There’s two big players when it comes to generating AI art – midjourney and stable diffusion. They both generate images from text, but operate in very distinct ways. Read up on what you need to know.
what is stable diffusion?
Here is what stable diffusion is. It is a free, open source ai image model. Meaning you can download, run on your own and use for free. It offers great flexibility and is supported by large community developing tools and extensions around it.
what is midjourney?
Midjourney is a paid subscription that runs on discord. You make prompts and it renders images hosted on their servers. You don’t need powerful hardware to use this. It has often impressive results from the start but you should pay 10-30 dollars each month.
quality comparison
For artistic, pretty, refined images – midjourney often wins. The default image quality is incredible. With stable diffusion, the quality really depends on what model you use and how you customize it.
cost comparison
Stable diffusion is free if you set it up yourself (requires a halfway decent graphics card). Midjourney is paid. If you own a current gaming pc or an m-series mac, stable diffusion might save you quite a lot of money in the long run.
which should you choose?
To get amazing images quickly and without hassle use midjourney. For limitless control and for running privately or for free use stable diffusion via automatic1111 or comfyui. Either way also good.
Most professional creators tend to use both. Midjourney for the two minute spectacular images and stable diffusion for the more specialized, custom or batch work.
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