For those who don’t know the tool: Photoshop and Lightroom sit at the image edit and photo finish end of the pipeline, with ideation support via Firefly Boards and automation via Firefly AI Assistant under Creative Cloud.

Rotate Object goes GA, keeps edits non destructive

Adobe moved Rotate Object from beta to general availability in Photoshop. The tool targets a familiar pain point: matching a cutout element to a new perspective without rebuilding the thing from scratch.

Rotate Object lets you tilt, spin, and recomposite an object from new angles in real time while keeping the workflow non destructive. The feature runs as a guided transform, with on canvas controls and additional rotation values available in a properties panel, and it can be reopened to refine the rotatoin later.

Adobe Turntable spins into Illustrator

The promise here is speed, not magic. You still need a decent selection and clean edges to get something usable, and you still need to evaluate artifacts against your actual plate.

Layer Cleanup tries to fix the mess we all made

Layer Cleanup arrives in Photoshop after being previewed at Adobe MAX in October. It renames layers and removes empty ones to declutter complex files, aiming to make handoff and collaboration less painful once a file grows past the point where any human remembers what Layer 143 copy 9 actually contains.

In practice, this is less about creativity and more about reducing the tax of working in large PSDs. If you move between artists, teams, and companies (And even different industries), layer names matter. If you move between yesterday and today, they also matter, because who knew there’d be a nother set of notes from the “Art” Director.

Firefly Boards plugs ideation into the edit loop

Firefly Boards now integrates with both Photoshop and Lightroom, aiming to cut the app switching between early concept and final execution. Firefly Boards is a visual workspace for rapid ideation, including mood boards, storyboards, and pitch materials, with an emphasis on gathering references, organising generations, and keeping direction in one place before you commit to a heavy edit.

The integration pitch focuses on moving smoothly from early concept to final output without breaking flow. That reads like workflow glue rather than a single feature, which is sometimes the stuff that saves actual time in a real porject, before you give the files to the actual artists.

Lightroom gets search, presets, and speed

Lightroom picks up Improved Search that lets you find photos by describing what you want in your own words. The update also adds new film inspired presets for a nostalgic look, alongside performance upgrades that include faster Assisted Culling and up to 5x faster interactive slider performance. There is also support for all Sony A7V formats listed in the release notes provided. If you shoot high volume and live on quick selects, faster culling and faster sliders can matter more than any single new creative knob.

Firefly AI Assistant enters public beta

Adobe also pushed Firefly AI Assistant into public beta. The assistant runs inside Firefly and uses a chat interface where you describe an outcome and the assistant orchestrates multi step workflows across Creative Cloud apps including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, and more.

Eligibility for the beta rollout is tied to Creative Cloud Pro or paid Firefly plans, and the beta includes complimentary daily generative credits for use with the assistant during the rollout.

https://firefly.adobe.com/ai-assistant

The post Adobe updates Photoshop and Lightroom first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Autograph is a 2D plus 3D compositor with a USD core, can hook into Maxon Studio and Red Giant, and imports SVG from Adobe Illustrator and Figma plus PSD from Affinity and Adobe Photoshop.

Free now, with a catch that is not scary

Maxon has released Autograph 2026.0.0 and made it free for anyone with a (free) MyMaxon account. The same release adds native integration with Maxon Studio for searching, navigating, and applying Red Giant effects, and it adds full OpenFX support for third-party plugins. Pricing beyond that free individual access is not specified yet.

The Autograph pitch in plain production terms

Autograph is a motion graphics and compositing application that mixes a layer-based timeline with a 3D mode for manipulating 3D assets. Think Nuke met After Effects at the Flame Birthday party, and they got drunk.

From the left..

The new kid on the block!

The timeline includes a standard layer stack and a dope sheet, then it switches into a 3D workspace when you need to push assets around in depth.

Autograph also promotes a responsive design workflow aimed at delivering multiple resolutions and aspect ratios from a single project file. Autograph calls these “responsive-design compositions”. Elements can be positioned relative to frame dimensions so one project can render multiple aspect ratios without duplicating layouts.

