Audiences got their first sneak peek of Adobe Research’s Project Turntable on the Adobe MAX stage. The new tool allows artists to spin their own 2D vector art to different angles, much like artists can rotate 3D objects. Turntable uses generative AI, but it focuses on preserving each artist’s original style and intent while giving them new ways to control and fine-tune their creations.
Since debuting their technology at MAX, the research team has been busy: they refined Project Turntable into a new beta tool inside Adobe Illustrator and then returned to the MAX stage last fall with Project Turn Style. Turn Style, which combines technology from Turntable with new research, allows users to rotate and move things in a photo and then automatically harmonize the light and shadows so that the object fits seamlessly into place.
The response from creators has been overwhelmingly positive. The Project Turn Style Sneak video went viral on YouTube right after Adobe MAX, racking up more than 2.2 million views and rocketing into the top five most-viewed videos on the Adobe YouTube channel.
Rotating stylized 2D vector art posed unexpected challenges
The research story behind Turntable and Project Turn Style began several years ago, when Research Scientist Zhiqin Chen, Adobe Fellow Nathan Carr, and Principal Research Scientist Matt Fisher started exploring new ideas about 3D generative models—and thinking about how AI tools could help artists do more with their own creations.
At first, they planned to build a tool that would lift 2D vector art into 3D, then rotate and flatten it back down to 2D. But they quickly discovered that the approach wasn’t suited to the unique qualities of vector art. Chen realized that instead of turning vector art into a 3D version of itself, what they really needed was a network that could reimagine the artwork as it would be drawn from different perspectives. This breakthrough got the team on the path to Project Turntable.
With Project Turntable, users click a button and drag a slider to spin their graphics around. “Our tool allows people to just draw one view of something and then see the shape from all kinds of different views,” explains Chen. “It saves them time drawing other views and can even help them imagine what their shape would look like from different angles.”
Once the team had a prototype of Project Turntable up and running, Chen presented the tool for the creative community at Adobe MAX 2024.
The Sneak delighted the audience, and the team quickly began working on turning their experimental work into a feature.
The collaboration that took Turntable from Sneak to product
Researchers sought to learn from future Turntable users to understand their workflows and find out how they wanted to use the tool. “We focused on making sure we were able to cover the types of things users want to rotate,” says Carr. “For example, we heard that characters are especially important, so that was a big focus for us.”
Another priority was making sure the tool’s output stayed true to the style of the original art and enhanced the creative work, rather than altering it beyond recognition.
“We wanted to make sure we weren’t destroying an artist’s work,” explains Carr. “We wanted to preserve colors, stroke styles, and as much of the artist’s original intent as possible in the final vector output. That is a hard problem, so it was a major part of the refinement between the Sneak and releasing the tool.”
Rotating art with photorealism in mind
Once artists started using the beta Turntable in Illustrator, they had a new request: bring the same capability into photorealistic imagery. While it sounds like a simple ask, the vector art and realistic raster images each have their own unique characteristics, so they required different technical approaches. In addition, while maintaining the artist’s style was a top priority for vector art, achieving photorealism posed a new challenge.
Here’s how Fisher explains it: “Imagine rotating a duck in a photo. You need to be able to put it back into the scene and make it look real, so things like lighting continuity are important.” Among other changes, the team added a harmonization step to their experimental tool to help blend color, lighting, and shadows after an object has been rotated.
This year at MAX, Chen took the Sneak stage once again to debut Project Turn Style, which turns a raster image of an object into a 3D shape on a user’s device for a quick, interactive way to rotate the angle and perspective of the object. Then, the upscale step refines the image and recovers the details.
Building easy generative AI tools that let artists control their own work
The Research team behind Turntable and Turn Style are excited to have tapped into something that’s really resonating—AI that preserves an artists’ work. These tools don’t generate finished art, perform edits automatically, or replace the creative decision process. Instead, they provide a way for artists to directly drive their own vision.
“This is such a powerful tool because we went to great lengths to maintain the artist’s work—it’s your style,” explains Fisher. “These tools just give you the ability to edit your work in ways that otherwise would be very hard to do. And that time savings is really valuable to people.”
Carr adds, “A good analogy for Turntable is to think about someone handing you a better tool for building your dream house, rather than building the entire house for you. For those who enjoy the construction process and the journey, and who care deeply about craftsmanship and a quality finished product, I believe that having better tools will always be preferred. At its core, Turntable is a tool, not an AI art generator, which is why I believe it’s been so well received by creative professionals.”
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