Photoshop 2026: 5 New Features Worth Adding to Your Workflow

Photoshop 2026: 5 New Features Worth Adding to Your Workflow

Photoshop 2026 arrives with a set of updates that genuinely change how certain editing tasks get done. The Light adjustment layer alone could replace a step many photographers have been routing through Camera Raw for years — and that's just the start.

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Video by photoshopCAFE. Any links or downloads mentioned by the creator are available only on YouTube

Practical Tips

Here are the key takeaways from the video, covering each of the five features and how to get the most out of them.

  • Use the new Light adjustment layer to recover highlights and shadows directly on the canvas — pull highlights down and open shadows before adjusting whites and blacks separately for better contrast control than the slider alone provides.
  • In Camera Raw's Glow effect, choose the glow type to match your intent: Diffusion for a soft Orton-style look, Bloom for expanding window highlights, and Halation for a warm, filmic edge glow around brighter areas.
  • When placing text on a path, draw your curve with the Freeform Pen tool, then use Dynamic Fit to spread the text automatically across the full length of the path rather than repositioning it manually.
  • Use the brush annotation tool inside Prompt to Edit to sketch the approximate location and shape of objects you want to generate — rough outlines are enough, and you can label each one separately for precision.
  • Apply Generative Fill with a loose selection brush to fill only a masked region; the AI will respect the painted boundary even if the strokes are imprecise, leaving the rest of the image untouched.

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