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Codex Issues / #35117

Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector: Creative Cloud asset preview fails with non-retryable Bartlebee 403

Open 💬 1 comment Opened Jul 24, 2026 by simontheworkshop-lab

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Codex App 26.715.72359 (CFBundleVersion=5718); bundled CLI codex-cli 0.144.4.

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro.

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.6.0 x86_64 i386

What issue are you seeing?

The Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector exposed in the native Codex macOS app successfully authenticates with a personal, non-SSO Adobe account and searches connected Creative Cloud assets. Using its Lightroom catalogue search capability, it locates the requested asset and returns its rendition path, but Codex cannot inspect or render that image because the downstream encoding request fails with:

{"type":"Unexpected","description":"image encode: could not connect to https://bartlebee.private.adobe.io/api/v1/image/encode — 403: Forbidden","retryable":false}

An immediate retry against the same rendition returns the identical non-retryable error.

This is not a request for a separate Lightroom connector and it is not a general connector-discovery or Adobe-login failure. The Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector is exposed in Codex, and its asset search succeeds in the same task immediately before the preview fails.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. In Codex Desktop on macOS, connect the Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector to a personal Adobe account containing Creative Cloud/Lightroom assets.
  2. Ask Codex to locate a known image using the connector's asset-search capability.
  3. Confirm the connector returns the requested LightroomAsset and its rendition path.
  4. Ask Codex to inspect or preview the located image.
  5. Observe the non-retryable 403: Forbidden response from https://bartlebee.private.adobe.io/api/v1/image/encode.
  6. Retry the same preview once; it fails identically.

The failure has been reproduced independently on multiple dates, including a fresh read-only run with a recorded immediate retry.

What is the expected behavior?

Once the Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector has authenticated and discovered the Creative Cloud asset, Codex should be able to fetch and encode the returned rendition for visual inspection.

If this operation is not available to the account, Codex should not expose it as usable, or it should return a clear entitlement/support message rather than an internal Bartlebee 403 after successful discovery.

Additional information

  • The same split is consistent across reproductions: Adobe connector authentication and asset search succeed; preview/image encoding fails.
  • A screenshot and screen recording exist, but they are not attached publicly because they include private catalogue identifiers.
  • Session diagnostics, connector logs, a contemporaneous reproduction record, and the screenshot were submitted through Codex’s diagnostic feedback uploader from the affected task and are available to OpenAI privately.
  • Related but not identical: #27842 reports the same Adobe (formerly Photoshop) connector returning FORBIDDEN at a Photoshop tool invocation. This report concerns its asset discovery succeeding before a downstream Bartlebee image-encoding 403.

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1 Comment

abcjhby2871 · 23 days ago

Additional independent impact report: the Adobe (formerly Photoshop) workflow can appear to finish processing successfully, but the edited/output photos are not rendered or displayed back in the Codex conversation.

I cannot confirm from the UI alone that this instance reaches the exact same bartlebee.private.adobe.io 403 described in the issue body, so this should be treated as either the same failure or a closely related failure in the generated-image delivery/preview path. The practical impact is severe: even when the edit operation appears successful, users cannot inspect, compare, or download the result, which makes the end-to-end Photoshop integration effectively unusable.

Could the maintainers please verify whether these two paths share the same encoder/attachment pipeline?

  1. Reading/previewing an existing Creative Cloud rendition.
  2. Returning and rendering a newly processed image after a Photoshop operation.

Useful triage points may include the generated asset/rendition identifier, entitlement scope used by the encode request, attachment hydration in Codex Desktop, and whether the UI silently drops a failed image attachment. A temporary fallback that exposes the saved Creative Cloud asset location or a downloadable result link would substantially reduce the impact while the inline preview path is being fixed.

Please indicate which sanitized diagnostics or log fields would best distinguish an Adobe-side encode/entitlement failure from a Codex Desktop attachment-rendering failure.