What a plan change does to old work
Upgrading is usually simple. Downgrading and cancelling are where the interesting questions sit: whether material made under the higher plan keeps its permission, whether stored assets survive, and whether an unmarked export stays unmarked. As of 2026-09-12.
| Change | Usually settled | Usually unaddressed |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelling | Access ends | Whether earlier output stays usable |
| Downgrading | Future output follows the lower plan | Output already produced |
| Upgrading | Wider permission from that point | Whether it applies backwards |
Inclusion rule. The three plan changes that raise questions about work already produced. Order. Alphabetical by change.
1Upgrading is the easy direction
Moving to a higher plan generally widens what is permitted from that point forward. The question worth asking is whether the wider permission applies to material generated earlier on the lower plan, which is usually addressed nowhere.
Where it matters, regenerating the material under the higher plan removes the question entirely and is often cheaper than resolving it.
2Downgrading is where the question lives
If a clip was produced while a commercial-use permission was in force, and the account later moves to a plan without it, whether the clip keeps the permission is a matter for the terms rather than for intuition.
Some vendors address it and some do not. Where a product is silent, that silence is the fact worth recording before the downgrade rather than after.
3Cancelling raises two separate questions
One is about permission: does material produced during the subscription remain usable. The other is about access: do stored projects, reference images and generated files remain downloadable, and for how long.
The second has a deadline and the first does not, so export everything before cancelling regardless of how the first question is answered.
4Marking can change with the plan
Where an unmarked export is a paid-tier feature, files exported before a downgrade keep whatever they were exported with, while anything exported afterwards may not. This is a property of each file rather than of the account.
Checking a sample of delivered files after any plan change is a two-minute confirmation that the exports still carry what the project expects.
5Trials and promotional tiers deserve their own reading
A trial that grants paid-tier features may or may not grant the paid tier's permissions, and a promotional or beta tier is frequently carved out explicitly. These are the cases most likely to differ from the plan table.
Anything produced during a trial that is intended for real use is worth checking specifically, because the trial is the period during which most experimentation, and therefore most accidental production work, happens.
6Seats and team plans add a second layer
On a team plan, what a member may do can be narrower than what the account permits, and material produced by a member who later leaves raises the same question a downgrade does.
Recording which seat produced which deliverable is the same habit as recording which account, and it answers the same class of question later.
7A refund or chargeback is a plan change too
Where a subscription is reversed rather than ended, some products treat the period as though it had not been paid for. Anything produced in that window sits in a different position from work on a plan that simply lapsed.
It is an edge case and it is worth knowing about before it happens, because it is the one situation where material can move backwards into a narrower permission.
8Price changes are not permission changes
A rate going up or down says nothing about what is permitted, and the two are announced on the same page often enough to be conflated. Read the pricing change for the number and the terms for the permission.
Where both moved at once, they are still two facts with two dates, and recording them separately keeps a later question answerable.
9Export before you change anything
Whatever the permission answer turns out to be, having the files is strictly better than not having them. Exports, reference images, project files and a copy of the terms page as it read that day.
This is the one step that is always correct regardless of how the terms read, and it is the one most often skipped because a plan change feels administrative.
10What the register holds
Each product's own statements about commercial use, by plan, with the page they were read from and a check date. Where a product does not address what happens after a plan change, the entry says that rather than guessing.
Whether a given change affects a given deliverable is a commercial question for the people responsible for it. The register is where the vendor's side of that conversation is written down.
11Where the vendor statements are kept
The mechanics above apply to anyone. What a given vendor has committed to in writing is held on the register instead, each line with the plan page it came from and the date it was checked.
- The rights register — each product's own wording, with a check date
An explainer, not an entry in the register. Vendor statements are held, with their sources, on commercial use, and nothing on this page is legal advice. Related: Reading terms, Clearing a deliverable.
12A generator's account of it
Alongside the terms behind “Changing plan”, SceneMixer's guides describe the work itself this way:
AI Edit Image on a step-2 card keeps the same character and applies a short change you describe — navy blue shirt, short curly hair, smiling — then Apply Edit.
SceneMixer, AI-Editing a Sheet: Outfit, Hair, Expression (read 2026-10-13)
The script is written from the photos and the one-line description. In step-by-step mode you can rewrite it before anything is shot.
SceneMixer, How to Make an Ad from One Photo — “Do I need a script?” (read 2026-10-13)