Adobe’s new AI experiment instantly turns a sketch into a full-fledged design

Over the past several years, Adobe has been hard at work dreaming up new AI tools, from time-saving Photoshop features to an automatic infographic maker. Its newest innovation takes a hand-drawn sketch and transforms it into an editable digital design in a matter of seconds.

The feature—officially named Project Remix a Lot—is among several prospective tools, called “Sneaks,” that Adobe will be demoing at its Adobe MAX conference this week. The conference is Adobe’s biggest event of the year, and it’s a major opportunity for the company to drive hype around upcoming tech releases. Sneaks are a special kind of UX experiment that may or may not ultimately become an actual product, depending on user interest.

“The more interest shown in a Sneak, the more likely it is to become a real piece of technology that’s either a product or in an Adobe app,” Adobe design evangelist and community advocate Kelsey Slay says. She points to Project Neo, an easy-to-use 3D modeling software that was greenlit after last year’s event, as a prime example. “That’s kind of the magic of this event, is gauging what our customers are interested in.”

Project Remix a Lot is designed to help creators essentially fast-forward through some of the manual labor associated with turning an initial concept into a fleshed-out design. In an exclusive demo with Fast Company, software development engineer Avneet Kaur walked through three main uses for the tool: turning a hand-drawn sketch into a digital design, using an inspiration image to stylize an existing graphic, and easily resizing designs with just a click.

First, Kaur uploaded a hand-drawn sketch of a halloween party poster to Illustrator. After selecting a button called “Sketch to Layout,” Project Remix a Lot used generative AI to produce a digital version of the sketch, even maintaining the spooky typeface and ghost graphic from the original concept art. The tool ensures that its outputs—including text, images, and colors—are fully editable, so creators can continue to iterate using Project Remix a Lot’s work as a first draft. It takes some cues from existing features that designers might be familiar with in Illustrator (like Image Trace and ReType) but with an AI boost that further simplifies the editing process.

“I think the best thing about this project is how the original design and layout can get transferred very easily,” Kaur says. “We’re skipping a lot of manual work with this—and the best part about it is, you can always edit [the designs].”

Aside from turning a physical sketch digital, Project Remix a Lot can also help designers tweak existing digital drafts. Kaur used this second feature to spruce up a poster advertising a circus. She found an inspiration image of a more stylized, colorful circus poster, and selected it as a “Layout Style Reference.” Then, Project Remix a Lot’s software re-interpreted her initial draft using the layout and style of the more visually interesting inspiration.

While Project Remix a Lot is still in early development stages, Kaur says that the end goal for the tool would be to “[provide] users with more guided, iterative control over the design process”—something akin to a gen AI-powered creative assistant.

For anyone who frequently posts designs on social media, Project Remix a Lot’s third feature is probably most intriguing. The software can automatically reformat designs into a batch of several other sizes for standard uses like banner layouts, Instagram posts, and physical posters. Users can also create their own custom size by simply adjusting their art board to the desired specs and clicking “Remix.”

In past years, Adobe spokespeople have estimated that somewhere between 40% and 60% of Sneaks go on to become usable products. The real test of Project Remix a Lot’s viability will come this week, when Adobe Creative Cloud users get a chance to react to the new Sneaks.