P: You don't have enough credits...

[Anilika]

Hello. This message starts to pop up now with using GenAI tool (Photoshop beta and 26.7.0, both version) 

"You don't have enough credits for this generative action. Upgrade your Firefly plan now to get more credits for continued access or wait until your monthly reset."

I have the annual subscription (renewed several days ago) and 250 credits included into this plan. 
Usually when all credits are gone, GenAI just continue to work slower, but there wasn't any block to use this tool. 

Are there any new rules/tariff changes for using this tool?

[Rafaelis]

"Deserves to be compensated"? 
I pay for this monthly. THEY ARE ALREADY BEING COMPENSATED! I pay for Midjourney too and they would never dare ask for credits beyond that. The subscription is enough, as it [cursing removed] should be.

This is a money grab to make people pay more for their plans. Pure and simple. 

[Danu10]

What they’re doing now is daylight robbery... and I’m sure they’ll come up with more fees in the future for the next features they add to Photoshop.

[Danu10]

 Are you serious dude???? We already pay monthly subscriptions for their software. Whats next credits for the heal bush??????

[Stephen Marsh]

 Whats next credits for the heal bush??????

By @Danu10

That doesn't involve cloud processing, specifically computationally expensive generative algorithms.

Select Subject can use local or cloud based AI processing, however, Adobe doesn't charge credits for this as it's not generative.

[Xenohart]

Glen 8675309's answer is what's called a "corporate" answer - someone paid to come on here and give the official: "hey guys, it's not so bad, adobe's a good guy, look at me." (unless you're doing it because you think you're all that - and then that's just creepy). No thanks. But, that's why this is a "correct answer" - it meets with Adobe "corporate" guidelines.. Adobe is sitting at a 2025 net income of over SIX BILLION DOLLARS. Do you, mr. corporate answer person, know why? BECAUSE WE PAY so much for this software already, that they have a near 30% net profit margin on every dollar paid to them. WE ARE paying for their services: for bugs that NEVER get fixed, UI's that change on us constantly, STUPID and useless features added, a program that needlessly consumes MASSIVE processing resources for their "cloud" monitoring to make sure nobody's touching their private stash without permission (wouldn't want the poor people to get to use their software - that would just be terrible) - and their nasty attitude toward the user base making them billionaires. So your answer is NOT the correct answer. The correct answer is: Adobe has ganed a monopoly - and they are abusing that monopoly. The end.

[Glenn 8675309]

I'm not paid.  I don't work for Adobe.   I'm actually a sustitute teacher and cancer survivor.  I just really like Photoshop (even though I suck at it,) but I am an expert at Photoshop Elements. 

So, a company should be punished because they do what companies are suppossed to- to make money for their  shareholders? 

[Xenohart]

Glenn - sorry to hear about your cancer. I'm permanently and severely disabled. So... with that out of the way: I am removing this part as you've made it clear that you do not care about your behavior or misrepresentation. Leaving it is unhelpful to the rest of the discussion. So, moving on:

To answer your question: "So, a company should be punished because they do what companies are supposed to - to make money for their shareholders?" Your question is framed in a way that does not allow it to be directly answered, so the answer to your question is: Yes, and No.

- a Company DOES have a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. But NEVER at the cost of its customers or product lest it fail, lose sales, and ultimately betray its shareholders. This has never been truer than the last 15 years of businesses, from banks to chain retail, gouging their customers, behaving inappropriately, and driving away consumers to the detriment of the company, including insolvency. To this point: should a company then be allowed to violate the law, cause harm, or do otherwise to merely appease shareholders? This is an Adobe forum, and so, to stay with "Adobe" and not bring up other businesses and examples: June 17, 2024: FTC takes action against Adobe and Executives for Hiding Fees, Preventing Consumers from Easily Cancelling Software Subscriptions. You can look it up if you care to, but the point remains: no - duty to shareholders does not give carte blanch unlimited permission to harm others in that process.

- A business has a fiduciary duty to its STAKEHOLDERS equal to its SHAREHOLDERS. Stakeholders includes: customers, employees, environment, and the law.

