Adobe added a generative relighting tool to the Photoshop beta, announced in its community forum on September 28. It’s called Relight, and it does something no slider in Photoshop could do before: put new lights into a photo that wasn’t shot with them, and let you move those lights around afterward.

What changed

A new Relight layer. Select an unlocked Pixel, Rotate Object, or Smart Object layer, then choose Layer > New Relight layer (it’s also in the Layers panel menu). Your original pixels stay untouched, and the relit version lives on its own Relight Layer, so you can turn it off or come back to it later from the Layer menu.

Up to three lights you can drag. A white light appears in the middle of the image. You can move it anywhere on the canvas, even outside the image as long as it stays above the bottom edge, and add up to two more. Each one has its own position, intensity, color, and diffusion. You always need at least one.

It replaces the light, not just adds to it. Adobe says Relight swaps out the photo’s existing lighting for yours. If you hide every light, what’s left is the ambient or original light.

Preview first, render at the end. While you’re adjusting, you’re looking at a low-resolution preview. Clicking Done generates the final result at the image’s full resolution. Adobe also says Relight works with Actions and scripting.

This is a different tool from the Light adjustment layer that arrived in Photoshop 27.10 in August. That one is a non-destructive tonal adjustment for exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows. Relight is generative and changes where the light comes from.

Why it matters for designers

Relighting is one of the hardest things to fake by hand. Fixing a flat product shot, matching a cut-out subject to a new background, or warming one side of a portrait used to mean dodging and burning, painted gradients, or a reshoot. Being able to place a light, change its color, and soften it, then move it again without starting over, makes that a few minutes of exploration instead of an afternoon.

It also pairs naturally with compositing. If you already use Harmonize or careful masking to drop a subject into a new scene, the light direction is often the giveaway. A movable light on its own layer gives you a direct way to fix that.

What to watch out for

It’s beta only, and it costs credits. Each Done click is 30 generative credits according to Adobe, and editing a Relight layer means rendering again. Early replies in the announcement thread push back on that cost for a beta feature. One detailed reply also reports a noticeable loss of fine detail in the final render, and finds positioning lights in front of or behind a subject clunky, so zoom in before you send anything.

Those same replies ask for things like a separate brightness control, which suggests the controls are still settling. We haven’t tried Relight ourselves, so the results described here are Adobe’s own. The build numbers in the post also don’t quite match each other, so if you don’t see Layer > New Relight layer, update the Photoshop beta in the Creative Cloud app and check again.