Best Apps For Stunning AI Art (Midjourney Alternatives)

AI Art generators have been all over the  Internet lately and for good reason. They   can be really useful and they're actually a lot  of fun. But not all of them are created equal   and this can make it really hard especially  now that Midjourney removed their free trial.   So if you ever wondered what other alternatives  are actually out there and which ones of those   are actually useful, you're in the right  place because now I'm going to show you   a ranking of my favorite AI art generators  and a bunch of examples to help you decide. So let's get started from the top by looking  at the very best ones first. And as you might   already know, the best one right now is Midjourney  V5 and now 5.1 is even better so that's why it's   S tier. And if you're not familiar with these  tier lists, it's very simple. This is similar   to grading with school with S tier being just  perfect. So down here F is the worst and S tier   is the best. And the reason Midjourney is the best  is because it's very aesthetic and they manage to   fix the issue with human hands. They mostly fix  teeth, bodies, and human faces and they're also   the best at generating photorealistic images.  And I don't think this is a large discussion,   most people that use AI art extensively would  agree that Midjourney is King right now. Alright, so Midjourney is best but what's the  problem? Well, it's quite simple. They charge   for their services and they now remove their  free trial so you don't get 25 images for free   anymore as it did over the course of the last  few months. If you follow the server closely,   sometimes they re-enable it for a few  days but usually, it's going to be paid. And that brings us to our next tier here because  most of these underneath are actually free to use.   And in our A tier category here we have Dali 2  by OpenAI, we have Night Cafe Art Studio, and we   have leonardo. ai. And all three of these are very  different so let's talk through them one by one. So Dall-e-2 is a model created by OpenAI  and it's particularly interesting because   Dall-e-2 is actually based upon a custom model.  Most of these other ones are based upon stable   diffusion which is the most popular AI image  generator that is fully open source so anybody   can build on it for free. Dali and now Dall-e-2  is different because they build their model. And   if you didn't know also Midjourney is different  in that way and that's why they're better. Any   further details are not known to the public  but all their status they have their own model   now which seems to be better than all the stuff  out there and that's why they're doing so well. So how do you use this? Well, you're gonna need  to open an AI account just like you do with   ChatGPT and then you can go to labs. openai. com  and start generating images with Dall-e-2. And   there was a waitlist for this first but around  the end of 2022 they just put it out to the   public and everybody can use it. So you can  upload images, you can take inspiration here,   or you can just use the text image features  in this text box and that is pretty much Dali. And the quality here is very high especially when  it comes to cartoonish or abstract items. But I do   have to say this when it comes to generating  human characters like anything that involves   humans within the picture which is actually one  of the most common motifs that you will want to   generate in a lot of the cases, Dali 2 is not  great. And what we did is we generate the first   two example prompts from our resource here. So  look, this right here, the results you would get   with Midjourney and here is what you get with  Dali 2. It's already no detail in the phase and   if you look at the ballerina this is just very  different. So if you're looking for the stylized   look within humans it's fine but if you're  looking for photorealistic images of humans,   none of the models presented here are as good  as Midjourney right now. That's just a fact. But with that being said, let's move on and we'll  keep these two examples in mind as we re-run them   for all of these image generators. Okay, so  next one on the list is Night Cafe and this   one is actually super easy to use and yields  very good results. All you need to do is go to   nightcafe. studio and again all the links will be  in the description below and all you need to do   is with Night Cafe is just create an account  and you can start generating. And even these   daily challenges are kind of fun to participate in  and as you can see these results are really good. So while crafting this tier list we  also considered user friendliness and   Night Cafe is very user-friendly because it  offers some of these presets, competitions,   and a lot of quality examples for you to get  inspired. And what intrigues me personally   about this is that they have this social  feature plus the quality of this image in   particular is just excellent. This is a 10  out of 10 when it comes to generating this   type of image and that's what I love here.  