Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has been the trending word these days. In fact, it is in the left, right and center of our life. Lots of jobs will be eliminated as we human be replaced by robots and A.I. As a designer, we have to embrace the change and figure out how we can leverage the technology to create new design.

Text to Image Generator

Text to Image has become very popular in recent years. Many new websites and applications popped up to offer various Generative AI tools for users to create images, videos, text and speech using text. I have tried a few and selected a few to share my view and experience in this article. 

Deep AI

Deep AI was on the top of the search result when you google “text to image generator”.  The website features AI Chat, AI image generator, AI video generated from an image or text, and text to speech. 

The result of AI chat was okay but it was no comparison to Open AI. The text to image result was disappointing. 

ImgGen

This AI-powered image generation website is easy to use, 100% free and offer a range of image enhancing tools, including background remover, watermark remover, image restoration, retouching, color correction, and unblur image tool. Of all the tools, I think that the watermark removal tool is a bit controversial. As a designer, I would like people to respect intellectual property and original artwork. 

Since it is a free platform, there are Google ads that pop-up but they are not as bad as Deep AI. Overall, it is easy to use, fast and you are supposed to be able to download HD file.  

Adobe Firefly

Adobe Creative Cloud is the most popular creative software among creative professionals. There are some free apps but most are subscription-based. Firefly is one of the few free apps that you can use by signing up an account. 

Adobe has been the most powerful creative software that offers a wide range of creative tools to create drawings, graphic design, websites, videos, enhance images, and more importantly read and write PDF. 

The Adobe Firefly is an AI tool to generate image/graphic from text. This artificial intelligence was trained on 300 million images in the Adobe library. 

You may select dimension, add and edit your prompt, regenerate, and generate more options based on your preferred result. The overall result of generating fantasy illustration was good but the options are limited after a while. 

Catch: it is not totally free. You get 15 credits very month to generate images. After that, you will have to pay HK$38/month for 100 credits. Honestly, I don’t know how the credits are calculated but it runs out fast. I didn’t even download one image and all credits are gone.

Microsoft’s AI image generator

Create.microsoft.com is a pleasant surprise. The tool was easy to use. Similar to many other photo editing tools, you can select the ratio of the image, remove background and enhance the generated image. 

The great thing is that you can immediately create a design using the image that you generated. There are some templates that you can choose to create a quick layout with custom text using design.microsoft.com. 

The overall experience using the create.microsoft.com was good without knowing much about it.  The file sizes are good to be used for website and social media. 

Many More...

If you search "text to image generator" online, there are many more websites that offer such service. Some are subscription-based. Some are free. I had tried a few other free ones but the results were not satisfactory. Like human, machine needs to be taught with reference and database. The bigger the knowledge base, the more combination of images can be created. 

What's Next for Professional Graphic Designers

With a smart phone, everyone is a photographer and videographer. With some generative A.I. tools, everyone can be a designer and creator. You don't even need to draw or take photos to generate an image. The question is whether the images or videos generated meet the expectation and good enough for use. 

Machines and robots are replacing many jobs for sure. It's a matter of time. For now, all these generative A.I. tools will help designers create concept and layout easily, saving a lot of time illustrating or retouching images.