Artificial intelligence has revolutionized many industries, and graphic design is no exception. We’re running a series of blog posts that take a deep dive into the world of AI tools for designers, covering everything from image editing to working with color and more. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or just starting out, you won’t want to miss out. In the first post, we’ll explore some of the best AI tools that graphic designers can use to create and edit images for their projects.
ClipDrop
ClipDrop, an ecosystem of AI-powered products, grew out of an app called AR Copy Paste, which could capture objects from the physical world with a camera and drop them on your computer. At the time, journalists were excited, calling it nothing but “a practical use for AR” that had finally arrived and opened up new horizons of AR potential.
To date, ClipDrop provides a set of tools for anyone working with visual content. Not only can you “cut” objects from the real world and “paste” them into devices, but you can also remove people, backgrounds, and text from photos, improve image quality, and clean them up by scrubbing away imperfections or adjusting lighting settings. Plus, the creators of ClipDrop have integrated Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image algorithm, so you can create images from scratch.
Pricing. You can use ClipDrop for free with limited options. Subscription plans start at $7 per month, and the API is a minimum of $0.020 per image.
Icons8
Icons8 makes a software suite for content creators, offering a range of tools, icons, vectors, images, and other digital assets for designers. Back in 2019, the company came up with a collection of 100k AI-generated headshots of people which made waves in the news and was named Product of the Month on ProductHunt. Two years later, they offered Face Generator, a tool for creating custom virtual faces by choosing different skin tones, head angles, emotions, etc. While the company allows non-commercial use only, you can purchase a paid license to use virtual images in commercial projects. In addition, Icons8 features Smart Upscaler, which increases image resolution, Face Swaper, which is able to replace faces from one photo to another, and Background Remover. These algorithms are built-in into their MegaCreator and Lunacy design software.
Pricing. Costs vary depending on the specific task you need to be done. Face Generator has a starting price of $19.99 per month, while Lunacy is free to use, although you only have to pay to purchase Icons8 graphic assets.
PhotoRoom
PhotoRoom is an all-in-one creative photo editing platform supported by AI. With this tool, you can erase or blur the background, focus on the foreground, remove objects, and perform bulk retouching. It also uses the Stable Diffusion algorithm to generate backgrounds from text prompts. All PhotoRoom templates can be used for commercial purposes (e-commerce, marketing, advertising).
Pricing. You can get a free account with limited features and upgrade to a Pro subscription for $5.83 per month.
Let’s Enhance
Let’s Enhance is an AI editor that increases image resolution up to 16x without losing quality by fixing pixelation, removing artifacts, and improving lighting and color. As with ClipDrop, there is also an image generator based on the Stable Diffusion algorithm. Note that the use of images created by the Image Generator is subject to the Stable Diffusion license.
Pricing. Users can use Let’s Enhance for free with limited credits. Paid subscriptions start at $9 per month. You can also choose a pay-as-you-go model with a minimum of 20 credits for $9.
Imagery Refiner
Imagery Refiner is an AI-powered design tool built by Everypixel. It offers to refine AI-generated images that may have imperfections that are hard to edit, such as crooked ears or misplaced eyebrows. The tool’s algorithms eliminate these defects while keeping the original personality idea intact. The product is still in beta, but interested users can sign up and give it a try. Registered users will receive notifications by email upon the final release of the feature-complete version in early February 2023.
Pricing. Registered users can refine 10 images per month for free. Premium access allows refining 300 images per month for $1, but you can discuss your individual plan with the company.
Upscaler
Upscaler is a software that helps users to get the most out of their images. AI algorithms improve image quality up to 8x. Upscaler offers four methods to enhance your images, each with its own strategy for upscaling and refinement. While the Balanced mode provides slight improvements to achieve authenticity, DetailPro highlights details, the FacePro works on portraits, and the Ironed removes artifacts and imperfections.
Pricing. Upscaler is available for free with limited options, and under a pay-as-you-go model with a starting price of $7 for 20 upscales.
Designify
Designify is an online platform that helps automate design routines for e-commerce and marketing. It was developed by the team behind Remove.bg, a well-known tool that allows erasing of backgrounds and objects on images. With Designify, they combine batch processing principles with AI features such as background removal, shadow generation, pixelation correction, and color enhancement. You can upload your product images to be integrated across multiple templates and get ready-to-use images from e-commerce and automotive to greeting cards and profile pictures.
Pricing. Designify is available for free, but if you need batch-editing features, and high resolution you need to upgrade your plan to Designify Pro for $38 per month.
Pixelvibe
Pixelvibe (ex-Rosebud) is a family of apps for creating stock photos, YouTube video thumbnails, art and concepts, game assets, and animated avatars, all of which are powered by AI. While most of their apps are paid and invite-only, there are some free options available. For example, you can browse through thousands of AI-generated stock photos, and the system will pull up a bunch of similar ones for you to choose from. Or you can play around with Synth.Run, which helps you craft art concepts in a variety of styles, from rococo to sci-fi. Tokkingheads lets you turn your photos into animated avatars.
As a paid option, you can create a unique image based on your prompt or feed the AI with your own visuals to train it to produce game assets or YouTube video thumbnails that match your brand identity, goals, and style. AI-generated images can be used commercially, and the company welcomes the attribution. See the detailed license terms here.
Pricing. It varies depending on what you need to get done. For example, text-to-image generation starts at $11 per month.