It might not be able to do everything but   the things that it can do are excellent  and that's why I would recommend it. And for Night Cafe, if we do our little comparison  here, it's just gonna be absolute catastrophe for   the app because it's based upon stable diffusion  and stable diffusion by default is terrible at   humans. It will create these monstrosities that I  will show you now so just be prepared. So here's   what it did for the image of the homeless  woman. As you can see the environment is   okay and actually quite good but when it comes to  showing the people it's absolutely unusable. It's   at least smart enough to cover up that fact  in some of these other images. And when it   comes to ballerina that is kind of the ultimate  test because you have to get the anatomy right,   you'd have to get the face right and usually  the body postures are quite extreme but they   need to make sense otherwise us humans will  pick up on the fact that it's not right. So now   have a look at the atrocity that it produced.  Well, there's like 50 things to critique here   so we'll just close it off and now you know  that this is not meant to be used for humans. Okay, let's move on to the next one. So the next  one is leonardo. ai. And Leonardo is interesting   because it's free-ish currently. It comes with  150 credits a day if you get an account and in   order for you to get an account, you need to  sign up to Early Access with your email. From   what I've heard usually takes three to five  days for you to get accepted and then you

can start using your free accounts every day.  And don't get thrown off by the fact that they   market this to be a game asset generator. This  is excellent for so many other use cases too. So again, they're really marketing this towards  game designers but if you look at the examples   of the homeless woman and the ballerina you  will find that Leonardo yields some of the   best results here. And the reason for that is  that once you're inside the app, you get to   pick from various models and some of them are  actually quite good with humans. Look at this,   this is not perfect but it's quite good and I  would say the homeless woman is actually quite   usable. So Leonardo is really great and what  you'll see once you're inside is that you get   all these various models to pick from. So Leonardo  Diffusion is a fine-tuned model of table diffusion   that is dark and very aesthetic in my opinion.  I really like this one and with this deliberate   model, you will actually be able to create  decent humans and there are many more in here. One more thing that I should point out is  that it actually allows you to fine-tune   your own models. So I could actually take  one of these models and train it further   with my own data which is absolutely amazing  and it's so user-friendly on here. Honestly,   this is shaping up to be one of the best AI  art platforms as their mission is trying to   be the Photoshop of AI art. So I strongly  recommend you check this one out and again   and get a bunch of these credits which  is more than enough to get you started. And now I want to take a moment to tell you  about a possibility that you could use to   make some extra money on the side with your  AI art generations and that is for today's   sponsor wire stock. It's the easiest way to  sell your AI-generated art with over 230,000   creators and more than 9 million media  items. Wire stock makes it a breeze to   upload and sell content on the world's largest  stock marketplaces. And as we are discussing   AI-generated images today it's important  to mention that not all of these platforms   except AI generated alright but with wire  stock, you get to upload to Adobe Photo   pond5 and deposit photos simultaneously.  All of those three are good to go and if   you sell images on there you're gonna get an  85% cut. Additionally, creators get individual   portfolios for free where they can sell content  directly, create collections and even sell prints. But it should be noted that you need to upscale  your images before you upload them to wire stock   otherwise they won't be accepted. And right now  there's many tools to do that but very soon there   will be releasing their very own AI upscaler  that will help you upload to their platform.   That's going to make it super easy to enhance  and upscale your AI art so it has the necessary   resolution for all of these sites to accept it  and guess what they're going to be integrating   that with Discord which will allow you to directly  send images from Discord to wire stock and they   will distribute it to the part-time marketplaces  making everything as seamless as it could be. So here's the deal with wire stock, you get  direct access to selling on the world's largest   marketplaces without the hassle of separate  signups, extensive forms or payment on multiple   sites and all that for a 15% fee. As someone who  has been uploading and selling stock photos and   videos for seven years let me tell you that's a  good deal especially when generating some of these   images takes seconds and then distributing them  amongst the platforms will take beginners hours.   