Best AI Image Generators for Artistic Visuals

In just a couple of decades, what started as restricted usage beta versions, AI image generators have evolved from producing obviously artificial images to real-life-like outputs. With new applications and tools packed with super-realistic features, AI image generation has gone from being a popular trend to a proper cultural shift. It feels like anyone with internet access is creating funny, downright weird, and stunning images via a text prompt.

If you are new to AI image generation, here’s a broader list of AI art generators to create artistic visuals. This isn’t a comprehensive collection of all the tools that can produce AI art or artistic visuals. But it will help you find the right AI image generator for your needs.

• Midjourney — Best for digital art, concept art, and creative professionals
• Leonardo AI — Best for game design and illustrations
• ImagineArt — Best and complete AI creative suite
• NightCafe — Best for casual creators and quick visuals.
• Craiyon — Best for casual use, fun visuals, and quick drafts.
• Stable Diffusion — Best for more creative control.
• OpenArt — Best for graphic designers and illustrators.
• Ideogram — Best for personalized artwork and branding materials

Note: the AI art and image generation industry keeps evolving each day. So, there’s a chance that a couple more AI image generators become available before you read this.

Our Top Picks for AI Image Generators to Create Artistic Visuals

Here’s a breakdown of the top AI image generators for artistic visuals:

1. Midjourney

Launched as a Discord-based platform, now available in app, Midjourney is known to produce high-quality images in versatile artistic styles. Midjourney allows for artistic support and control. In fact, you can change the whole aesthetic, mood, genre, and settings of the image — all through a single prompt. The customization capabilities feature:

• The Blend command allows for merging different images into one composition
• The Vary command allows for more granular control
• Remix and Pan commands allow for creating multiple variants of the same image.

The intuitive interface makes it simpler to generate stunning artistic visuals without technical know-how or skills. This makes Midjourney the favorite AI art generator among the illustrators, artists, and creative professionals.

Limitations: Although Midjourney now has a web app, the lack of a standalone application and free tier access restricts experimentation and trialing.

Pricing: Midjourney offers paid subscription plans starting at $10 with 3 hours/month GPU. The bigger the subscription plan, the higher the GPU

Learn more about Midjourney alternatives if you are looking for a Discord-free platform.

2. Leonardo AI

Featuring its own AI and image generation model, Phoenix, Leonardo AI lets you fine-tune the creative process with a real-time canvas and royalty-free images.

It is simple enough for beginners with an easy-to-use interface and advanced enough for professionals with character consistency and video generation. Here are Leonardo AI features:

• It allows you to train your custom AI model and generate images that align with your vision. You can apply different elements to modify the styles for creative variation.
• The image upscaling tool and motion effect allow you to generate short, dynamic animations from images.
• Batch generation allows you to produce multiple assets, visuals, and variations with a single prompt.

Limitation: Leonardo AI offers lower-quality images and AI art generations on free access. Customization and batch generation are only available for paid plans. Also, not every feature works while using Leonardo AI on mobile phones.

Pricing: The starter package is available at $12-15 with 8500-12000 tokens per month. The larger enterprise plans are available at $80+ with more than 50,000 tokens per month and access to all advanced features.

3. ImagineArt

ImagineArt presents a versatile AI creative suite, from quick visual and art generation to animation and video creation.

ImagineArt Image Generation Tools

The well-integrated Imagine Art AI video generator allows you to animate images with a single click. ImagineArt can generate photorealistic images, digital illustrations, anime-style visuals, product mock-ups, branding materials, and whatever you could imagine. The platform features multiple AI image generation and AI video generation models to let you experiment and figure out what works best. Here’s what you get in the ImagineArt AI creative suite:

• AI avatar generator
• Model training
• Background remover
• Image upscaler
• AI logo generator

Generated by ImagineArt Logo Generator

Limitation: ImagineArt is entirely cloud-based and requires a stable internet connection. Also, each model has a different credit consumption and is restricted to free users.

Pricing: ImagineArt offers a credit-based pricing model. The free plan comes with 50 credits with only a couple of generations. The basic plan starts at $10/month with up to 18k credit/year. The professional plan starts at $41/month with up to 180k credits/year.

4. NightCafe

NightCafe offers a comprehensive community for AI art enthusiasts with a Discord server, an inspiration gallery, and daily AI art generation challenges. With NightCafe, you can produce images in different art styles such as whimsical, classic, cyberpunk, abstract, geometric, gothic, and vaporwave. The platform features various AI image generation models such as Flux, Imagen, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion. Here are a few built-in AI art creation tools that NightCafe offers:

• AI flag generator
• Banner and carousel generators
• Logo generator
• Cartoon character generator
• AI video generator

NightCafe leverages text-to-image generation while applying neutral style transfer capabilities.