On the feature list side, Autograph describes itself as a tool for motion graphics, VFX and compositing, plus 2D and 3D projects. So, eveything Comp. It also sports a GPU-powered engine and extensible capabilities as part of how the tool approaches performance and expansion.

OpenUSD 3D inside a compositor timeline

Autograph includes an integrated 3D workspace powered by OpenUSD. The 3D space blends with the 2D workflow and supports extruded vector shapes and text, using compositions as textures, and compositing with multi-pass renders inside the same application.

That same 3D space is useful for motion designers who want depth, lighting, and dimensional design without moving to another application, and for 3D artists who want to streamline texture creation and final composite across the broader toolchain.

Plug-ins, Studio integration, and the new OFX door

Autograph 2026.0.0 introduces full OpenFX support. That matters if your shop already lives and dies by OFX (because, why wouldnt it…), or if you want a compositor that does not treat third-party effects as an afterthought.

The release also adds native integration with Maxon Studio. The stated goal is quick search, navigation, and application of Red Giant effects from inside Autograph. Capsules are explicitly not available in Autograph yet.

One naming change also comes with the re-release: Instancer has been renamed to Cloner, aligning naming with Cinema 4D terminology. The Sources do not list additional feature renames beyond that one.

System requirements and supported platforms

Autograph 2026.0.0 supports Windows and macOS. On macOS, the supported versions listed are macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe, and the supported hardware requirement listed is Apple Silicon M1 or better, with 16 GB of memory.

On Windows x64, the supported operating systems listed are Windows 10 version 22H2 and Windows 11. The minimum CPU requirement listed is a 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU with AVX2 support. The minimum GPU requirement is either an NVIDIA GPU from the Maxwell generation or newer with at least 4 GB of VRAM, or an AMD RX 570 or RX 580 with 4 GB or 8 GB, or a discrete GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM and support for OpenCL. The memory requirement is 16 GB.

Test new tools and updates before you put them into a production-critical pipeline!

https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/26689114527388-Autograph-2026-0-0-April-15-2026

The post Maxon Autograph 2026 is here first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the site: FippedNormals is/was a CG store for assets and training you use alongside Blender, ZBrush, Unreal Engine, and the Substance 3D tools, when your pipeline needs fewer guesses and more ready-to-ship bits. Also Plugins, Tutorials, 3d-Printfiles and much more.

The dates you need on your calendar

The FlippedNormals Marketplace will stop accepting new orders on March 31, 2026. After that, purchases are done. Access to previously purchased files stays available until April 30, 2026. After that date, marketplace files will no longer be accessible. Creator payouts have a final date too. The last creator payout happens on April 15, 2026.

April 30, 2026 is also tied to creator operations, because the Creator Dashboard shuts down on the same day customers lose access to file hosting. If you bought something in the past, invoices matter. An invoice was emailed after every purchase, and it should be in the email inbox used at checkout. You can keep what you have locally forever, but you need to get it locally first. Treat April 30, 2026 as a hard donwload deadline, not a friendly suggestion.

What is actually shutting down

This is a shutdown of the marketplace, not a blanket disappearance of everything connected to it. The official plan is a smaller, more focused reboot that pivots away from running a broad storefront with thousands of creators. The new website is planned to focus on FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox.

Why it is happening

The reason given is simple and painfully familiar to anyone who has ever stared at an infrastructure bill and then stared at their revenue chart. Expenses increased significantly over the last years while earnings decreased. Salary reductions were also mentioned as part of efforts to keep things going.

A key detail here is that revenue from FlippedNormals Exclusives was used to keep the marketplace afloat during that period. That combination of higher operating costs, lower earnings, and internal cost cutting still led to the conclusion that the marketplace model was no longer sustainable. If you are reading this as a warning label for other niche CG storefronts, resist the urge to generalize. The only confirmed facts here are the reasons described for this specific shutdown, not the whole sector.

