Issue #10 - Can’t Find the Right Picture? Make One.

Issue #10 • August 25, 2026

Can't Find the Right Picture? Make One.

You know the feeling — twenty minutes into a stock photo site, and nothing looks like what's in your head. Turns out there's a faster way, and you don't need to know anything about design to do it.

Here's something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I needed a picture for the AI Unlocked homepage — something warm, something that looked like you, not a stiff stock photo of a 30-year-old in a blazer pretending to be excited about a laptop. I looked through three different stock photo sites. Nothing fit. Everything was either too corporate, too staged, or clearly not anyone over 55.

So instead of settling, I made the picture myself — with Adobe Firefly, an AI tool that turns a written description into an image. I typed out what I wanted, in plain English, and a minute later I had a handful of options to choose from. The photo on our homepage right now? That's one of them.

The actual result — made from the prompt below, no photographer or stock license involved.

No design software. No photography. No hiring anyone. Just describing what I wanted, the way you'd describe it to a friend.

Finding a Photo vs. Making One

The Old Way — Searching	The New Way — Making
You dig through stock sites hoping something fits.	You describe exactly what you want.
You settle for “close enough.”	You get several options built to your description.
Someone else's photo, someone else's people.	An image made for this exact moment.
Best for: real photos of real, specific things.	Best for: illustrations, concepts, cards, flyers, and photos that don't exist yet.

One honest caveat: Firefly won't replace an actual photograph of your actual grandkids. It's for the pictures that don't exist yet — a birthday card scene, a flyer for the garden club, a title slide for a talk you're giving. That's exactly the gap it fills.

This Week's Tip — Try This Exact Prompt

1. Go to firefly.adobe.com and sign in with a free Adobe account (or Google account — it'll let you use that instead). No credit card, no download.
2. You'll land on a big text box. That's it — that's the whole interface. Type a description of the picture you want.
3. Click Generate. Firefly hands you four options in about ten seconds. Don't love any of them? Tweak your description and try again — it's free to keep trying.

“A warm, sunlit photo of a retired couple sitting on a porch together, laughing, a glass of iced tea on the table between them, golden afternoon light, photorealistic style.”

That's close to the actual prompt I used for our homepage image. Swap in your own scene — a birthday gathering, a card for a friend, a header for a presentation — and see what comes back.

Why This One and Not Just Any AI Image Tool

There are a lot of AI image generators out there, and most of them have a real problem: nobody can tell you for certain what they were trained on, which means nobody can tell you for certain you're free to use what they make. Adobe built Firefly on licensed content — Adobe Stock photos and public domain material — specifically so the images it makes are safe to use for a newsletter, a flyer, or a nonprofit website without a legal asterisk hanging over it. That's the whole reason I trust it for AI Unlocked.

This Week's Tool

Adobe Firefly

The tool behind our homepage photo. A free, browser-based way to turn a written description into an image — no design skill required. We've added it to our Tools page if you want to give it a try.

See the Tools Page →

Go Deeper

This week's companion guide breaks down exactly how to write a Firefly prompt that gets you a usable image on the first or second try — plus real examples for cards, flyers, and presentations, and what to watch out for.

Read the Guide →

Talk soon,
Gary
Founder, AI Unlocked

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AI Unlocked • aiunlocked.us • Your trusted guide on the AI journey
Helping adults 55+ navigate AI with confidence — no hype, no jargon.