Adobe Acquires Topaz Labs: AI Upscaling and Restoration Enter Photoshop and Premiere

In recent hours, Adobe announced a definitive agreement to acquire Topaz Labs, the American company specializing in artificial intelligence models for image and video enhancement: upscaling, noise reduction, sharpening, and restoration.

The financial terms have not been disclosed, and the closing of the deal is expected in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and the usual closing conditions.

Based in Dallas and active for over twenty years, Topaz Labs brings to the table a well-known catalog of tools among photographers and videomakers: Topaz Photo, Topaz Video, Topaz Gigapixel, along with the more recent Astra and Bloom. The company claims millions of customers, including 20 of the 50 largest companies in the world, and in 2025 it received an Emmy for AI enhancement of images and videos at the 76th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, recognized for high-quality restoration of television catalogs.

Neurostream is Topaz Labs' proprietary technology that allows large and complex AI models to be executed locally on consumer devices without relying on cloud processing. This appears to be the aspect that interests Adobe the most, as it grapples with costs and the limitations of server-side inference for its generative functions.

What Changes for Creative Cloud

Topaz Labs' models will be integrated into Adobe Firefly, in Firefly Services, and within the Creative Cloud applications, starting with Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere.

The two companies were already collaborating in this area: from October 2025, at Adobe Max, some Topaz models for upscaling, noise reduction, and sharpening were brought into Photoshop via Adobe's AI credits, while in February 2026, Topaz Gigapixel was added to the cloud version of Lightroom.

David Wadhwani, President of Adobe's Creativity & Productivity Business, linked the acquisition to the evolution of creative work: creators, he noted, are increasingly producing content by mixing captured and generated images and videos, and with Topaz Labs, the goal is to provide them with quality and control to achieve higher-resolution content. Among the professional clients cited by Adobe are the production company Asteria Film Co and documentary filmmaker Robert Stone.

Standalone Products and Open Nodes

For those already using Topaz tools, there is a firm point: the products will remain available as standalone offerings on the company's website even after the deal closes, and Eric Yang, CEO of Topaz Labs, will continue to lead the team. Building technology to make images and videos look their best, Yang stated, has been a lifelong job for over twenty years, with the belief that technology should serve human creativity rather than replace it.

However, there remain some gray areas since the announcement does not clarify how prices and the subscription structure will change for existing Topaz Labs customers, a non-trivial detail for those currently paying for standalone licenses.