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Adobe Generative Credits: The Photoshop Slot Machine
2.1k Plays17 days ago
Adobe Generative Credits were introduced as a way to offset the larger amount of costs incurred by using AI in Photoshop and other Adobe products. Essentially it's a way to charge people that use more expensive features the most, rather than pass the costs on to everyone - no matter what tools they use. Well, it's getting out of hand a bit and Matt Blake take this episode to talk about some of the problems the industry has with it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Jump to Topic
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, everybody. Welcome back. Matt and Blake here. i could do a long podcast intro, but nobody really cares about it. So we will jump right in to our topic. I'll introduce my my co-host here today. His name is Blake Grudis.
00:00:14
Speaker
If you haven't seen or met him before, f64academy.com. How you doing, man? Good, how are you? I'm good. I like your anti-intro. Your anti-intro is great. Yeah, nobody really cares. My name's Matt Klaskowski. You can find me over at mattk.com. If this is the first time you're watching it, we are educators in the photo industry.
00:00:34
Speaker
And got something to talk to
Adobe's AI Credit System: Transparency Issues
00:00:37
Speaker
you about today. is this is This is a topic Blake and I, you know, a lot of the topics we we come up with are topics from our real conversations. And that's how we come up with them when we say, all right, let's talk about this with a microphone on. And that's how this one came up.
00:00:51
Speaker
um We were talking about all the all the new stuff in the Adobe world. And Blake, I'll let Blake introduce it because um because he kind of came up with the whole tagline to it. So go ahead, Blake.
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, um you know, it is kind of like Adobe's becoming Vegas now, ha isn't it? um So we'll dive into that. But ah I called Matt last week and I said, hey, I'm about to do this video on XYZ. And he goes, you know, I've been doing some notes on this, too. Why don't we just do this podcast? And it's like, perfect, because that way we don't have to make two separate videos.
00:01:22
Speaker
The idea here that we want to talk about is there's been some new features have been added into Adobe. Photoshop specifically is the direction that we come from this at. So other people might be watching this from a Premiere perspective or whatever, but we're really speaking about the Photoshop perspective. And that is the generative credits and how they are spent, used, accumulated, and everything that goes into that when it comes to using your AI credits that Adobe gives you for every time you use AI within the software, you lose credits.
00:01:52
Speaker
And at the shift of the month, you get those credits back. But what we found was that there was this disparaging amount of information on the credit usage. Now it's there if you dig real deep, but it's not in front of you. So this is really a call to transparency.
00:02:10
Speaker
We aren't trying to make this a um a video that is trying to take down the the system. Right. We aren't F stoppers or petapixel. We're not trying to drag Adobe through the mud.
00:02:22
Speaker
What we're doing here is calling out the need for transparency and to give possible ah solutions that we think would be very helpful for the users as this new age and new era of generative ah content is coming inside of Photoshop.
Community Engagement vs. Criticism
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah. And but to what I would say, because I have a lot of i have a lot of acquaintances and and friends over at Adobe, I'm And, and, and not only do I have acquaintances and friends there, but I also know, like, I think, think, you know, people see Adobe as this huge giant corporate conglomerate and, um,
00:02:59
Speaker
and And I know for a fact that they are incredibly community driven. um They host many, many things. They do a lot of things to engage the community, engage people to to what they know. And I know that that while it's a corporation, there's there's people there that really care to make the best of their software. So what I would say what i would say to Adobe is...
00:03:21
Speaker
somebody was going to do this video and and they still might, but the, the PETA stopper mob, the mafia, just be thankful that they're not doing it first because, and it's not necessarily against anything about the ah websites themselves, but it's the most, they are the most toxic communities in the photography space. They are the, the people that go to those communities are often the worst of the worst. They say the worst of the worst things.
00:03:48
Speaker
And so hopefully, yeah we hopeful hopefully we can tune them out and kind of talk amongst our communities because Blake and my communities are are are pretty nice people and they just enjoy editing and Photoshop. And I think they probably have a lot of the same feelings here. So so somebody was going to do this Adobe,
00:04:06
Speaker
We're going to try to do it first. I can't guarantee nobody else is going to kind of call it it to attention, but hopefully hopefully they they do it in a way that we we know you're trying to do good stuff. And this is this is a nudge to help you do those those good things.
00:04:18
Speaker
As Blake said, it's like it's like pulling the slot machine, right? yeah You don't know what you're going to get. and And I'm going to take your analogy one step worse, Blake, because it's like pulling the slot machine, but you don't even know how much you bet.