- Adobe has used, since 2018, the promise of this LLM/AI inclusion to attract new accounts with the intention of always transitioning the LLM/AI into a profit gain. This is known as "bait and switch". It's a very well-known legal issue (and one that Adobe is facing with the FTC, even now). Profit-seeking behavior does not excuse ethically flawed and legally incorrect actions. That is covered under Section 5 of the FTC: unfair or deceptive acts. Adobe marketed this product to users, taking their information to train its AI because they did not know they needed to "opt out", while posting on their corporate website that they "don't do that", which is a Section 5 & ROSCA violation. Adobe marketed its product as a value-added feature: NOT that it was exploring this as a "future revenue generating" feature. The question then becomes: did the users have a reasonable understanding of Adobe's intentions (of which the burden falls upon Adobe). I would say: no - they did not. Adobe used "beta" software of the SAME product name to hide this intention while they intentionally named "Firefly" separate from in-product "generative ai", releasing them at separate times (to which one might understand Firefly was a pay-to-use added feature, but not the "built in" generative pop-up menu that was FORCED onto everyone's software, not "voluntarily added".

- In regard to deception: Adobe's software could not do the "great job" of filling in or generating pictures as you have stated in other comments on the vast array of pictures it has, unless it has had more than its "stock library", as they OUTRIGHT CLAIM, because statistically, Adobe's stock photo library is not large enough to handle that. I have posted elsewhere on these forums a SPECIFIC example, using Adobe's advertised prompt, with the software outcome vs. a custom prompt, demonstrating this fallacy. This is further substantiated by the problems other "predictive algorithmic" LLM/AI's have even after having unlimited access to millions of more pictures. So, I have substantiated my claim.

- You used a strawman argument by oversimplifying the question (also falling under a few other fallacy conditions, such as false dilemma), which as a teacher, is disappointing. In your question, you conflate the terms 'punishment' (par.) with 'accountability'. It doesn't matter if I use generative AI or not for myself, the "point allowance / usage system" is now a nation-wide battle that has reached the FTC's desk and they are having to address it: IF you offer me a service and advertise a claim, your product must do as stated OR even under manipulative circumstances, provide sufficient up-front knowledge of its functions (not buried on page 1,453 of the "terms and conditions"), IF you are going to charge for it. Case in point: the "100" point generative LLM/AI is only as good as the system's functionality, so the LLM does NOT translate your "ideas" into images, it "loosely attempts to create an image based on predictive modeling of other images with less than 40% accuracy and reliability to the source input". THAT is honesty. That tells a person that it works some of the time and they have no expectation that their money will go to the service for which it is being paid, but something approximately close, if at all. Artists have had to put up with a LOT of garbage from Adobe over the years as the Company has been given permission to violate anti-trust laws (as the FTC wasn't watching this industry), and have knocked out competition. This is unacceptable.

The point here is that Adobe is wrong, in more ways than just "ethical". This is not as simple as: "does a business have a right to charge and do what they want?" Because: of course they do, within reason. Why are we, the users, having our price points raised and our use for several years restricted now? Why are we the user, having to pay more for Adobe's "generative AI" built-in feature that we did not ask for (which falls again under Adobe's hidden fees abuse case with the FTC). This is no different than the Adobe cc "package" and font-pay wall and font-hosting restrictions which have resulted in tens of thousands of lodged complaints against Adobe (and been incorporated into the current FTC complaints).

Cheers. (Sorry for my long reply and any repetition off of other replies, as the format of your question did not allow me to answer it in equal simplicity).

[Glenn 8675309]

Saul Goodman.  (see what I did there?)

[Xenohart]

no. not really. You did, however, simply deflect and ignore with no intention of answering or continuing to justify your position. If you think simplifying into 2 words somehow rebuttles my lack of brevity - it does not. But, I'm not here for a fight with you personally. That's for social media. This is a discussion about Adobe. Thank you.

[davescm]

Just to add to Glenn's reply, credits included in each plan are listed here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/firefly/get-set-up/learn-the-basics/generative-credits-faq.html#monthly-g...

Dave

[Rafaelis]

Yes. We should pay more! Then more when they introduce their next feature! Then even more again and again and again! 

It was bad enough when they turned Photoshop into a subscription platform, but this is beyond the pale. A total rip off.

[Glenn 8675309]

So it sounds like you expect to get new abilities and features for free?  A total rip off?  Far from it.

[Rafaelis]

I don't even know how to begin responding to this nonsense.