What customers should do right now

Log in, open your library, and pull down everything you have paid for to local storage before April 30, 2026. If your workflow spans multiple machines, back up like you mean it. Put a copy on a second drive. Put another copy wherever your studio keeps long-term project archives. If you rely on invoice PDFs for accounting, store those alongside the content so future you does not have to play detective.

If you depend on the platform for recurring downloads during a production, plan to stop depending on it before the cutoff. The last thing you want is a late-night render emergency that turns into an “amrketplace is gone” surprise.

There is also a specific path for owners of exclusives content. If you purchased FlippedNormals Exclusives on the current marketplace, there is a process to move them to the new site once it launches.

That process requires contacting support after the new site is live, using the support email address. A 100 percent promo code is described as the mechanism to migrate courses to a new account. One more detail that will trip up anyone on autopilot: you will have to make a new user account for the new site as part of that migration flow.

What creators should expect

If you sell on marketplaces, you already know the question creators ask first: what about payouts. The official timeline includes a final creator payout date of April 15, 2026. That is presented as the last payout event. There is also an operational cutoff on April 30, 2026, when the Creator Dashboard shuts down.

If you are a creator and you have analytics, product files, thumbnails, descriptions, license text, or customer support notes you rely on, assume you need to export whatever you can before that dashboard goes dark.

The new site focus, as described, narrows the catalog to FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox. That is a very different value proposition from a wide creator marketplace, even if the UI ends up sleeker. If your pipeline planning relies on “I can always re-download that later,” change the habit. This event is a reminder that availability is a feature you only notice once it is gone.

https://help.flippednormals.com/article/130-flippednormals-marketplace-closing-down-faq

The post FlippedNormals Marketplace closes March 31 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the case: This lives in the subscription plumbing behind Creative Cloud plans used by Photoshop and Acrobat, right where creatives meet billing screens and regret. A proposed stipulated order filed by the U.S. Department of Justice would resolve a federal case over online subscription enrollment and cancellation practices. The total settlement value is $150 million.

The proposed order requires a $75 million civil penalty payment to the Department of Justice. It also requires $75 million in free services for qualifying customers. The case also named two employees, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, and the proposed order would resolve the case against them as well. Court approval still matters here. The proposed order only takes effect if the court enters it (As far as we understand it – I am NOT a lawyer and not even a US Citizen – take all of this with a muntainsized grain of salt!)

What the government said went wrong

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The legal hook is the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, often shortened to ROSCA. ROSCA generally requires clear disclosure of important subscription information and simple ways to cancel.

The allegations centered on two themes. First, important information about subscription plans, including Early Termination Fees, appeared in fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks. Second, subscribers faced cancellation flows described as convoluted and inefficient, with unnecessary steps, delays, unsolicited offers, and warnings.

The Early Termination Fee point matters to artists because it tends to surface only when a project wraps, budgets tighten, or a studio pipeline shifts. That is exactly when a cancellation flow becomes part of production reality, not just a legal footnote.

What changes the proposed order requires

If the court enters the order, the required changes focus on disclosure timing and exit friction. Any Early Termination Fee and how it is calculated must be clearly disclosed before enrollment. That disclosure must happen before customers get locked into a subscription that can trigger the fee.

There is also a requirement tied to longer free trials. For any free trial lasting longer than seven days, customers must be reminded before the trial converts into a paid subscription that includes an Early Termination Fee. The order also requires easy ways to cancel subscriptions. The thrust is simple: if a subscriber can sign up without needing a scavenger hunt, they should be able to leave without one too.

These requirements land squarely on the unglamorous screens that most product teams treat as a footnote. For working post and VFX artists, those screens are still part of your toolkit because they decide whether an account can be trimmed cleanly during downtime or whether a production ends with finance drama.

What the company said it will do

Adobe said it finalized a settlement agreement that ends the litigation filed in June 2024 related to disclosure and subscription cancellation practices. The statement said it disagrees with the government’s claims and denies wrongdoing.