00:04:32
Speaker
yeah like At least when I pull the slot machine, I know, did I do like the one X, the three X, the five X multiplier, but no, you you don't even really know how much you bet a lot of times. Yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's a random, random poll. So where do we want to start Blake? where We're, we're there. There's a lot of stuff we can talk about, but. There is. um i think the best place to start is kind of with that, with that analogy is the way we kind of feel about this is it feels as if,
00:05:01
Speaker
When you go into Photoshop these days to generate something, it feels like it's a slot machine.
Costs and Transparency Concerns
00:05:07
Speaker
you You put your money in, which would be your generative credits. You pull the lever, which is what you type in, and you press enter.
00:05:13
Speaker
And your outcome is either winning a small amount of money, winning the jackpot because it's an awesome generation, or which is more common, you get a bunch of crap because it's AI, you know, and it's fed based on what we feed it.
00:05:28
Speaker
So a lot of that is on us to make sure that we are informing the AI properly. But even then, sometimes when we make that poll, we lose that money. Now, it's not money that you're losing here. Let's get that part straight. We're losing generative credits that are attached to your account that you pay for on a monthly basis.
00:05:46
Speaker
So the the part that that feels like it's disparaging, like we don't necessarily know what's going on right now, is the fact that There is an outline as to how many credits you get with whatever type of account that you have. That's true.
00:06:00
Speaker
But where it feels random, and this is what Matt was talking about, is that sometimes you don't even know how much you're going to be charged. You could do a Firefly generation and get charged one credit. But then if you do a premium generation with something like Gemini, which has just been added, which is exponentially better than Firefly from my experiments, um you don't get as many credits. Or in my plan, I only get ah sampling of those premium features because I'm on the old grandfathered photography plan.
00:06:29
Speaker
So I can only do maybe two or three generations with Gemini before I'm prompted to put more money in the machine to to get more credits, so to speak. So this is the the the the core of the of the conversation is um A, how much am I being charged for what it is that I'm about to generate?
00:06:48
Speaker
B, am I going to be happy with what I've generated and C, what happens if I'm not? Well, if you're not, you don't get anything back. You've lost that money. It's putting money in a slot machine. I think it's an important takeaway from that, that we don't have a we don't have a way around it yet. and And I think from from starting, one of the things that i would I would say to Adobe is, is this what your customer wants?
00:07:13
Speaker
Okay, so so we've we've unfortunately gotten to this world where the customers kind of last, you know, it's and we didn't used to be in this world, but in a lot of places, the customer is thought of last, your experience is thought of last.
00:07:29
Speaker
um And I would say to Adobe, do your customers want this? Do your customers want to guess how much money it's going to cost me to edit a photo?
00:07:39
Speaker
If you can answer that question with a clear no, then it's time to go back and kind of rethink and retool some of the things you wanted. Because think of it like, dude, I sit down and I edit a photo.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I don't know what it's going to cost me to edit that photo to to what you had said before, Blake. So Adobe is what I would say semi-transparent, right? There's links to all of this stuff in the different windows and dialog boxes.
00:08:09
Speaker
All those links take you to different places. And I can't count how many times of the word varies was used. So you've even been taking me to a place that's supposed to tell me what it's going to cost me.
00:08:24
Speaker
But the the very variable terms are used all over those pages. And so now as I start to edit this photo, I don't really have a good clear way of figuring out what's it going to cost me to edit this photo.
00:08:37
Speaker
Let's extrapolate this going forward. And this is why it needs to be addressed now. As these tools move into other programs, as they move into Adobe Camera Raw and they move into to Lightroom, As we move into generative credits in that world, what about batch processing? but People don't really do a whole lot of batch processing in the Photoshop interface.
00:08:55
Speaker
So the the the odds of me running something that costs me 40 credits and getting hit with that 10 times are very, very slim, but we will get there, right? It'll come in, it has to come into, I would say Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.
00:09:09
Speaker
So when it does, and now I go to batch process something and I get hit with 10 times 40 or a hundred times 40, now we're starting to get into this place where i don't know what it's gonna cost me. ah do what we We talked about it, Blake, you know the restaurant analogy.
00:09:26
Speaker
I go into the restaurant and they yeah and we've all we've all been there, these and especially in the last five years. There's all these surcharges now. And a lot of times they're barely even listed on the menu.
00:09:40
Speaker
So do you want to go in and and maybe there's a little sign in the front of the restaurant that says, please please check our website for what all of your surcharges are. Is that the experience you want when you go in to order food?
