News, workflows, and honest takes on AI for illustrators, from sketches and vector work to the rights questions around generated art.
14 articles
3 min read· 3 min read
Agent-made vectors now come with sensibly grouped layers and real strokes for line work, and you can attach your own illustrations as a style reference. Here's what that changes, and what Figma hasn't said yet.
Illustration, UI/UX
3 min read· 3 min read
The unified Affinity app is now on iPad with Pixel, Vector, Layout and a new Sketch Studio, it opens the same .af files as desktop, and only the Canva AI features cost anything.
Brand & Graphic, Illustration, Photo & Imaging
3 min read· 3 min read
Ideogram's first vector model skips the pixels entirely. It generates SVG artwork from a text prompt, or converts an existing image, and the pitch is shapes and colors you can actually edit afterward.
Brand & Graphic, Illustration
7 min read· 7 min read
Firefly Custom Models can learn your illustration style from 10 to 30 images. Pulling together Adobe's docs and several independent write-ups, here's how to curate, caption, test, and actually use one.
Illustration, Brand & Graphic
6 min read· 6 min read
Turntable can spin a flat character or object around and hand you dozens of editable views, but it's picky about what you feed it. Pulling together Adobe's docs, hands-on reviews, and early tester reports, here's how to prep art for it and what to do with the results.
Illustration, Brand & Graphic
3 min read· 3 min read
A new Rerun (Thinking) button on V8.2 jobs has the model look for where it missed your prompt before generating again. The same alpha update adds shared folders, so a team can generate into one place.
Illustration, Photo & Imaging
6 min read· 6 min read
Text to Vector Graphic gives you real paths, but often far more of them than you'd draw yourself. Pulling together Adobe's docs and several independent guides, here's a workflow from prompt to a file you'd actually hand off.
Illustration, Brand & Graphic
5 min read· 5 min read
Most people try Generative Recolor once, get a random palette, and move on. Pulling together several tutorials, here's a fuller workflow: prep the art so the AI can actually see your colors, explore broadly, save what works, then snap it back to a real brand palette.
Illustration, Brand & Graphic
2 min read· 2 min read
A quiet Firefly update triples the crop options for GPT Image 2 on the web and in Boards. Small on paper, useful in practice if you generate assets for more than one placement.
Photo & Imaging, Illustration, Brand & Graphic, Web
3 min read· 3 min read
Canva has grouped its four pro acquisitions into one connected suite, and the headline Affinity 3.3 update adds a Blend Tool, InDesign file import, JavaScript scripting, and a paid Layer to 3D feature.
Brand & Graphic, Illustration, Photo & Imaging, Motion & Video
3 min read· 3 min read
A write-up of Nolen Jonker's XDA walkthrough: connect Claude to Affinity, let it do the tedious layer renaming and color swaps, then keep the good ones as scripts. Updated for Affinity 3.3's new Scripting Studio.
Brand & Graphic, Illustration
3 min read· 3 min read
CorelDRAW's September 2026 update generates editable vector artwork from prompts or existing art, speeds up bitmap tracing, and lets CorelDRAW Web use your own fonts and export DWG and DXF.
Brand & Graphic, Illustration
3 min read· 3 min read
A new alpha edit model lets you open any generated image, describe a change in plain language, attach up to four reference images, and see every edit in a session lined up in one place.
Photo & Imaging, Illustration
2 min read· 2 min read
A new fast tier of Recraft's image model trades reference-image input and aspect-ratio range for generation times of about 1.4 seconds, at $0.007 an image.
Illustration, Photo & Imaging, Brand & Graphic