Disclaimer: what follows is not a technical comparison. It’s honest feedback based on experience. I’ve been a visual content creator for seven years, photographer, motion designer, and sometimes illustrator when a client needs it. Since the rise of generative AI, I’ve tested almost every tool I could get my hands on to understand where these technologies are truly useful in my profession.
Spoiler: it was far more frustrating than I expected.
First Month: Naive Excitement
I started with the mainstream tools. Everyone was talking about them, so I wanted to see what the hype was about.
First came Midjourney. Beautiful image quality, a strong visual identity. But Discord as an interface? Seriously? I spent twenty minutes just trying to understand how to generate a simple variation. Once I figured it out, the results were stunning, except whenever I asked for anything related to the human body. Then everything broke down. Not explicitly, but the AI would systematically produce stiff poses, strange angles, and robotic hands. I dug deeper and discovered that dozens of keywords were silently filtered. No error message, just degraded results.
Then came DALL·E. More accessible technically, directly integrated into ChatGPT. Decent quality, but below Midjourney. And the same censorship problem: impossible to generate anything outside ultra-safe boundaries. Ask for a fashion photo inspired by 90s magazines? Refused. An artistic scene inspired by classical painting with nudity? Refused. I quickly realized these platforms were built for ultra-cautious family-friendly usage, not for professional creators.
Then Stable Diffusion. That’s where things got serious. I spent three days installing ComfyUI, configuring graphic drivers, and downloading models. Once everything worked, it was amazing. Real creative freedom, total control. But how much time had I spent on technical setup instead of actually creating? Too much. Way too much. I’m a creator, not a developer.
During those first weeks, I wrote everything down in a notebook: prompts that worked, prompts that failed, subscription costs, wasted hours. By the end of the first month, my conclusion was clear: 60 euros spent on subscriptions, 12 hours wasted on technical setup, and only three or four truly usable images for real client work. The investment-to-result ratio was terrible. I seriously started doubting the whole thing.
Still, there was one revelation during that month: the potential was real. When a tool actually worked for my specific use case, I could feel how it might transform my workflow. The problem wasn’t the technology itself, it was the commercial ecosystem built around it.
Second Month: The Supposedly “Less Censored” Solutions
I discovered there was an entire ecosystem of tools positioning themselves as less censored than the big American platforms. I thought maybe that was the answer.
I tested five different platforms. No point naming all of them, some have already disappeared since then. But the conclusion was obvious:
Three out of five were pure scams. Poorly designed interfaces, terrible image quality, mandatory payments before even seeing decent results. I lost around 50 euros on subscriptions that were intentionally difficult to cancel.
Another one worked technically, but the output quality was so bad it was unusable for professional work. Distorted faces, broken anatomy, ruined details. I understood why those services remained obscure: they simply didn’t hold up.
The fifth one was decent, but billed through vague credit systems with a poorly translated privacy policy. No way I was uploading my own photos there.
By the end of the second month, I had spent nearly 200 euros and produced zero usable content.
The worst part wasn’t the money, it was losing trust. After two months of disappointment after disappointment, I started wondering whether the entire ecosystem was broken. Specialized forums didn’t help much either. Many positive reviews felt fake or unrealistically enthusiastic. Discord groups were filled with beginners like me sharing frustrations without finding real answers.
I even considered giving up. Going back to traditional tools and accepting that AI simply wasn’t mature enough for serious professional work. But something kept me going: I had seen creators produce incredible results with these technologies. The problem had to be tool selection, not the technology itself.
Third Month: The Discovery
A fellow photographer told me about a French service he had been using for several months. I was skeptical. Another platform to test? I was exhausted.
But he insisted. He showed me his latest client projects: retouched photos with stunning quality, videos generated from simple prompts, all created within minutes. I asked for the name.
He sent me the link: bodyswap to test uncensored AI for free. A French platform he had been using for months for both photography and video projects.
First pleasant surprise: no credit card required to sign up, and enough free credits to genuinely test the platform. I tried it first on a personal project, a series of stylized portraits I had been imagining for months but couldn’t produce with previous tools. Within fifteen minutes, I had my first results. I was blown away.
Second pleasant surprise: the video module. I honestly didn’t think this level of quality was possible on a reasonable budget. Yet from a single image, I generated an eight-second video with realistic movement. For client projects, that changes everything.
Third pleasant surprise: it was French. European hosting, GDPR compliance, support in French whenever I had questions. After my bad experiences with platforms operating under vague jurisdictions, that was reassuring.
Over the following weeks, I tested the tool intensively on client work: retouched fashion photos, short videos for a creative studio, visual prototypes for a Paris agency. Everything worked. My clients were happy, deliveries became faster, and my margins improved. The return on investment I had been hoping for since day one finally became visible.
What I Truly Learned
Three months of testing, nearly 400 euros spent on subscriptions and credits, and dozens of hours wasted on unsuitable tools. Here’s what I learned, and what I wish someone had told me from the beginning.
Mainstream AI tools are not designed for professional creators. Their filters are so aggressive that they block half of all legitimate creative use cases: fashion photography, adult-oriented motion design, medical illustration, conceptual art that pushes boundaries — forget it.
Running Stable Diffusion locally remains the most powerful option, but it requires real technical expertise. If you’re not a developer or don’t want to spend weeks learning, stay away from it. Or prepare a serious budget to pay someone else for setup and maintenance.
Most alternative platforms are mediocre or outright fraudulent. The industry attracted countless opportunists trying to ride the AI wave without delivering real value. Be extremely cautious with YouTube ads and sponsored recommendations.
The few serious platforms share common traits: professional interfaces, clear privacy policies, responsive support, free testing before commitment, and GDPR compliance for European users. If one of these elements is missing, walk away.
My Workflow Today
For my daily work, I’ve stabilized my workflow around two complementary tools.
For highly specific projects requiring advanced technical control, I still use local Stable Diffusion. It’s heavy, but effective.
For roughly 80% of everything else, I use the French platform mentioned earlier. Speed, simplicity, quality — it checks all the boxes. I use it for image rendering, short-form videos, and more recently for their beta audio generation features.
Compared to the cost of outsourcing or professional software alternatives, the pricing is very reasonable. For a freelancer, the return on investment is immediate.
If You’re Just Starting
Here’s my advice if you want to avoid the mistakes I made.
Start by identifying your exact needs. Photos only? Video too? Monthly production volume? Which legal jurisdiction applies to you? These questions sound obvious, but they instantly eliminate half the market.
Here are the most common traps to avoid:
- Mandatory credit card before testing: serious platforms always offer free credits or trial access.
- Unrealistic promises at suspiciously low prices: infrastructure costs are real. If a platform promises premium quality for 5 euros per month, it’s probably lying.
- Vague privacy policies: many services reserve the right to reuse your content for AI training, which is unacceptable for sensitive client projects.
- Nonexistent or robotic customer support: a serious service answers within 48 hours with a real human.
- Unclear legal jurisdiction: if you’re in Europe, prioritize GDPR-compliant European providers.
This checklist alone would have saved me hundreds of euros and dozens of wasted hours.
Final Thoughts
Nobody paid me to write this. No one contacted me asking for it. This is simply the conclusion of three exhausting yet ultimately rewarding, months of experimentation.
The industry is still maturing. Serious tools are gradually emerging while scams are slowly disappearing under competitive pressure and honest user feedback. Within a year or two, the landscape will probably become much clearer for newcomers.
Until then, it’s up to you to avoid the traps I fell into.
Good luck.