00:09:52
Speaker
Especially when, you know, you, how many people who visit a restaurant go to the website first? Yeah. Pretty much nobody. And that's kind of what Adobe is expecting here is like, well, if you want to know about your generative credits, you can go to our website.
00:10:04
Speaker
But that's the part that's tricky because I, in just in a Google search this morning, I typed in generative fill credits explained, and I found two different ways that generative fill credits are used.
00:10:16
Speaker
with an Adobe Firefly plan, and then also within your Photoshop plan that you have selected. So what that means is that now we have, wait a second, not just, so if I want to keep my one plan with my, ah whatever it is, grandfathered 500 credits for Firefly, um but if I want more more of those generative credits, where am i what where is where am I even spending my money to get that? And as a photo educator, if I had to look really deep at that and I don't know what somebody who is not a photo photo educator who does this for, you know, not a living, just someone who's maybe a hobbyist who's really confused about their plan. There's so many plans out there with so many different generative fill credits.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's gotten to a point of you, you pretty much have to take both of those charts, put them into chat GPT and say, Hey, which one should I buy if I'm a hobbyist and have something else to determine it for you? Because it's hard to read that stuff.
00:11:12
Speaker
Um, And, you know, i do understand this because I do a lot of stuff with AI, whether that's chat GPT. I've even started to make my own chat bots and do all this stuff.
00:11:22
Speaker
I fully 100% understand that every single time someone interacts with AI, it's going to cost something. So what I'm saying is that Adobe, we understand why this needs to cost something. It has to cost something because you can't do anything for free.
00:11:39
Speaker
You know this would be like ordering a pizza and expecting delivery to be fee free because you paid for the pizza. Well, this is the thing here that the generative fill process and creating something from nothing has a cost behind it.
00:11:52
Speaker
So with every generation of every AI thing that you do, if you're just a consumer of AI, you have to understand that every one of these companies has to pay for what it is that you are doing with their software. So what they're doing then is putting a buffer into that cost for themselves so that John over here can't do 50,000 generations and spoil the pot for Jim, who's only doing three.
00:12:16
Speaker
So I totally understand the reasoning behind limiting the amount of generations per person and and making that have some type of of monetary weight.
00:12:27
Speaker
I agree with that 100% as a business owner. The thing is, is transparent transparency, transparency, transparency, transparency.
AI Features: Standard or Paid?
00:12:34
Speaker
That's the key. Yeah. But, you know, and you, and you said, you know, you said the, the, the hobbyist is, is hurt, but dude, the, the business owner, you're almost, I think a lot of, think there's a lot of freelance designers, commercial artists, graphic artists, photographer, whatever.
00:12:52
Speaker
and Think of them. think of Think of somebody who whose income depends on this. So you have paid for your software, okay?
00:13:03
Speaker
Pre-2013, you paid a lump sum amount of money. Now you pay, I mean, you kind of pay a lump sum amount of money per year. But ah to me to me, when they went subscription,
00:13:14
Speaker
it helped a freelance person plan even more. Now I know exactly how much money every month I'm going to spend. Not every 12 to 18 months I get hit with this $400 to $600 expenditure to upgrade software depending on when some software company decided to you release an update.
00:13:32
Speaker
So now every month I know what I'm going to spend, but now I don't know what I'm going to spend. And as I start to work on a project for a client, is that client going to allow me to pass on those credit expenditures to them?
00:13:48
Speaker
When and in the beginning, I don't really even know what it's going to cost me yet. I don't know how many times I'm to have to click on generate or remove or whatever the tool happens to be. So, ah dude, I think think it's everybody. I think it's a bad experience.
00:14:03
Speaker
for anybody to now open up their software and not have any idea how much it's going to cost me to edit this photo. Right. And you know, on that too, when the, when the new Gemini feature came out, was stoked. I was so excited to use it. And I think I can't recall, I don't want to make a ah number up, but I believe I tried it two times, maybe three times.
00:14:25
Speaker
And on the third time I was pinged to ah pay, pay into a bigger or a better subscription or generative fill credit subscription so that I could use that premium feature more because a premium generation costs 20 versus five. Now we're in right now we're talking about generating images, but, and most people who are watching this are probably like I don't care because I'm not generating anything. I want to make it all myself. Well, that's fine.
00:14:50
Speaker
But now that we've moved into a different realm inside of this AI world with what things are going to cost you, let's put generation to the side. Let's say you don't want to do generation, but you really enjoy upscaling, denoise, sharpening.
00:15:04
Speaker
Those have been put in there from Topaz now. So we have this partner models. They're called they're called partner models. OK, partner models. Yeah. so So what we know of now is Topaz is in there. But with these partner models that are going to be coming in there, this is just one that we know of now.
00:15:17
Speaker
But to say that you know more are coming, that's that's what we can expect, right? yeah So in that, you this is one of the prime things that we were talking about last week when you said, well it's not even just about image generation. Now it's about you know noise reduction and not knowing how much it's gonna cost when you go to reduce the noise in something. And that's the the concept that we're talking about from the batch perspective of, yeah, we know maybe on a one-off it's gonna cost us something, but we don't know what it's gonna cost.
00:15:46
Speaker
But if I were to batch this amongst five, 10, 15, 20 photos from a bird photography session that we know are going to need some noise reduction and sharpening. Now, how many credits are we going to be out? And that's that's the real where where is this going? I think is a really strong question that we need to ask, like, because if this is going to make its way into the neural filters, I use depth blurs constantly in my workflow.
00:16:10
Speaker
If that becomes an AI feature that will now cost me something, I need to know that because I use it Yeah. yeah every image i'm using that on i don't generate images a lot i really don't i'm even in the compositing world of things i'm pretty much still doing things the old way where i find an image that i want or i photograph it and i do it myself um just so that i can avoid having to put in ai-generated images into my work especially my portfolio so that's that's a different case But the new Harmonize thing that just came out, that uses that uses your generative credits, if I'm not mistaken. So so even that, like it's theres there's there's there's a few problems.
00:16:51
Speaker
kind of I think we stated our our our case here. As we start to dive into like how to fix the problems, now you've got generative stuff all over.
00:17:03
Speaker
And so nobody knows what really uses but really uses all that stuff. you know Again, that harmonized thing uses it. Generative fill uses it. Now got these partner models. um i've got I've got a few problems with it. Partner models,
00:17:17
Speaker
it this is a this is a really tricky one because why am I okay with charging me for generative fill, but I'm not okay with you charging me to sharpen something?
00:17:28
Speaker
um And i and i and i i don't know i don't fully understand why I'm okay with that. But I think part of it is is sharpening should be part of Photoshop.
00:17:40
Speaker
Noise reduction should be part of Photoshop. I shouldn't have to pay. be and And here's the worst part about it. You're going to make me pay for a partner model before you've ever even given me a good option.
00:17:52
Speaker
It'd be different if I had a great option. And then I'm like, well, the partner model is better for wildlife photos or whatever it happens to be, um even image upscaling. So image images image upscaling, ah noise reduction, and sharpening.
00:18:08
Speaker
are think In Photoshop, I'm not talking about in Lightroom or Camera the AI noise reduction inside of there. I'm talking about in the Photoshop interface. Those three things have not been touched in decades.
00:18:22
Speaker
Have not been touched. and And again, i don't I love Adobe. I really do. I i mean, i you you and I both, we we defend Adobe constantly in our comments because I hate when people try to take them down for mostly incorrect information.
00:18:36
Speaker
But It's crazy. Adobe, you haven't addressed noise reduction in Photoshop. You knew when you go under the filter noise, reduce noise thing, you have known for over a decade that that filter sucks.
00:18:50
Speaker
it's It's almost a joke. It doesn't do anything to your photo. No. And you've known that people went to third party apps to do it. So in Lightroom and Camera Raw, you came out with honestly best in class noise reduction, great noise reduction, but it's still not in the Photoshop interface, but you gave me a way to pay somebody else to do it.
00:19:08
Speaker
Sharpening, same thing. You haven't touched sharpening in over a decade. Instead of making sharpening better, you're going to make me go pay somebody else to get a good sharpening filter. Same thing with image sizing.
00:19:20
Speaker
Same thing with upscaling. You haven't touched it and going make me go pay somebody else to do it. So I think number one, I want to see those things made better first by by Adobe because it feels, I can't say this what they're doing, it feels like a money grab.
00:19:36
Speaker
And it feels like you're putting those partner models in for those tasks. And I never, i honestly don't feel like Adobe is trying to do a money grab. They, they, I pay $120 a year for Lightroom and Photoshop 12 years after I started paying $120 a year.
00:19:51
Speaker
Like that's not a company that's just trying to grab money from me. Agree. But putting those in there, that feels like a little bit of a money grab. And it feels like you're being penalized for lack of knowledge, right? Like,
00:20:02
Speaker
If you really know noise reduction and sharpening, you can do some phenomenal sharpening inside of Photoshop with Photoshop's native tools that are already there. You don't need sharpening in Photoshop, in my personal opinion.
00:20:14
Speaker
um There's been some ah phenomenal advancements in some of those tools, especially using the high pass filter along with, you know, blend if and some other things that. make sharpening even better than any of the third party sharpening. I guess, let me use the term de-blur, because that's what's becoming popular.
00:20:30
Speaker
Right. So de-blur is more of of the case and high pass sharpening, smart sharpen, so whatever whatever tool you want to create, doesn't de-blur an image. That's where AI has come in and and really helped out.
00:20:43
Speaker
And that's where in you know Adobe Camera Raw Lightroom, the AI noise reduction feature is phenomenal for that. And then if you do your own personal sharpening, You don't necessarily need to do much else. So it feels almost as if you're being penalized for not knowing how to do things properly with the use of credits with AI that isn't even giving you a good enough result.
00:21:04
Speaker
ah Dude, you're telling me with all of the engineers at Adobe, AI denoise inside Lightroom and Camera Raw so good. You're telling me that that somebody can't take half of it.
00:21:17
Speaker
and put it under the filter menu in Photoshop. Because the the the problem with it in Lightroom and Camera Raw is that it it can only be run on a raw photo. So I understand. Now I might be in the main Photoshop interface. There's a lot of people that don't there's a lot of people that only start with a JPEG.
00:21:33
Speaker
So now I open up into the main Photoshop interface. I don't have a good noise reduction option. And and really, like you can't take half of what it was. and put it into the filter menu just just so removes a little bit of noise.
00:21:46
Speaker
Arguably, theyve they they've covered that. Arguably, they've covered that with using Adobe Camera Raw as a filter. But even then, we know that that's not a very strong workflow. Well, hold on. I don't think you can do it. I don't think you can do You can't AI noise reduction, but you can use noise reduction and sharpening those same filters, like the luminance reduction and and the sharpening. Even those yeah are phenomenal tools. Even before AI noise reduction came out, those were phenomenal tools that could have been turned into a filter, like you were saying.
00:22:13
Speaker
They could have taken just the sharpened interface out of Adobe Camera Raw, turned it into its own little interface, with its own GUI inside of Photoshop and it would have fine, right? so So, Blake, let me ask you a question that I already know the answer to.
Educator Transparency and Software Access
00:22:27
Speaker
Why don't we see this in all of these YouTube videos? Why don't we see all of these credits and and it's got to cost a lot of money to make them. So why don't we see or hear about this?
00:22:41
Speaker
and And that's the thing, you know, this is the, the and on the analogy of the Vegas thing, this is basically like you getting house chips to play. You come in on a Thursday because, or let's say Tuesday, because nobody goes in there on a Tuesday, house chips, $50 in house chips for Tuesday. Okay. So now you're playing on house money.
00:22:59
Speaker
um Essentially what what we see on the YouTube environment, and I know this for for from my perspective is Adobe doesn't reach out to me for anything. They don't give me any warm fuzzies. They don't give me anything special.
00:23:11
Speaker
um I'm paying the photography plan that I got grandfathered into last December, just like anybody else who did. um I don't get any handouts or anything from Adobe, but we do know that there are educators that have free plans from Adobe.
00:23:24
Speaker
And with those free plans, they're typically giving them the, the, the highest tier of free plan, which gives them 4,000 image generations in premium credits. OK, unlimited, unlimited Firefly.
00:23:37
Speaker
But now you have four thousand of your premium. Now, mind you, did you remember I just said that I tried to use premium features three times and I got told to pay for a bigger subscription? So I think what's happening here is there's also this kind of bait and switch mentality where it's like, yes, we have this wonderful thing for you and we have all these educators that are showing you how to use it.
00:23:56
Speaker
Oh, but wait, you know, they get that stuff for next to nothing or almost free. You're going to be charged for this. So there's that's to me is also a lack of transparency. Now, that's not Adobe's fault on transparency.
00:24:07
Speaker
That's typically the transparency of the educator who is teaching that that lesson. to say, hey, I get these credits for free. So if you see me generating this thing five times, I don't care about my image generation credits, but just know this would have cost me 200 credits, right? like if there So that we can't ask for transparency on the side of the educator that's going to be giving that. But we also know from our perspective that when we say something, people do it, right?
00:24:33
Speaker
Um, because that's the, the way that we've put ourselves in it. They trust us. So these individuals that are looking at other people that they trust are trusting that they're getting all of the information when in reality you're not, because some of these people are playing on house chips. Some these people are allowed to go in and say, yeah, go ahead, run in this slot machine because you know, this, this casino is the best.
00:24:54
Speaker
Well, they're saying that because, Hey, they gave them house chips, you know? ah You know, that's my perspective because I'm, I am on the humble plan if we want to call it that. Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
And go back to what we said. It's, you what you experienced, is what nobody wants to experience. Nobody wants to like in the middle of editing a photo, this very creative process, like, sorry, insert your credit card.
00:25:19
Speaker
yeah And I was about to do a video on this about how excited I was that Gemini was in there. Cause you know that I use AI a lot in my, in my business. i I use it for image generation all the time. but I'm still going to be using mid journey now.
00:25:31
Speaker
Why would I use anything different? You know, because there's alternatives out there that are better still. So now you've got this new stuff that's in there. Great. But if I have Magnific and Mid Journey, which I am very upfront with my subscribers that, Hey, I pay for this stuff and it's expensive, but it's worth it.
00:25:48
Speaker
Right? So if there are alternatives out there and they are better, if we're to, we're going say it that way, there's no need for me to get these credits, right? At this point, there's no need.
00:26:00
Speaker
I still have the other things that I can use to get to that point. Yeah. So i think, I think kind of shifting gears toward what could, what could help. um I think one aspect that could help would be being more, being more transparent. So it was easy when it was just generative fill and it was one credit,
00:26:24
Speaker
Adobe could arguably say they put enough information out there, they put enough links out there, they led you to the places to find out that every time you click Generate, you are using up one of your credits.
00:26:36
Speaker
And think that was fine. Now that we're in this world where things use up multiple credits, um i think I think Adobe has to find a way, if you're going to go down this route, and I don't see them stopping this route, so I think i think the industry is is going there, I think you've got to find a way to to put put this into the program.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I'll use Topaz Photo AI as an example. Topaz came out with credits a year, a year and a half ago, i don't know exactly, um but they put it up in the top corner of the app.
00:27:09
Speaker
You knew how many credits you you had. And then when you went to do something, you were told how many credits it was about to use. Blake and I, we both use Magnific AI to to generate various things.
00:27:24
Speaker
Magnific AI has different settings. They've got a lot of different settings in there. And as you pull, twist, turn, change all the dials inside of there, when before the little button that says generate, before you click that, you see exactly this will cost you this many credits.
00:27:39
Speaker
So Adobe has to go there. I think um if if you're watching this on the on the YouTube video, you know um um I put up the the Topaz example, but also um i just mocked up some things. So as an example, when I go into generative upscale under the image menu,
00:27:59
Speaker
there's There's nothing in there that really lets me know I'm going to be charged credits for this. Like they don't even really give me a little disclaimer of anything. There's a couple of links, but if you weren't somebody that understood this process, and I would say the majority of people don't, the majority of people aren't even watching a video like this.
00:28:19
Speaker
If you're not somebody many that gets this, you have no idea. So there needs to be something in that box that says, 20 credits, 40 credits, whatever. When you go into generative fill, there needs to be something that tells you you're about to use this many credits.
00:28:36
Speaker
these These things need to be, I think in in Photoshop, I think up in the top right-hand corner of your interface, it needs to say how many credits you have.
Suggestions for Improvement and Conclusion
00:28:45
Speaker
Like if you're going to make this a part of Photoshop, you need to put it front and center so all users know it's there and know exactly what they have.
00:28:53
Speaker
Because we know you can do it. We know you can merge the Internet into Photoshop. So why not show us credits to exactly our libraries? Perfect example. We've had libraries for how many years in Photoshop? 10 plus.
00:29:05
Speaker
As soon as they create a creative cloud plan where you could upload images to your libraries on the creative cloud and see them inside of Photoshop. That's been there for 10 years, if if not more. um So if if that capability is there,
00:29:19
Speaker
You know, just a little thing, even in the help section, like just where i could look in the help section of Photoshop, even if it's in a dropdown that needs to generate when I click the button so that it interfaces with the my Adobe Creative Cloud account. Great. But I shouldn't have to go to my Creative Cloud cloud account, look at my my preview and see how many credits I've used and how many I have used up. That should be something that's just clear as day. I agree with you 100 percent there because, you know,
00:29:45
Speaker
Otherwise it feels like you're hiding it. Right? Exactly. Exactly. That's, that's key. And you know, here's the thing in a time where we have the ability to be incredibly transparent with our subscribers and our users and, and give them that information with immediacy. Why aren't we doing that?
00:30:02
Speaker
Because we're we're in a world of, I mean, i don't want to go too far into the societal string of things of fake news and coverups. Why would you want to be a part of that? Why wouldn't you want to be straight up as as clear and transparent as you possibly can so that you don't leave room for gray area for subscribers to leave? Because you and I both know we get so much hate mail at us about Adobe for some reason because they went to a subscription model. So people already don't like this to begin with.
00:30:30
Speaker
So if they don't like this model to begin with, and you're giving them more reasons not to like it, you're giving them more reasons to move on to another product that we know is going to be lesser, obviously, but that's still the the contention here.
00:30:42
Speaker
Dude, you nailed it. And I hope people are still listening to to this part. you You just nail nailed a really important topic. Because remember last year, so so everybody thought when you did your create, when you, if you uploaded to a cloud album in Photoshop, if you uploaded to the libraries feature that we're talking about, and then also when generative AI started coming out, everybody thought Adobe was using your photos ah Everybody, the terms of service, because every company's terms of service says they need access to your photos, but they need access to your photos in a different way to keep them on their servers.
00:31:21
Speaker
Adobe doesn't want your photos. get Just... don't Don't pat yourself on the shoulder too much. Adobe wants no part of taking your photo and stealing it for free.
00:31:32
Speaker
so But they got trashed. They got just absolutely annihilated in the industry when the websites that we talked about before started running articles about what the terms of service say.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so Adobe came out very, very quickly and said, no, no, no. Like, hey, we we we have we we need the terms of service to store your stuff on the server, but we're not we don't own your photos. We're not training AI with your photos.
00:31:58
Speaker
think there was a small circumstance with Adobe stock that they might've been doing it, but- But they weren't taking your cloud photos that you put into cloud albums. They weren't training AI on all this stuff, but people thought they did.
00:32:11
Speaker
We did a podcast. That's why what you the point that you made is so good because Adobe didn't think of that ahead of time. And then the world came out and just annihilated them. And then they had to come out and say, guys, look, like we're not doing it.
00:32:24
Speaker
So this was a chance to say, to do the to do what they should do first without the world coming out and annihilating them over the over trying to be sneaky. And I don't ah really don't think they're trying to be sneaky.
00:32:40
Speaker
I think this is new technology. It's a new world. I really don't think it's an absolute money grab. Money is always... At the forefront, and it has to be. They're a publicly traded corporation.
00:32:53
Speaker
But I don't think that they're trying to take advantage of you. It's just by not showing this information and being transparent about it, it could come across that way.
00:33:04
Speaker
You know, we know that Adobe is not trying to deceive. They may have withheld it. they've ah They give you the opportunity to look it up. It's going to take you some time to find it. ah But once you find it, it's pretty clear once you find it And now, you know, the the the the thing here, I think really boils down to A, just be more transparent about it and B, show how much this is going to cost because we both know refunds for credits are not going to be possible.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's kind of like the burger concept. You can't go to a restaurant, eat a burger and say, yeah I'm not going to pay you because I didn't like it. Well, top We'll give you a free dessert. Right, exactly. So with this model, we know for a fact that we can't refund a generated thing. You can't put it back into the system once it's been fabricated out of nowhere.
00:33:49
Speaker
So I understand that part. And I understand losing my credits, even knowing that I'm gambling with what it is that I'm going to do. I get that 100%. But um knowing what it's going to cost, like the magnificent point you came up with.
00:34:03
Speaker
And the the graphics that you made are great for this because I think that would be ah very simple and easy thing to do. Now, from a coding perspective, I don't know, maybe we're putting more on them than we should, but from a user... It's one of the largest technology companies in the world. They can do it That's true.
00:34:18
Speaker
From a user experience perspective, that would be phenomenal for us. And it would show full transparency where we know exactly what's going to cost and when it's going to cost. To say varies, and that's not good.
00:34:29
Speaker
You know, and and I know even from a perspective of generation, it does cost something. But for the most part, it's pennies on the dollar for them. But yes, those pennies add up when you have 50 to 100,000 people doing something with it. Those pennies add up really quickly.
00:34:44
Speaker
So I understand the justification for the credits. And I'm not saying that they need to get rid of the credit the credit system. We just want transparency. Yeah. And I want one more thing, though. I want them to roll over each month.
00:34:56
Speaker
That would be nice. there there there's There's no reason other than money that they shouldn't. Yeah. if If you paid for them in that month and you didn't get to use them, you shouldn't be penalized. ah or Now, I'm okay if within a 12-month contract, you say, I have to use them.
00:35:18
Speaker
That's fine. Okay? Because I get cost change and they can't, you know, you can't sell me something. You can't sell me something. two years ago, and then I use it today when really it costs you, the company, double to use it. So give me a 12-month contract.
00:35:35
Speaker
Like every every contract, my my credits expire or something. like I don't know what it is. But they should roll over. Because if I didn't use it that month and I use it this month, I already paid for right?
00:35:47
Speaker
The technology's there, what I'm going to use on your servers are there, whether or not I used them all last month and all this month, I don't i don't think that's right. It's, you know, Adobe stock, your credits roll over each month again. And I think it's within a 12-month contract.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's just, I don't know. it's not right to It's not right to take them away from me because maybe I had a ah slow month last month and now I have a busy month this month and I really, really need my software.
00:36:13
Speaker
And now my software is going to take more money from me and penalize me for having a busier month this month than last month. Exactly. And getting ahead of it before they add too many features that we end up relying on this system. That's that's the point, you know, because right now, I mean, in all honesty, I'm not using much of anything that costs credits.
00:36:33
Speaker
So I'm really not the best case scenario for this discussion and in that It upsets me, it bothers me a little bit, but i don't it doesn't affect my daily life when it comes to Photoshop almost at all, right?
00:36:45
Speaker
But there are some people that it will. um and And that's the part that we're looking out for here. Especially, i think more than anybody that we're looking out for is Adobe because if if certain people get a hold of this topic, they're gonna take it another direction.
00:37:00
Speaker
And then Adobe is gonna see their you know user base plummeting and once again. because of misinformation or mishandled information is probably the best. yeah yeah i think it's also I think it's also important to know that some people don't want it.
00:37:14
Speaker
And then you can also get stuck doing it that you didn't even want it. You know we you and i have a lot of the same users. They're submitting photos for contests. And i get like every photo contest person thinks that their world is the only world that everybody does contests, and and they don't.
00:37:31
Speaker
But they can't use AI. you know they They can't use AI for this or whatever. The the image size thing is a perfect example. it It replaced the eye in my photo.
00:37:43
Speaker
So the bird's eye was no longer the same bird's eye. It looked it looked completely different. And some people don't want that. And there's no way to really turn this off. There's no alert. you know ah Is it a preference?
00:37:56
Speaker
Alert me anytime I'm about to use generative AI. Because there's different AI too. And it's a whole other topic. But when you go and you use select subject, You're using AI trained models to make a selection for you.
00:38:11
Speaker
You're not generating something new in your photo. So there's different types of AI, but some people don't want any of this generative AI, but they don't even know that they're getting it. And right now, in many cases, they don't even know that not only are they getting it and it's changing their photo, they're being charged for something that they didn't want in the first place.
00:38:28
Speaker
Right. So, all right, man, anything to wrap up? I don't think so. I just think that, um you know, this shouldn't feel like gambling.
00:38:39
Speaker
I shouldn't feel like I'm do do do two two do do. Yeah, no, you made you made a perfect analogy. It's it is. It's like it's pulling the pulling the pulling the slot machine and maybe you get something good. Maybe you don't. And they again, I think the only difference here is that sometimes I don't even know how much money I put in with this stuff. Yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah. that a fine where ah Where would you like to send everybody to find out what the amazing Blake Rudis does? I don't know about that guy, but you can find me at F64academy.com.
00:39:12
Speaker
That's about ah where, yeah, that's pretty much where ah you can find some background information and sign up on the email list if you'd like. Sounds good. And you can find me over at MattK.com.
00:39:24
Speaker
I do courses and presets and tutorials and maybe I'll start just putting random charges for things. It's just a mystery button, buy this. And you didn't really know how much you're going to spend. I think I have a new business model coming my way here. Anyway, I'll do it on mine too.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. right. Well, thank you everybody for, for watching. And, and, and just as importantly, thank you to Adobe. We know you've got two big fans here. We, we know, Number one, I know there's a lot of good people, and they're not good people without say. These are good people that have direct input, um and the executives of the company will listen to them. So we know that there's a lot of good people there. we know I know for a fact that they are killing themselves to come up with great features.
00:40:11
Speaker
um So thank you for doing that. And we just want the recognition to be to be at Adobe. We want all good things coming in your way, and we want people happy with you, not kind of getting a little bit disgruntled. so Thanks to everybody over there as well for making some really killer software and hopefully just keep making it better.