Recraft and its new model

Recraft.AI offers one of the best image generation models available to use online, according to this comparison. Their new model, called Red Panda 3, excels at producing photorealistic images, but can also create stylized images and graphic designs, as well as terrific text.

They also have a Recraft app available on app stores, so images can be created easily on phones, and the images in your account's history can be viewed or shared on your phone. The app doesn't seem to have all of the graphic design and editing tools that are available on the website, however.

Recraft.ai offers a generous 50 credits a day for free image generation. (Regular images are 1 credit to generate.) You can choose from a range of aspect ratios to make wide-screen images or tall images for phones. You can export images as JPEG or PNG files (with other file formats supported if you create vector images.)

Recraft's images can be very realistic. I was able to produce images of people holding hand-written signs saying messages such as "verify me" with quality that could be mistaken for a photograph of a real person. However, you can also choose from a range of other styles, such as illustration, vector art, and icons. A few months ago, I noted that Ideogram was great at generating text and creating graphic designs and logos, but now Recraft seems even better at this.

Recraft includes a suit of editing tools that will let you select any region of an image and regenerate it with different contents, mask-out and remove parts of an image, or remove the background from an image layer. You can even drag in images from your computer and use Recraft's editing tools on your own photographs.

A special "mock-up" tools that let you generate an image of a product product (such as a plain white mug, t-shirt, or flag), and then design a logo or other graphic design that you want to appear on the mock-up, position your design on it, and slide it around as if the mock-up you just generated were a 3D model. Combined with how well Recraft generates text and makes logos, this makes Recraft a powerful system for graphic designers or anyone who wants to previsualize custom products or new packaging ideas.

There is also a powerful image-to-image mode called Fine Tune that lets you redraw an image with a slider for "similarity to the original image" to control the amount of change. This lets you restyle or redecorate or change the contents of an image according to any new prompt you wanted to type. I uploaded a photograph of my dog and Recraft had no trouble stylizing it into a whimsical illustration of the dog.

Only paid members can use the powerful "Creative Upscale" function, which adds detail and believability to faces and raises the quality and resolution of the whole image. Paid membership starts at $12 per month (when billed monthly) and gives you 1000 credits monthly. Although the Creative Upscale function costs 20 credits per use, it seems worth the expense. The Creative Upscale function raises the already good image quality up to print resolution images, as well creating more fully rendered faces on people.

Recraft heavily censors images. Words you can type into the prompt are screened and you will be criticized for word choices that are even potentially offensive, with a special focus on blocking terms that might be associated with describing the appearance of a woman.

Recraft's interface is complex, and icons or functions seem to have been changed more recently than the built-in tutorials were recorded, so you might not be able to find the specific tools they show or describe in the tutorials. The video tutorials also seem to skip steps or gloss over what button you are supposed to press in some cases.

Even with all of the built-in editing options (once you learn how to use them), you'd still need to use Photoshop or another paint program for most painting or retouching tasks, after using Recraft to create and upscale images.

With this powerful new model, Recraft.ai has moved into a leadership position among online image generators, with tools that will appeal to many kinds of artists and designers. The 50 free credits per day you get just for signing up are reason enough to recommend that you go give Recraft a try.