This week’s new tools, tutorials, and resources

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TOP STORY
📱 Instagram releases “Edits,” a free video editing app

This week, Instagram released Edits, a standalone video editing app designed to compete with CapCut (a video editing tool owned by the parent company of TikTok) and empower creators with mobile-friendly tools.

The app currently allows users to:

• Keep track of ideas, manage your projects, edit, and export watermark-free without leaving the app.

• Use your phone camera, an editing timeline, and creative tools (like green screen and AI-powered image animation).

• Access an inspiration feed of reels & trending audios, and real-time insight.

The app is now available globally and is free to download on the App Store and Google Play Store.

Now seems like the perfect time for Instagram to release Edits, with CapCut’s uncertain future (amid TikTok’s potential ban) and CapCut increasingly paywalling essential features like transitions, video effects, and even 1080p exports (!!!).

For context, CapCut reportedly has over 300 million monthly active users and is by far the biggest mobile video editing app in the world.

It’s not looking good for them, however, just read this “Capcut Complain Megathread” on the r/CapCut subreddit.

In the meantime, Instagram has already revealed that they’ll be working on adding the following features and updates soon:

• Keyframes: Pick specific frames to animate the position, rotation, and scale.

• Modify: Use AI to change how your videos look and feel easily.

• Collaboration: Share your video drafts with friends, creators, or brands to get feedback and work together.

• More creative options: Extra fonts, text animations, transitions, voice effects, filters, sound effects, and royalty-free music to make your videos unique.

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GRAPHIC DESIGN
✨ Photoshop releases “Select People & Details”

This week, Adobe released a brand new Photoshop update (v26.6) that has dramatically improved the workflow for creating selections and masking objects.

This includes 3 new features and much-improved subject detection and background removal (view example).

These are the three main features that were released 👇️ 

1) Select Details 👀 

A new capability within the “Object Selection” tool that allows users to isolate specific elements (a person, hair, eyes, shirt, etc).

2) Adjust Colors 🎨 

Users can now tweak the hue, saturation, and lightness of the six most prominent colors in an image via the Contextual Task Bar or Properties panel.

3) Composition Reference 🖼️ 

This new setting found in “Generate Image” allows users to create assets that mirror a reference image’s layout and structure, ensuring design consistency.

Watch this full overview of the new Photoshop update 👇️ 

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MOTION DESIGN
📹️ Spline releases “Hana,” a canvas for interactive design

Spline launched Hana, a new platform for designing interactive 2D experiences, featuring a canvas that lets you create dynamic elements like buttons, animations, or interfaces that react to user actions such as clicks and hovers.

Hana streamlines the process by allowing you to export your designs as live URLs, images, or other formats, ready for immediate use in websites or applications without additional steps.

Hana also enables real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit a project simultaneously and see changes instantly, much like a shared creative workspace.

Integrated with Spline’s broader ecosystem, it leverages their 3D editor capabilities and adds features like motion effects and interactivity.

This makes it easier to design, enhance, and deploy your work seamlessly across platforms.

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OTHER STORIES
Everything else in creative news 🗞️ 

Figma released new AI beta features to all Pro, Organization, and Enterprise users: Rename Layers, Boost Resolution, Edit image, Make an Image, and Replace Content.

Adobe released “Firefly 4,” a new AI model powering tools for image, video, audio, and vector generation.

Descript released “Agent,” an AI co-editor that helps you edit videos.

Lovable announced “Lovable 2.0” with a brand-new UI, new collaboration features, increased security, and a smarter “Chat Mode Agent.”

Bolt has upgraded its agent to generate better-looking landing pages, dashboards, and multi-page apps.

Adobe Photoshop’s “Reflection Removal” feature now works for non-RAW images.

Tella announced a $2.1 million seed round — their goal is to create a screen recorder that edits videos for you.

DaVinci Resolve 20 released “Public Beta 2,” adding improvements & bug fixes including: the ability to view and adjust changes made to speed keyframes, better syncing in source timeline workflows, and improvements for dual screen layouts.

Luma AI’s “Ray 2” AI video model is coming to Adobe Firefly.

Higgsfield AI added support for OpenAI’s new image generation model, enabling users to transform any prompt or image into over 30 iconic styles.

FLORA released a “Background Remover” feature.

Recraft released “Select with Magic,” a new tool that can isolate any part of an image.

FLORA released image and video upscaling, allowing users to upscale images up to 4x their resolution.

Photoroom released 3 new tools: AI Virtual Model, Product Staging, and Product Beautifier."

KREA AI now allows users to export 3D “Stage” files for Blender.

KREA AI added support for OpenAI’s new image generation model, allowing users to edit images in Chat, render 3D scenes in Stage, or generate images from hundreds of styles.

Suno now allows users to upload 10-second loop videos as their song art.

Runway has released early access to “Gen-4 References” to all Gen:48 participants — this feature allows users to create consistent worlds with consistent characters and locations.

Higgsfield AI has added 7 more cinematic camera motions to its library.

Figma Figjam now has curved connectors.

Haliuo AI has released a new “Character Reference” feature allowing users to transform a single image into dynamic, expressive characters.

Contra is partnering with Bolt next week.

Luma AI released a Claude Desktop and MCP clients that can generate images and videos using Luma.

Gamma now supports OpenAI’s new “GPT4o” image generation model.

Captions’ “Mirage Edit” feature is now powered by OpenAI’s new “GPT-4o” AI model.

Freepik added support for OpenAI’s “GPT-4o” image generation model, now available for all users.

Pika now allows users to apply “Pikaeffects” to videos.

Recraft added support for the “GPT-4o” AI model, allowing users to generate and edit images directly in Recraft.