Choosing an image model without burning credits

A big model library is only an advantage if you can navigate it. The useful question is never "which model is best" — it is "which family is built for this job".

Match the family to the job

• Text inside the image — packaging, posters, UI mockups, anything with legible words. The Ideogram family and Recraft were trained with typography as a first-class concern and they hold letterforms where general models scramble them.
• Photorealistic people and products — the Nano Banana, Seedream and GPT Image families give the most convincing skin, fabric and specular highlights, and they follow long prompts closely.
• Stylised, graphic and abstract — the Flux, Qwen and Stable Diffusion families are the most steerable toward illustration, and they respond best to unusual art-direction language.
• Editing an existing image — filter to the Image in models. Anything tagged for reference input will take your file and change only what you ask for, which is a different task from generating fresh.
• Anime and comic — the dedicated anime-tuned checkpoints beat general models by a wide margin. Do not fight a photoreal model into a cel-shaded look.

Then sort by cost, not by hype

The model gallery shows credit cost on every card. Many families ship a fast/lite variant next to the flagship at a lower cost. Use the cheap variant for exploration — composition, framing, colour — and spend the flagship credits only on the frame you have already chosen. On a twenty-image exploration that is the difference between a coffee and a lunch.

Do not skip the free tier

Models marked Free · Experimental cost zero credits. They are slower, they can ignore some settings and they are not guaranteed capacity — but for composition tests and "will this idea work at all" questions, a free render that takes ninety seconds beats a paid render that takes ten. Prototype free, finish paid.

Use the gallery like a professional

• Every card shows a real sample from that specific model, not stock art. Judge the family by the thumbnail before you spend anything.
• Video cards play a motion loop on hover so you can see how a model handles movement without rendering.
• Star your keepers. Favourites pin to the top rail and Recently Used remembers the last eight, so your working set stays two clicks away.
• Sort by Cheapest when you are exploring, and by Featured when you are finishing.

Build a shortlist, not a favourite

Most people end up with three: one cheap explorer, one photoreal finisher, one typography specialist. That covers the overwhelming majority of commercial work. Save each with its settings as a Studio Preset and model selection stops being a decision you make every session.