How Magdiel Lopez turns creative possibility into momentum.

The Cuban-born artist and creative director makes vibrant artwork that combines photography and illustration, using Generative Fill in Photoshop to quickly experiment with custom textures and details.

“To be able to do something that translate what you have in your brain into something that you can see immediately is like magic.”

What you’ll need

Practice in the app

Open Photoshop

Magdiel often combines elements of photography with bold, graphic illustration. In this artwork, he used Generative Fill to add detail and texture to his sketch of a denim poncho.

Try generating a custom image for your background. For this design, Magdiel opened up a separate document and created a prompt for the exact kind of cloud he had in mind, then selected one that matched his vision.

He then turned the generative layer into a Smart Object and dragged and dropped it into his working file, using his favorite techniques to work the image into the composition.

Once Magdiel was satisfied, he added and adjusted more elements until it felt just right. “I want people to feel something when they see my work,” he says, “to mirror what they’re looking at with their own feelings.”