Create Images From Nothing
Midjourney, Ideogram, and ChatGPT compared -- what each does best and what they cost.
AI image generation has reached the point where the results are genuinely useful for social media, presentations, personal projects, and creative work. The quality varies significantly between tools.
The main image generators
| Midjourney | |
|---|---|
| What it is | The highest-quality AI image generator, accessed through Discord or the web |
| Best at | Artistic, photorealistic, and stylised images with exceptional quality and coherence |
| Free tier | No free tier (previously offered a trial, now requires a subscription) |
| First paid tier | Basic Plan - US$10/month (~A$16/month) |
| Ken's take | Midjourney produces the best-looking images of any AI tool I have used. The quality gap between Midjourney and free alternatives is noticeable. The catch is that it used to require Discord, which confused many people. They now have a web app that is much easier to use. Worth the US$10 if you create images regularly. |
| Sign up | https://midjourney.com |
| Ideogram | |
|---|---|
| What it is | AI image generator that excels at putting readable text into images |
| Best at | Logos, social media graphics, posters, anything that needs legible text in the image |
| Free tier | Free tier with limited daily generations |
| First paid tier | Basic Plan - US$8/month (~A$13/month) |
| Ken's take | Most AI image tools are terrible at text. Letters come out garbled and unreadable. Ideogram solves this. If you need a poster, a social graphic with a quote, or a logo concept, this is the tool. The free tier is enough to test it. |
| Sign up | https://ideogram.ai |
| ChatGPT Image Generation | |
|---|---|
| What it is | Image generation built directly into ChatGPT, now native to GPT-4o and newer models (DALL-E is legacy) |
| Best at | Quick image generation without leaving your chat, iterative editing through conversation, generating images as part of a broader task |
| Free tier | Included in ChatGPT free tier (limited generations) |
| First paid tier | Included with ChatGPT Plus - US$20/month (~A$32/month) |
| Ken's take | Image generation in ChatGPT is now native to the model itself, not a separate DALL-E step. You describe what you want in conversation, iterate with feedback, and the images appear inline. Quality has improved significantly. If you already pay for ChatGPT Plus, you have this included. No need for a separate subscription. |
| Sign up | https://chat.openai.com |
Brief mention: Adobe Firefly is worth knowing about if you already use Photoshop or Illustrator. It integrates AI generation directly into those tools. Free tier gives 25 credits/month. Standalone plans start at around US$5/month. The image quality is behind Midjourney, but the commercial safety (trained on licensed content) is a selling point for business use.
Try this right now (free)
Open ChatGPT (even the free version) and type: "Create an image of a cosy Australian country kitchen with morning light coming through the window, a cup of coffee on a wooden table, and a cat sleeping on a chair." See what comes back. Then try: "Make the light warmer and add a bookshelf in the background."