Kalyan Sunkavalli

I am a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe Research, where I lead a team advancing generative AI for image, video, and 3D creation and editing. We develop ambitious research ideas from conception through publication, scale them into production-ready technologies, and help bring them into Adobe products used by millions of creators, including Photoshop, Substance 3D, and Firefly.

My work focuses on making visual content creation more intuitive, expressive, and controllable by combining the creative power of generative models with the structure and precision of spatial intelligence. One example is our recently released Rotate Object feature in Photoshop, which lifts single photos into 3D so creators can intuitively experiment with composition and perspective.

I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University, where I was advised by Hanspeter Pfister, and my M.S. from Columbia University, where I was advised by Ravi Ramamoorthi. I completed my undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Sketch portrait of Kalyan Sunkavalli

Selected Shipped Features

Firefly Boards conversion from a 2D sofa image to a generated 3D asset

Generative Image-to-3D in Firefly Boards

Bottle lit within a generated kitchen environment using Image-to-IBL

Generative Image-to-IBL in Firefly Enterprise

Scooter composited into an interior using Match Image in Adobe Dimension

Match Image (Lighting and Camera) in Dimension

Landscape enhanced using Auto Smart Looks in Photoshop Elements

Auto Smart Looks in Photoshop Elements

Publications

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

Removing Shadows from Images of Documents

Steve Bako, Soheil Darabi, Eli Shechtman, Jue Wang, Kalyan Sunkavalli, Pradeep Sen

ACCV 2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

Parsing News Video Using Integrated Audio-video Features

S. Kalyan Krishna, Raghav Subbarao, Santanu Chaudhury, Arun Kumar

PReMI 2005