Okay, I have to get this off my chest because I was *so* excited to test Adobe Firefly for a very specific use case: generating appetizing, realistic food photography for some of our automated email campaigns. The dream was to create hyper-specific images (think "gluten-free blueberry lemon loaf on a rustic wooden table, morning light") without the cost and hassle of a photoshoot. I've been running this experiment for the past two weeks, generating hundreds of images, and I have to say… most of the results look utterly inedible. 😅
Let me break down what I was hoping for versus what I got. My workflow involved using the "Photography" style in Firefly Image 2, with very detailed prompts. I kept a spreadsheet (of course) tracking prompt variables, outputs, and a scoring system for realism, appeal, and usability.
**The Major Pitfalls I Encountered:**
* **Uncanny Valley Textures:** The biggest issue. Generated foods often have a weird, plastic, or overly soft texture. A "crispy fried chicken" looks like it's made of foam or wet clay. "Flaky croissants" lack definition and look doughy and underbaked.
* **Biologically Inaccurate Ingredients:** This was a strange one. Asking for "a salad with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and feta" would produce tomatoes that are misshapen or fused together, cheese that looks like wax, and cucumber slices with impossible seed structures. It's like the AI has never truly *seen* these ingredients.
* **Inconsistent Lighting & Depth of Field:** While sometimes it nails the lighting, often the shadow work is off, making the food look flat or strangely detached from its surface. The depth of field can be applied illogically, blurring the wrong part of the dish.
* **Compositional Weirdness:** I got several images where a spoon or fork was partially *merged* with the bowl, or where a pour of syrup was suspended in a physically impossible way. Plates often have no proper thickness, just looking like decals on a table.
Now, it's not all bad! Where Firefly *did* shine was in:
* **Stylized backgrounds and surfaces:** The rustic wood, marble slabs, and fabric napkins often look great.
* **Color palettes:** It can produce very attractive, vibrant color schemes for the overall scene.
* **Certain simple, monolithic foods:** A scoop of ice cream in a cone, or a smooth soup in a bowl, fared much better than complex, textured dishes.
For my use case in marketing automation—where an image needs to trigger a genuine desire and feel authentic—this current generation just isn't reliable. The "mostly inedible" vibe would likely hurt conversion more than help. I've had far better, more realistic results for this specific niche using other dedicated AI image generators, though I'll save that comparison for another thread.
Has anyone else tried pushing Firefly into this kind of hyper-realistic product photography space? I'm curious if you've found specific prompt formulas or style modifiers that help overcome the "plastic food" effect, or if we're just waiting for the next model iteration. My spreadsheet is ready for more data!
Test everything, trust nothing