I’m already paying for it - don’t you get that? Not only that, but they’ve hiked the monthly subscription price by 50%! Add the additional cost of buying generative credits, and you're easily looking at total price increases of over 100%.

Any other company would be buried by a move like this, but Adobe has become so deeply embedded - practically a monopoly - in the digital imaging industry that they can get away with it while laughing all the way to the bank.

Since when does Photoshop require additional payment on top of a paid subscription just to access new features and tools? What exactly am I paying for, if not that?

Are we now expected to pay extra every time they improve something? Every time they fix a bug? Add a brush? Introduce a filter? Is this what it’s come to - a million microtransactions for every tool in the box?

If it’s not painfully obvious what a blatant, money-grabbing scam this is, then I don’t know what to tell you. But hey - if you’re interested, I’ve got a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.

[Xenohart]

This is just too much and the corporate sponsor replies on here supporting adobe - is just adding insult to injury.

[Martin15D5]

I feel like Adobe hooked us on using generative fill and then pulled the rug out from under us by telling us we could no longer use it for free. I can't even begin to fathom how many generative fills it took to create the backgrounds and touch up detail after detail in each of these pictures, which are in my Adobe Stock portfolio. I've been having so much fun using generative fill, but I guess that's over. I can't possibly afford to use it to the same degree I have been. 

[Glenn 8675309]

You get 250 credits each month with the cheapest plan.   5$ and you can buy 100 credits--- that's 5 cents per image.

[kilgorin]

That's not entirely accurate or fair. The generative AI gets things wrong quite a lot and does not generate what people want in complex cases. If your edit is quick and easy chances are you didn't need the generative feature to begin with, unless you are adding an object to a clean surrounding. For example if you are refining edges using generative of say people/clothing and other objects to make them look like they "belong" after a move that's, much more than 1 click 1 credit. That could be 50 clicks 50 credits because the shape of the thing you are selecting matters. You can't just select everything all at once, add some descriptive words and click generate, it has to be dont in pieces. "fix my eye" "fix my hand(s)" another common request that Adobe doesn't do well, I've burned through 64 generations still havent got what I wanted had to change my verbiage try again and again. In many cases I have to add something I do not wan't, save the image, open it as a new image and then start working with it again, OR group and hide the layers under the image after merging everything into one. Then there's the sensitivity of trigger words or selections it thinks are offensive such as skin when you are trying to change the shape a shin bone or forearm with some realistic looking hair that blends into the edges / background. Deformations that again need to be dealt with as new selections, if I sat down and thought about it I could probably give to 20 more examples. I used my 250 credits by the 2nd click on my 3rd image when I got the "out of credits" notification and realised what Adobe had done. Thats alot more than your proclaimed 5 cents per image. Cellular companies tried something similar with thier prepaid community years ago where consumers paid by the minute and small unused balances did not roll over to the next month, it did not go well for them. The price index per credit as they are applied per image is too high. If the cost index were as high as you advocate for hardware resource allocation Adobe would have went bankrupt in the beta phase of their data collection campaign to margin the price index to begin with. The way that you speak in your replies to peoples valid complaints make me believe that your individual needs and personal financial stability make you the 1%, so stop downplaying what Adobe did and trying to normalize greed to the other 99%. Politicians do this regularly, then there's this thing called amendments, when something is passed and accepted it is often changed is a way that is widely undesirable soon after when it should have been objected for that very reason right from the beginning. I suspect the same is happening here. 

[Jane needs help]

I have to use generative fill all the time–to create simple background extensions of a white wall, baseboard, and floor. Photoshop does a fairly mediocre job of this–they add unwanted elements galore, and lots, and I mean lots, of vignetting, which I have to undo. The thing is–why do I have to now pay for this? I'm being squeezed as it is.

[ceanderson81]

Dear Adobe,

Creatives aren't playing video games with your software, we understand the need to limit the bandwidth of AI features. Please maintain core principals by always offering the best product to working professionals without looking for ways to milk the cash cow. Creativity should feel free or at the very least have a flat rate monthly fee.

[Martin15D5]

Since I was cut off from using generative fill--in the middle of an edit, no warning-- until my meagerly allotment of 250 credits renews, I've started using the "remove" tool. I wasn't even aware of it before, and I  have to admit that it's pretty useful. So, of course, there's an asterisk next to it on Adobe's information pages--with a footnote saying "it's free for now." I won't be surprised when there's a per-use charge to use that too.