It also said it agreed to provide $75 million worth of services for free to customers that qualify, and that it will proactively reach out to affected customers once the appropriate court filings are made and accepted. The statement also said it agreed to a $75 million payment to the Department of Justice.

Why this hits creatives where it hurts

This story is not about a new brush engine or a faster render. It is about the moment you try to leave a plan. Subscription software sits in the same mental bucket as storage. You only notice it when it fails, when it fills up, or when it refuses to let go. For artists, that moment often arrives between gigs, at a studio wrap, or after a toolchain change.

Products like Photoshop and Acrobat get mentioned in the underlying enforcement action because they are part of the broader subscription universe in question. That matters because these are daily drivers across design, editorial, previs, and deliverables.

If the court enters the order, the practical impacts will show up in enrollment screens, trial conversion reminders, and cancellation user experience. Those are the touchpoints that determine whether a subscription feels like a utility or like a trap with a user interface.

The legal frame in plain English

ROSCA is a US federal law that targets certain online sales tactics and requires clear material terms and express informed consent in covered scenarios. It is part of the broader consumer protection toolkit used by the Federal Trade Commission. The enforcement action here used ROSCA as the named statute and targeted both disclosure of material terms and cancellation mechanisms.

There is no need to be a lawyer to understand the production takeaway. If a tool’s checkout flow hides costs behind links and the off ramp feels like a puzzle, regulators now have a well established playbook to challenge that pattern under existing law.

What is still not spelled out

The public settlement materials describe the $75 million in free services for qualifying customers, but they do not specify which services, which plans, or which product bundles will be included. They also do not spell out the exact criteria that define qualifying customers. There is also no public schedule in the materials for when customers will be contacted beyond the note that outreach follows court filings being made and accepted.

What to do with this information in a pipeline context

If you manage seats for a team, this is a reminder to treat subscription lifecycle as part of pipeline hygiene. Procurement, offboarding, and account access are as real as colour management and version control.

If you are an individual artist, the practical watch items are the upfront fee disclosures, the free trial conversion reminders for trials longer than seven days, and the ease of cancellation requirement. Those items are the ones that affect how risky it feels to try a short-contract plan.

As always, new tools and innovations should be tested before use in production, and that includes billing flows and cancellation paths, not just features and performance. Two things can be true at once. A creative app can be excellent, and the subscription experience around it can still need guardrails. The settelment and its required changes target that second part.

And if you have ever had to schedule time to cancel something the same way you schedule a render, you now have a fresh reason to keep screenshots of signup terms in your project folder, right next to the license keys and the delivery checklist. Yes, that sounds ridiculous. So does a canclelation flow that needs more endurance than a night shift.

// Settlement and injunction details, $75 million civil penalty, $75 million free services, cancellation and disclosure requirements, named employees, court filing and date
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/adobe-agrees-150-million-settlement-and-injunction-resolve-alleged-violations-restore-online

// Company statement on finalizing settlement, denying wrongdoing, $75 million free services, $75 million payment, outreach after court filings
https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/03/adobe-statement

// FTC action filed June 2024 and allegations about fees and cancellation hurdles
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/ftc-takes-action-against-adobe-executives-hiding-fees-preventing-consumers-easily-cancelling

// ROSCA statute reference
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/restore-online-shoppers-confidence-act

// Case docket reference
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68860528/united-states-v-adobe-inc/

The post Adobe settles US case over cancel terms first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Dither Boy is a standalone dithering app that sits alongside Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and even MS Paint, and exports PNG, SVG, JPEG, and MP4. It also lives alongside sibling tool Flareware.

A rewrite, not a patch

Dither Boy version 6 is a complete rewrite of the app. Every part of the software got redone, changed, or optimized, including areas that behave similarly to earlier versions. The update targets faster iteration in the viewport. Algorithm browsing can now be stepped through with arrow controls, and common tweaks like brightness, contrast, saturation, midtones, and highlights are designed to update faster while you work. Blur and the D noiseise control can take longer to refresh because they are heavier effects combined with the rest of the stack.

