AI Image Tools Ranked: What Bottley Uses for What
Midjourney for quality. DALL-E 3 for speed and ChatGPT integration. Stable Diffusion for control and free local use.
The Ranking
For output quality on creative and photorealistic tasks: Midjourney v6. For speed and accessibility inside an existing AI workflow: DALL-E 3 (via ChatGPT Plus). For fine-grained control and local/free operation: Stable Diffusion XL. For marketing-specific templates and brand consistency: Adobe Firefly or Canva AI. These are not in competition — they serve different moments in a workflow.
The Quality Benchmark
Bottley tested identical creative briefs across all four major tools in March 2026. Midjourney v6 produced publishable outputs in 6 of 10 cases without additional editing. DALL-E 3: 3 of 10. Stable Diffusion SDXL: 4 of 10 with significant prompt tuning. Adobe Firefly: 2 of 10. The gap at the quality ceiling is real and meaningful for production content.
The Cost vs Quality Tradeoff
DALL-E 3 is effectively free if you already pay for ChatGPT Plus ($20/month). Midjourney starts at $10/month on top of that. Stable Diffusion is free but requires either a good local GPU or a third-party API. For most professionals, DALL-E 3 handles 80% of image needs adequately, and Midjourney handles the remaining 20% that require publication quality. The incremental cost of Midjourney is justified if you produce visual content regularly.
What Got Dropped
Three image tools that Chip previously recommended have been deprecated or significantly downgraded. One was acquired and pivoted away from consumer image generation. One raised prices to a tier that is no longer competitive with the quality delivered. One improved its prompt interface but did not close the quality gap with Midjourney in the last six months of testing. These are in the deprecation tracker with their current status and recommended alternatives.