Can AI Do Real Photoshop and InDesign Work Now? What It Costs

You might have seen the demos of an AI agent opening Photoshop and InDesign and doing the work, and be wondering whether it can really replace a retoucher or a designer. It can do real work in both programs. It is also slow, it needs a person watching it, and one hard retouch cost about $250 in usage. Here is what we have seen, as of October 2026.

The agent drives the actual programs

ChatGPT Astra 6 does not make a flat picture and call it Photoshop. Through the ChatGPT desktop app and its computer use plugin it opens Photoshop or InDesign on your computer and works with the tools, layers and masks the way you would. That means the file it gives you has layers, and you can open it and carry on.

Setup is the same as for After Effects. Install the desktop app, switch it to work mode, enable computer use, and grant the permissions your system asks for.

A hard photo retouch took 14 hours and about $250

The best example we have is a retouch of a holiday photograph. The photo showed a famous street with people and a car in it, and the goal was a clean print at 11 by 14 inches with the street empty.

It was not a one prompt job. The agent had to:

• Combine three or four different photos of the same spot and line them up, because they were shot from slightly different positions on the ground.
• Remove people and a car, and rebuild what was behind them.
• Match the sky, the road and a wooden door so the seams did not show.

The first pass invented a door that did not exist. The fix was to tell the agent to search the internet for other photos of the same street and match them, so it kept the true detail. Even then there were faint lines in the sky that only showed at high zoom, and a lamp in the background that was slightly off. Each one needed another round.

The whole job took about 14 hours, and the usage bill came to about $250. It also built depth of field maps and fine masks that the person running it would have had to look up how to do. The honest summary from the person who ran it was that a fast retoucher could probably have done it by hand in less time.

InDesign is better at repeating a layout than inventing one

The other test was a case study layout. A design company had been charging about $1,500 per case study for the same format, interview answers set into a branded layout. The agent opened InDesign and recreated the layout from the finished example. An earlier attempt with a chat model alone had not got close.

The appeal here is repetition. Once the agent can rebuild one layout, the next case study is a matter of feeding it new answers. The expected usage was a couple of hundred dollars. That is a lot for one document, and sensible if you are making twenty of them.

What it handles and where it falls apart

• Handles: photo restoration with several source images, object and person removal, layered edits you can reopen, and templated InDesign layouts.
• Struggles: fine seams, small details such as a door or a lamp, and anything it has to invent rather than copy. It guesses, and it guesses wrong with confidence.
• Slow: hours for a hard image. You can run it on a second computer while you work, but someone must look at the result.
• Expensive: a hard job reaches the hundreds of dollars in usage.

We have not tested batch retouching of many photos, so we will not claim anything about it.

So does it replace a retoucher or a designer?

Not on the evidence we have. For a professional use case with a client paying, $250 and a day can be a fair trade, particularly for a job nobody wants to do by hand. For a person who already has the skills, doing it themselves is often quicker and cheaper.

The better use is as an extra pair of hands. Give it the tedious tracing, masking and layout rebuilding, then check it closely and fix the last seams yourself.

For example, inside GenHQ we treat this the way we treat motion graphics and colour grading. The agent builds the base file and a person reviews every zoomed in detail. If you want the grading version of this story, read can AI colour grade in DaVinci Resolve.

The number to watch before you quote a client for this kind of work is not the hours the agent runs. It is the hours you spend checking.

Common questions

Can AI do real Photoshop work?

Yes. ChatGPT Astra 6 can control Photoshop through the desktop app, combine several photos, remove objects and build masks. The result is a layered file you can reopen. Hard jobs are slow and need checking.

How much does AI Photoshop work cost?

One hard retouch that ran about 14 hours cost around $250 in usage. Simple jobs cost much less. Check your plan's usage meter after a first test.

Can AI work in InDesign?

Yes. It can recreate a layout you already have and repeat it with new content. It suits repeated formats such as case studies better than a layout designed from nothing.

Will it replace retouchers and designers?

Not yet, based on what we have seen. It is a useful assistant for tracing and repetition, and it still needs a skilled person to review the detail.

Want to learn this with people testing these tools every week? Join GenHQ.