Images
The 2026 image landscape has settled into clear specialisms. The blunt version: GPT Image for realism and reliable prompt-following, Midjourney for art direction, FLUX when you want open weights or licensing flexibility, Ideogram or Qwen-Image the moment there is text in the picture, Recraft for brand and design systems, Firefly when the client needs indemnified assets.
GPT Image (OpenAI)
The strongest all-round default in 2026 and the top of most blind-preference leaderboards. Excellent realism, unusually literal prompt-following, solid text rendering, and conversational multi-turn editing — generate, then say 'make the sofa navy, pull back a little' and it does. If you only learn one tool, this is the safe choice.
Midjourney
Still the undisputed king of look. Midjourney has an opinion about beauty and applies it whether you asked or not — which is exactly what you want for mood boards, concept art and cinematic stills, and exactly what you don't want when you need something specific. V8 is several times faster than earlier versions with much better prompt adherence and text. Reach for it when the brief is 'make it feel like…'.
FLUX (Black Forest Labs)
The realism and texture specialist, and the most important open-weight family. Excellent skin, fabric, materials and light, with strong world knowledge. Crucially, the smaller FLUX releases carry permissive licences, so it is the practical choice when you need commercial use without negotiating a separate agreement — or when you want to run your own.
Google Nano Banana Pro / Gemini Image
The fastest good option, and the best conversational editor. Generates at 4K in seconds and excels at iterative, chat-driven changes to an existing image — replace this, extend that, keep everything else identical. Built into Gemini, so it inherits real world knowledge and can reason about a reference image before editing it.
Ideogram
The typography specialist. Rendering readable, well-kerned, correctly-spelled text inside a generated image is a genuinely distinct hard problem, and Ideogram was built for it. The default choice for posters, signage, book covers, packaging mock-ups and logo exploration.
Recraft
The designer's tool rather than the artist's. Generates true vector output (SVG) alongside raster, holds a defined brand style across a whole set of assets, and handles icons, mockups and layouts with text. If your deliverable is a design system rather than a picture, start here.
Qwen-Image (Alibaba)
Open-weight, and currently the strongest open model for text rendering — including non-Latin scripts, where most Western models fail completely. Worth knowing about if you work in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic, or if you need text accuracy without a subscription.
Adobe Firefly
The commercially-safe option. Trained on licensed and public-domain content, sold with IP indemnification for enterprise customers, and built directly into Photoshop, Illustrator and Express. Rarely the most impressive output — reliably the easiest one to defend to a client's legal team, and the one that fits an existing Creative Cloud workflow.
Leonardo AI
Strong for games and production art, with tools for consistent characters, tileable textures, sprite sheets and asset sets, plus custom style training on your own images. Good when you need fifty things that look like they came from the same world.