Limitation: The higher the image generation quality, the higher the credit consumption. Some image generations might be inconsistent and require re-prompting.

Pricing: The free plan is available with 5 daily credits. The beginner plan starts at $5.99 with 100 monthly credits. The AI enthusiast and AI Artist plans are available at $19.99 and $49.99 with 50 and 1400 monthly credits, respectively.

5. Craiyon

Craiyon is an alternative to Dall-E (not Dall-E 2), an accessible to all and free AI image generator. The mini-Dall-E uses style modifiers to generate high-quality and multi-styled images such as digital art, photorealism, steampunk, pixel art, and street art. It is a perfect AI art generator for casual artists, creators, and hobbyists:

• Craiyon produces multiple image variations for a single prompt.
• It allows removing unwanted elements and objects from an image with negative keywords.
• It allows creating a transparent background for images.
• The generated images have no watermarks.

Limitation: Craiyon doesn’t offer a higher image resolution like other paid and more advanced AI image generators. It has limited image customization and prompt refining options. Rendering speed is slower than that of other advanced AI image generators.

Pricing: The free plan allows unlimited image generations. The supporter plan starts at $10/month with 120 pro credits. The professional plan starts at $20 with 250 pro credits.

6. Stable Diffusion

Developed by Stability AI, Stable Diffusion is a deep learning and open-source AI image generator. Using diffusion techniques, Stable Diffusion allows you to run the model on your computer or hardware, giving complete control over the image generation process. This makes Stable Diffusion a preferred choice for artists, businesses, creators, and developers for commercial and personal use.

• Inpainting: Stable Diffusion allows you to edit and modify parts of the image to improve image and contextual consistency.
• Outpainting: It allows you to expand the existing image to produce extended scenes and a panoramic effect.
• AI Video: The platform offers creation of AI videos and the generation of 3D assets.
• Versions: Stable Diffusion has built-in models to cater to different AI image generation needs, including Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large for best quality, 3.5 Large Turbo for faster speed, and 3.5 Medium for more accessible performance.

Limitation: For better AI art generation, it requires a higher-quality GPU and higher storage VRAM. The generated result can vary based on the selected model and input prompt and might require iterative prompting.

Pricing: The open-source AI image generator is free to use and install with compatible hardware. Pricing differs for different platforms, model versions, output resolution, and features accessed. There is no single cost for using Stable Diffusion.

7. OpenArt

The name hints at what this platform does best: AI art generation. It is a versatile and comprehensive platform similar to ImagineArt, offering both AI image and video generation capabilities. With OpenArt, you can generate images, convert those images into video, and train custom models to optimize image and video generations. Here’s what OpenArt has to offer:

• Image upscaler: It allows you to convert any image to higher resolution visuals, along with the capabilities to remove inaccuracies in the image.
• Image editing: The built-in image editor allows you to blend, restyle images, and remove the background from images.
• Video generation: It comes with an AI video generator, featuring different models, automated audio and lip sync capabilities.
• Batch generation: It allows you to generate multiple variations of images and videos for improved workflow and better asset production.

Limitation: Credit expires in 90 days, requiring regular usage. Customization options and advanced features are only available for paid plans. Batch generation and higher-resolution image generation have a slower turnaround speed and time.

Pricing: The free plan comes with a one-time trial with 40 credits. The essential plan starts at $14/month with 4000 credits/month. The infinite plans offer unlimited generations at a price of $56/month and 24,000+ monthly credits.

8. Ideogram AI

Ideogram AI promises unprecedented text rendering and delivers images with well-integrated text. The model offers multilingual text support and advanced prompt understanding. With Ideogram AI, you can generate images with stylized typography, logos, posters, character consistency, and other branding and marketing visuals with incredible accuracy.

Same Character, Different Poses — Ideogram Chracter Consistency

The text-aware generation allows it to generate legible results. Here’s what Ideogram AI has to offer:

• Style reference: It allows you to upload multiple images to define the image style you require.
• Magic prompt: This feature helps you refine the prompts for better image generation.
• Editor: It comes with an integral image editor and canvas to make adjustments to existing images with different tools such as Magic Fill and Extend.
• Artistic styles: The platform offers multiple styles for AI art generation, including 3D design, anime, realism, and more.

Limitation: Even though the model works best with non-English prompts, it still doesn’t understand non-Latin scripts such as Chinese or Arabic.

Pricing: The free plans allow for free image generation daily. The paid plans' prices start from $14-56, varying with credit consumption, image resolution, and batch generation.

Learn more about Ideogram AI features and use cases.

Comparison Table: AI Image Generators for Artistic Visuals

Final Thoughts

There’s no single best AI image generator — whichever tool meets your needs is ultimately the one for you. So define your requirements, do a little research, compare results from a couple of tools, and start generating visuals. The best way to find your favorite tool is to start creating!

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