There is also a new playback and update behavior control at the bottom of the viewport with three modes labeled full, live, and still. In a debounce style mode, the viewport waits until you stop moving a slider before it updates, which aims to help on older machines or when other heavy apps are open. That setting also appears in the settings area.

Updating and support without spelunking

Version 6 introduces a new update path tied to a web account. Signing into the website account and opening orders reveals a refresh software button that checks whether download links have been updated, then provides the new link when a newer version exists. The older update flow still exists inside the app. The help menu includes check for updates, which asks for your info to retrieve the update.

Color workflows move into the app

Version 6 expands the palette system with a source palette category intended to keep the colours of the original image closer to the output. Multiple options exist inside that category, and a complete option is presented as a strong starting point for retaining source colours.

Once you start from those source colours, the palette remains editable. Individual swatches can be adjusted,d and the image remaps live while you work. The broader palette system still includes importing and exporting palettes and allows editing colour depth and other related controls.

Controls previously handled in a companion palette app named Color Cat have been migrated into the main app interface in version 6. The companion tool may return in the future. // Not independently verified at press time.

There is also a quality-of-life feature for palette shuffling. Each swatch has a lock toggle. When you lock a color, then shuffle, that locked swatch stays while the rest randomize. The same lock and randomize idea applies to adjustments. You can lock an adjustment and randomize others.

Effects become a stack you can reorder

The effects workflow in version 6 shifts from a set of toggles to an add system. A plus control adds an effect by choosing it, rather than enabling everything at once. The stack is reorderable. Effects can be moved up or down in the pipeline and the viewport updates to reflect the new order. This ordering also interacts with animation.

Named effects called out for stacking include Epsilon Glow, JPEG Glitch, and Chromatic Aberration. Blur and sharpen are also described as post processing effects within the stack. The official product description states the app includes 63 dithering algorithms and supports stacking and reordering effects. Marketing claims appear in official copy around exclusivity and uniqueness of algorithms. Treat those as marketing claims, not measurable guarantees.

Animation arrives without needing a video file

Version 6 adds animation inside the app. You can animate from a still image without importing a video file, while video import remains supported. There are two ways to switch a still workflow into animation mode. One is a file menu option called convert to animation. The other is a still toggle near the bottom controls that switches you into animation mode. In animation mode, a timeline appears at the bottom of the interface.

Playback offers a quick mode and a rendered mode. Rendered mode loads frames for accurate playback and can display a settings changed warning because frames need to be prepared. Playback can also be set to looped. Animation is created by adding an animation layer, then selecting a category and property to animate. Adjustments are one such category, including brightness. An animation layer defines a from value and a to value, and offers ease methods including ease in, ease out, and linear. Multiple animation layers can be sequenced on the timeline to build a loop.

When a property is animated, the matching control becomes locked in the panel to prevent manual edits from fighting the animation. Exporting an animation is handled through an export video action, which processes frames and renders a video from the animated still image plus the active settings and effects stack.

Temporal Variation and better video handling

Version 6 introduces a new animated effect called temporal variation. It applies animated noise patterns to the input image, and nine controllable patterns are described. This effect is positioned as inspired by retro screens. Live video playback and preview are also added to the app in the 6.0 update as a free update.

Pricing and licensing

Pricing for Dither Boy is listed at £45.00 on the official product page, with an original price shown as £60.00. Delivery is an instant download access after checkout, also it is just one purchase that includes all future updates and no subscription is required.

If you ship animations or shortform clips, run a quick test suite before you commit. Try your typical content, your typical resolution, and your typical export formats, then review the results in the exact viewers and encoders your pipeline uses. That kind of boring discipline saves you from exciting surprises in prodcution.

https://studioaaa.com/product/dither-boy/

The post Dither Boy 6.0 brings animation and video polish first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.