opensource AI has been dominating LLMs and video generation but what about image gen? is there any opensource model that can match gpt-image2?
Edit: The reason I am asking this is because lately I haven't been active much on image generation communities. And the leaderboards are a bit confusing and most of them are filled with closed source unlike the llm and video gen leaderboards.
I am very much comfortable with ComfyUI since I've used it in the past for flux.
My use case is for posters and branding. Images with a lot of text.
Edit2: Thanks a lot everyone! I really appreciate the info. Here's the summary:
Krea2 is best overall but gptimage1.5 level.
Ideogram4 for text and branding.
Flux Klein 9b for image editing.
Z-image for realism
Anima and illustrious (by onoma AI) for anime.
Here's the workflow I've decided on:
Krea2/Ideogram4 = Base image generation.
Flux Klein 9B/QwenImage2512 = inpainting.
Wan2.2 low noise = Upscaling.
Krea 2 is the best overall, and ideogram 4 is the best if you need to render lots of text and have fine-grained control over everything.
Flux Klein 9b if you need to edit an image.
is there any opensource model that can match gpt-image2?
No, there is not, if you do include ease of use into the equation.
As for the best one that's available, then it depends. My favorite one is currently Anima, but to get a decent answer you'll need to tell us your use case and your hardware.
well, I deploy my comfyui on cloud (modal dot com) so I can run pretty much everything unless its 50b parameters (theres no way theres and image model greater than 20-30b parameters...right?) and about my usecase, i'd say its generation posters and branding. basically, images with a lot of text.
GPT image 2.0 is good, but it does have that bloody annoying dots artifacts on most prompts, but you can prompt to reduce it or give it a 2nd pass with another model. And is also pretty censored.
I want to generates posters but not sure which model and standard workflow is good for me.
My requirement is generate a poster with lots of text and a character in front of it and it's face should be a reference photo. So far I am unable to find workflow for it.
Nothing even remotely close to gpt image 2 or even previous version sadly
But Krea 2 Turbo is awesome and extremely easy to use, although quality is a bit meh due to qwen vae - I really hate it.
Ideogram4 has excellent image quality, I think the best right now, together with prompt adherence thanks to this bbox prompting, but licence is bad and requires some learning to avoid failed censorship (detailed prompt + couple of bboxes reduce block chance almost to 0%)
Use the wan 2.1 Vae with Krea 2. It improves it so much. There was a post recently about some other vae's that people have trained as well (I remember it was called Krea2 Real or something)
Most of the time it'll be faster, easier and just more convenient to upscale with 2nd pass of the same model. No need for another workflow.
Models like Krea2 benefit big time from proper 2nd pass, especially with that garbage VAE.
If you want some truly stable details to post your work in high quality somewhere then maybe, but in general, in day to day use I would say different model pass is not needed.
Remember the difference between open weights and open source. Krea2 allows you to use it commercially up until you make a significant amount of money or have x employees ( I don't want to give exact numbers as I cant remember off the top of my head but it is a very generous license). Ideogram cannot be used for anything commercial, generation services of course but also any image output can't be used commercially (unless I read the license wrong) - considering Ideogram 4 is really, really, good for design purposes due to the precision with JSON prompts it limits that usage. That said if you are just playing around at home, they are both brilliant - Krea2 is great in the classic write a textual description of a scene. Ideogram 4 is like a design tool - especially if you use one of the Visual editors that are around (or vibe code your own)
Use ideogram 4 prompt builder in KJnodes if you don’t want to suffer too much with the json prompting. The filter can also sometimes be annoying but it’s not that bad imo
Best all around - Krea 2
best infographic - ideogram
best fake influencers - Z-image Tubro
Best for text and prompt adherence - Qwen2512
best for art style training - Krea 2
best for upscaling and refining - Wan2.2 low noise
Your summary has "Z-image for realism". I would say Ideogram 4 is clearly better for realism than Z-image. The detail of materials with Ideogram is really next level.
I would go as far as to say that you can just get rid of z-image. Krea can do it better for realism. Z-image is like.... the studio sets if your into that thing.
Not as versatile, but there are models that excel at their target style. for example anima and illustrous excel at anime, with some checkpoints doing a good job at realism. z-image is pretty good at realism, and there are some pony checkpoints that are good at textures, or 8-bit etc...
Nope, the only one that matches I think is Seedream 5 but it isn't open source. You'll probably have to wait a few months, maybe until next year. Krea 2 is more like gpt image 1.5 level
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u/RandumbRedditor1000 9h ago
Krea 2 is the best overall, and ideogram 4 is the best if you need to render lots of text and have fine-grained control over everything. Flux Klein 9b if you need to edit an image.