[Glenn 8675309]

"Since I was cut off from using generative fill--in the middle of an edit, no warning-"--Without warning tells me you failed to montior your generative credits which only takes three mouse clicks.   I just checked, I have 207 left for June.    I udenrstand your frustration: When I sold image sets on my website I saved whatever  I working on everytime I stepped away from my computer- I had backups of my backups, I had backups of installation files, My computer could die, and I would back online in a couple of hours with a new computer. 

I used to use generative credits to burn thru removing things, now I use the remove tool / distraction tool.   Even Photoshop Elements has the remove tool, Which doesn't work as well as the PS remove tool. 

If I were a  "working professional"- as others have stated they are- I wouldn't rely on the Generative fill tool to make a sale, it would add to my skills and my creations, and I would go whole hog and get all the Adobe apps--  but I'm not- I'm actually just a teacher that plays with photoshop-- for $10.85 a month it's a cheap source of entertainment.

Crapy AI ( you didn't say it)?   Far from it.  Below is an image from one of the challenges, everything below the little dam on the right was created using the gnerative fill tool- and you simply cannot tell by looking that AI was involved in the image.   



My 250 generative credits  I'm making out like a bandit with them- I love them, and I don't have to pay extra for them.  They could go away July 1st, and I would live-  Otherwise I would just buy credits each month and write it off as a busienss expense.


There are plenty  of free Ai generation tools-- my prompt below was simply make it a cartoon...

[Xenohart]

So everything you said just reinforces that you're schilling. "You should check your credit usage" - that was utterly ridiculous and very corporate of you. Worst reply, ever. "I just use the remove tool" - you're trying to conflate apples and oranges - and it's just obnoxious. You're not an artist with that type of comment- don't attack artists. And, then you come out and say you're a teacher at $10.85 a month. Well, teach, buddy, dude - there is NO $10.85 a month offer with Adobe. So, that's a lie. And, you get the teacher discount. At $69.99 - paying for a delux package that utterly sucks and nickels and dimes - you don't have ANY idea what it's like for us to get kicked in the gut again - so why are you commenting at all? Your corporate "I'm making out like a bandit with them" - said NO human being - EVER. "Just look at that AI, I can't tell the difference" - yeah, well, in the "real world" - not your corporate Adobe paid reply world, after 600 tries, we can get a pretty good image, too.

And before you go nuts here, chief: I have been using illustrator and photoshop for as long as they've existed. The end. I have been using it for clients for decades. I also do neural prompting for people as a profession, not because I want to, but because every fool thinks they need an AI answer and they can't script it like I can and I can tell you that Adobe is single-handedly the worst - against every other package out there. 

[stacie0D4C]

I think it is absolutely ridiculous they are using credits for there crappy ai. You have to do so many clicks just to get a decent result. You can blow through 100 credits in no time. Then they don't even let your credits roll over. I made the very big mistake of paying for my plan for a year. I will not be renewing. 

[Martin15D5]

I agree completely with what Stacie says: "You have to do so many clicks just to get a decent result. You can blow through 100 credits in no time."

[Xenohart]

This is a business model that I do not understand, and to me, and the letters I have written to the AG, state Congress people, and the FTC, there is only one business model where you spend money and take a "chance" that it will work because you "will" get an outcome based on their machine, but that outcome is not guaranteed: gambling. It's frustrating that we live in a "subscription era" - but, we do. However, a subscription era now for a product, that's supposed to be a product (not a toy or a gambling engine or whatever), that is not cheap, to operate as gambling is incredibly wrong. Unfortunately, as I've already had an unpleasant discourse with the FTC over pay-to-play mobile gaming working in the same way (the discussion was about this type of system being targeted at minors in the form of "video games"), I'm not sure that a "precendent" of paid influence has not already been established with the FTC and that there will be much in the way of further resolving this. The current argument, as it was last left in groups I work with was: "it's a young software and still in development", and offers a "free" version (that pertained only to LLM text tools). Sadly, we're also in an era where products are released prior to being complete, and they depend on full releases to "stress test" their models (something that used to have to be done prior to release), and then apply "patch-as-you-go" solutions. I know none of that is helpful to what you're saying, but hopefully it acknowledges that there are many of us that have seen this and have taken that argument all the way to the top, for whatever it's worth.