Festive Wrap: Digital Image editing

This post is part of our Festive Wrap series, where we review all the creative themes we’ve covered this year and bring you up to date with the latest software developments. Call it a free gift 🙂

Let’s start with an AI generated image created to represent image editing in a festive way – The full prompt used is below:

Colorful holiday-themed illustration with ornaments, a glowing gift box, lights, and paint palette. Rich in reds, greens, and golds with intricate patterns and textures.

The full prompt used with DALL-E3 to generate this image

Festive gift wrap that embodies the art of digital image editing, bursting with intricate detail. The design should feature a vibrant color palette of rich reds, emerald greens, and sparkling golds, with elements like tiny, multi-colored pixels forming mosaic-like patterns across the paper. Incorporate layers that appear to overlap, each with subtle transparency, creating a sense of depth and dimension.

Embed editing tools into the design — brushes with bristles made of holiday lights, sliders resembling candy canes, and selection marquees outlined with festive garlands. Interweave these elements with traditional holiday motifs like elegantly detailed snowflakes, glittering stars, and flowing ribbons that seem to dance across the paper.

Add a touch of whimsy with miniature digital palettes that resemble ornaments, and filters that cast soft, colorful glows across the scene. The overall effect should be a magical fusion of technology and festive spirit, resulting in a wrapping paper design that is both unique and delightfully eye-catching.

February 2024 was Image Editing month!

A computer screen displays colorful digital art. Text reads, "Welcome to image editing month!" Various art tools and pencils are on a nearby table. — A computer screen displays colorful digital art. Text reads, “Welcome to image editing month!” Various art tools and pencils are on a nearby table.

Back in February we presented 15 video explainers, each introducing one of the beginner workflows below in PaintShop Pro, Gimp and PhotoShop. Head back there now if you missed out!:

Resizing images
Rotating and cropping images
Applying basic colour correction
Adding text to an image
Creating single-colour images to use as backgrounds

PaintShop Pro updates

At time of writing in December 2024, the current version of PaintShop Pro remains at 2023, and there is no indication of there being a 2025 version on the horizon.

When we open our copy, there are regular prompts for offers relating to VisionFX 2.0, an AI image-generation and enhancement tool. It’s a fun, subscription free tool, though as it runs locally on your computer you’ll need a laptop with a decent GPU if you’d like to see high quality results without waiting around or heading off to make a brew!

Image of a PaintShop Pro 2023 promotional screen featuring Vision FX 2.0. Includes a woman, a peacock, and bold graphics with instructions on how to purchase the product.

Photoshop updates

It’s AI all the way in recent versions of Photoshop! The most recent update followed the Adobe MAX convention in October and includes object removal, improved generative fill and multiple generations:

Screenshot of Adobe Photoshop's "What's New" page, showing updates on distraction removal, generative fill and expand, and generative image variations for October 2024. — Screenshot of Adobe Photoshop’s “What’s New” page, showing updates on distraction removal, generative fill and expand, and generative image variations for October 2024.

The Photoshop ‘road to AI’ has not been without a few bumps in the road in recent months, as creatives keep a close eye on changes to Adobe’s terms and conditions…

A collage of angry faces with the Adobe logo and text: “Photographers Outraged by Adobe’s New Privacy and Content Terms.

Only last month, Adobe went officially on record with their ‘Embrace AI or get left behind’ message. Of course, if the Adobe suite fails to embrace AI, their competitors will fast surpass them in this huge growth area, so it’s the only stance they can realistically take.

A person in a suit with two illustrated laptops, one red with devil horns and one blue with a smiley face.

GIMP updates

At time of writing, the most recent version of this excellent, free digital image editing tool is from May this year:

Screenshot of the GIMP download page. Text displays the current stable version as 2.10.38 (2024-05-02) with download links for different operating systems.

Behind the scenes, active development on this software continues. The latest update to their blog is from October and we look forward to seeing v3 in the near future!

Screenshot of a webpage titled "Development Update: Closing In on the 3.0 Release Candidate" by GIMP Team, dated 2024-10-05. Discusses progress and goals for GIMP 3.0 release. — Screenshot of a webpage titled “Development Update: Closing In on the 3.0 Release Candidate” by GIMP Team, dated 2024-10-05. Discusses progress and goals for GIMP 3.0 release.

Where to next for Digital Image Editing?

We asked Leonardo.ai to conjure up ‘A visual representation of the future of digital image editing in 2049, 25 years from now’ using their ‘Lifelike Vision’ engine and the ‘creative’ preset…

A digital interface showing future-themed AI-generated images depicting people in various futuristic settings, with navigation and customization options on the left panel. — A digital interface at leonardo.ai showing future-themed AI-generated images depicting people in various futuristic settings, with navigation and customization options on the left panel.

Here are the results returned. (Note the captions shown are AI -generated when the images are added to this page – They are NOT the original prompts used to create the images).