relying solely on menus or separate controls.

Rinse Repeat is intended to copy edits from one part of an image to another. The process recreates those edits with native Photoshop tools so they remain editable for later refinement.

Link Up explores the use of gesture in design work. A drag action can express a creator's intent, such as placing a car in an illustrated parking space, after which the system adjusts perspective, scale and style to match the surrounding scene and leaves the result as editable vector artwork.

Labs access

Alongside the stage previews, Adobe expanded Adobe Labs as a channel for ongoing research feedback.

Adobe Labs now combines research updates, professional workflows and early-stage experiments from across the company's teams. Within that broader offering, the new Playground gives users access to selected previews, including Deep Brush and Hands On, as well as a Photoshop feature preview called Custom Filters.

The move points to a wider effort to put some experimental work in front of users earlier, rather than limiting exposure to annual demonstrations. It also gives Adobe a way to gather feedback from creative professionals and hobbyists as it assesses which ideas might develop into product features.

For Adobe, the Sneaks format has long served as a public window into research that may later influence commercial software. This year's projects continued to emphasise automation paired with direct user control, especially in areas such as scene continuity, timing, image manipulation and sound extraction.

The 10 projects also indicate where Adobe sees persistent friction in creative work: repeating edits across shots, isolating audio from mixed material, transferring image adjustments and making design changes more directly on the canvas.

Within Adobe Labs, the new Playground lets users try selected early innovations themselves, including Project Deep Brush and Project Hands On, and preview Project Custom Filters for Photoshop.