Adobe closes the Topaz Labs deal. The upscaling brand keeps its own apps

The purchase closed on 23 September 2026. Topaz Labs builds models that sharpen video and blow up small images without the usual mush, and Adobe is folding that work into Firefly and Photoshop.

Adobe did not give a price in its announcement. It did say the Topaz name survives: the apps and models stay on sale as separate products, alongside whatever ends up inside Creative Cloud. Eric Yang, who ran Topaz, moves to Adobe’s digital video and audio team.

Adobe keeps a brand it bought instead of folding it in

That is the unusual part. Most software purchases end with the logo taken down inside a year. Topaz has a following among photographers and video editors who bought it precisely because it was not Adobe, and Adobe appears to have noticed. Topaz picked up an Emmy in 2025 for its video work.

Marketing teams get cleaner archive footage, not new footage

The practical use is old material. Brand archives are full of clips shot at sizes that look soft on a modern screen, and product photos too small for a billboard. Upscaling does not invent a new shot. It makes an existing one usable, which is a smaller promise than the one made by tools that build a whole campaign from prompts.

Upscaled footage tests the labelling rules Polish agencies drew up

Labelling rules draw a line between touching up a picture and making one. Where sharpening ends and inventing begins is not obvious once a model fills in detail that was never recorded. Teams in Poland already had to work out who labels AI content under the AI Act, the EU rules on artificial intelligence. Upscaled archive footage will test that line.

The folder of old brand videos and product shots set aside as too soft for today’s screens is the place to start. That material is what the Topaz models in Photoshop and Firefly were built for.