So if you're an AI artist or just looking to sell  your creative work online give wire stock a try. Click the link in the description  to try it out for free and if you   decide to upgrade make sure to use  my code advantage20 for a discount   at checkout. And now let's get back to  exploring the best AI image generators. The next category, the B tier, are ones that  I have bookmarked but I only come back to   them for specific use cases. So for example,  dreamline art is a very beginner-friendly way   to get started with all of this and it gets  you up and running with stable diffusion like   no other app extremely beginner friendly  and I would strongly recommend this one.   Deep Dream Generator on the other hand is  a fantastic app, with very artsy results,   but their plans start at 19 a month and for  that, I would just go straight to mid-journey. And then in this tier I also put Stability AI  which is actually the company that brought out   the stable diffusion model that I talked  about so much and that most of these are   actually built upon and they have their  very own app called Dream Studio which   you can access for free and this allows you  to do some fun stuff like auto expand images   and it's quite good at that and just fun to  play with. So if you're an AI art enthusiast   I would recommend you play with all seven  of these and see what they're good at,   what those different models are capable of and  where the weaknesses are. And if you're gonna   pay for one I would make that Midjourney with the  most useful free one being Leonardo right now. And that brings me to the last category. So here  we enter hmm that's kind of interesting territory   but honestly I don't really return to many of  these because they have major weaknesses and in   the categories above you will usually find better  results that are also all free. So for example,   the Canva image generator yet again is based upon  stable diffusion and will get you results like   this or this when it comes to humans so absolutely  unusable but it is inside of Canva and we actually   use Canva to design some of our Instagram posts  and there it's just super useful to have it right   there. So for the sake of convenience and ease  of use, it actually got C tier although it's   really not that great. So the same thing would  go for most of these, they're either easy to   use or integrated into something interesting and  this is the category where I would say if you're   interested in this stuff check all of them out  because they could introduce one upgrade and all   of a sudden they would be great but right now  they're kind of in this weird in-between spot. One more honorable mention should go to  Runway. They're doing some fascinating   stuff in text to video but their text image is  just average at best. And I'll give them this,   they actually generated the worst ballerina out of  all the examples. Have a look at this one, oh God,   I'm sorry this is gonna haunt your  dreams now. And then we also have   Crayon which is based upon the Dali  Mini model which is a lightweight   model of Dali that we talked about above  and this generates results like this. And look below this, we enter the territory of  the apps that tried but honestly are not very

useful. I mean okay, text to Pokemon might have  some niche use cases but otherwise all of these   I would rather avoid. I mean you might recall  Lanzai that was the viral app where everybody   created AI variations of their own photos but  it cost money and it does nothing but generate   images and Midjourney right now can remix your  photos way better than Lensai was ever able to.   And also the Jasper image generator costs money  and it's not even as good as the free stuff in A   and B tier so that's why it's down here. It's not  horrendous but I don't see a reason to use it. And then the category down here are just the  ones that you should stay away from. It's   not even worth your time exploring them. But  hey look, I might have missed something here   so leave a comment below if you disagree with  one of these rankings but make sure to leave a   reason and then over time we can update this tier  list to reflect the current reality including all   of your guys' feedback to make this resource as  good as possible. As we'll make this amongst many   other maternal resources available for free on our  website from here on out so you'll find a link to   that below. You can check it regularly and we'll  be updating the rankings as these apps evolve. And lastly, I would like to bring your attention  to the events that we started running inside of   our Discord server. It's completely free, the  events are free, they're just there for you   to have fun and we actually just ran our AI art  remix contest to remix various images. So with 50   participants and I gave them SpongeBob and they  had five minutes to generate a remix and look,   this is what the winner of this round, Karate,  came up with. Isn't that just incredible? So   these are some of the possibilities here and right  here you can see the four winners. So this one was   Success Kit before this was Nyan Cat and this  was the Chat GPT logo. So if you're interested   in participating in the next one we're holding it  on May 20th and there's gonna be regular contests   after that. So feel free to join us, generate  some AI art and learn while you're doing it. I hope this video was useful and if you  want to learn even more about Midjourney   and how to get the most out of it, you  will love this video which introduces   you to a bunch of tips and tricks on  how to do interesting stuff with AI.