Adobe Generative Upscaler November 2025 Short user review

 

Original cropped image upscaled x2 in Adobe Firefly AI Upscaler

The introduction of Adobe Denoise AI in 2023 was a big event in my personal photographic life.  It enabled me to make the decision to sell all my full frame gear and settle on a crop sensor kit, based on the Canon EOS R7.

The near-magical ability to remove a blizzard of high ISO noise while retaining and even improving detail has been a game changer.

Other AI powered features have continued to expand what can be achieved in post processing, especially the ability to remove unwanted items from the frame.

The traditional way to photograph little subjects at a great distance from the camera has been to mount a giant 600mm lens onto a high spec full frame body. This is very effective but also very expensive and beyond the resources of most enthusiast amateur photographers.

A lighter, less expensive approach is to mount a consumer zoom onto an APSC body.

The table below shows  the weight and current new price in Australia of each kit.

Kit	New price AUD	Weight	FF equivalent focal length
Canon EOS R5.2 with RF 600mm f4	$26,000	3840 grams	600mm
Canon EOS R7 with RF 100-400mm f5.6-8	$2654	1247 grams	160-640mm

 

Professional sports, wildlife and bird photographers are not giving up their full frame gear any time soon. 

But for the rest of us who have neither the resources nor the desire to spend that much on specialised photo gear, there are lower cost alternatives.

Upscaled in standard Photoshop  x2 with Preserve Details 2.0

Photographing birds, either perched or in flight often means our subject is quite small in the frame. After cropping we end up with a very small picture which could benefit from upsizing.

The traditional way to do this in Photoshop is  via Image > Image Size > select an upscale option. I use Preserve Details 2.0 with 20% noise reduction. If our image file has been denoised before upscaling this actually does a pretty good job.

The exercise for this post is to compare this traditional process with the new AI Generative Upscaler with Firefly. This is accessed via Image> Generative Upscale > Follow the prompts on the new window which appears.

Note that as of November 2025 Generative Upscale is limited to an output size of 6144 pixels on the long side of the frame. This means that it is currently only usable on small images. Which is OK I guess, those are the ones which need upscaling the most.

I ran several of my photos through both the old and new upscale processes.

I find that the new Firefly AI process gives slightly better results than the old with slightly better fine detail and highlight detail. But I have to pixel peep at 100% on a sharp screen to pick the difference.

My conclusion is that the new Firefly AI upscaler from Adobe is a step in the right direction with plenty of room for upgrades to size limits and imaging capability in future Photoshop updates.

I include just one pair of photos to illustrate this. I photographed the welcome swallows with the Canon EOS R7 and RF-S 18-150mm f3.5-6.3 kit lens. On the day I had no intention of photographing birds in flight but  the swallows were swooping back and forth right where I happened to be at the time. So I did a point-and-pray job on the birds and a few frames emerged in focus, one even showing the insect about to be eaten.

The original cropped image is 1954 x 1832 px = about 3.6 Mpx area.

I upscaled 2x linear in both the traditional and Firefly processes.