I don't understand how credits work with Generative AI in Photoshop

[Dan32594060uzcn]

I have Creative Cloud Pro. I recently added the Flux Kontext/Gemini 2.5/3.0 with NanoBanana. I paid $9.95 (if I remember correctly). I didn't know this at the time, but I received a certain amount of credits. I found this out when I got a message saying I was low on credits. Does anyone here understand how this works? Will I be paying $9.95 every month or are a preset amount of credits? What does buying extra credits get me? I have a dozen tabs open on my laptop now and a can't find any clear explaination for how any of this works. I can't find any Adobe support to answer these questions.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Hi Dan.  That's an excellent question, and I wish I had a definitive answer for you.  I have a full subscription, so get 4100 premium credits a month and I have been doing a lot of Ai video.  As a consequence I found myself with zero credits and was amazed at how much that affected my day to day use of Photoshop.  I looked at paying $19.99 for 2000 credits, but it was assuming I wanted to buy a plan where I'd be paying that $20 every month.

I could find no information on what happens at the rollover date.  Without a top up plan unused credits are lost at rollover time.  You might have 2000 credits left, but it only tops up to the 4100.  

Note:  I actually discovered today that I get 4000 credits that are topped up on the 12th and 100 credits that were topped up today on the 6th.  I was expecting/hoping that I would be back to 4100 today. 😞

Anyway, my gut tells me that if you buy additional credits, they are used before your monthly alocated credits.  If I paid for and additional 2000 credits while I still had all of my 4100 monthly alocated credits (6100 in total), and a month later I still had 5000 credits, then I would still have 5000 credits after the monthly allocation.  That is not ideal. 😞

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

OK, I thought there had to be an FAQ, and of course there is one.

https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/creative-cloud/apps/generative-ai/generative-credits-faq.html

I should gone looking for this a while back.  If you already have the Topaz tools, then use them rather than use the Topaz models inside Photoshop.

I also now think I might be wrong (or even more confused) about Ai Generated video as that happens inside Firefly.

Bugger!  Looks like I was not wrong, and it is worst case: