Doc Searls Weblog

I am a heavy Photoshop user, and recently upgraded to Photoshop 2026 at Adobe’s robotic insistence. But, when I went to do a “generative fill” on an old photo (in the outlined area above), I was met with this:

Fuzzed by that, I hit the View my balance button and got this:

This shows I’m almost out of something I didn’t know I had. So I hit the Buy now button to get to the bottom line. This appeared:

I’m not going to subscribe to any of those. But I do want to understand what’s going on.

I assume that credits are for tokens, but don’t know what a generative fill will cost in tokens, or credits, or whatever. I assume bigger ones will cost more, but how, and how much?

I do get that intelligence is a commodity and for sale. What I need is a sense of how this commodity (in tokens, credits, or whatever) is metered, and how I can easily see it.

One clear thing to me, at least emotionally, is that Adobe is enshittifying Photoshop here, because it is starting to charge for something that had been free.

Look, I get why they’re doing it. But I also believe there have to be better ways to create this new AI economy.