Microsoft Designer (Formerly Bing Image Creator)

Let's start with what I think is the most straight­for­ward and sur­pris­ing­ly pow­er­ful free tool: Microsoft Designer's Image Cre­ator. You might still see it called Bing Image Cre­ator, but it's the same thing. Microsoft built this using the DALL‑E 3 mod­el from Ope­nAI, which is a big deal. It means the qual­i­ty you get for free is gen­uine­ly impres­sive.

What’s the catch?

With free tools, there's always a "catch," right? With Microsoft Design­er, it's pret­ty minor. You need a Microsoft account to use it. Once you're in, you get a num­ber of "boosts," which are basi­cal­ly cred­its that make your images gen­er­ate faster. You get 15 boosts per day with a per­son­al account, and they refill dai­ly. If you run out, you can still make images; they just take a bit longer to show up. Hon­est­ly, for most peo­ple, this is a non-issue. The wait is nev­er that long. Anoth­er thing to know is that Microsoft allows the images you cre­ate to be used for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es, which is a huge plus.

How to actu­al­ly use it

Here’s the step-by-step. It’s sim­ple.

1. Go to the web­site: Just search for "Microsoft Design­er Image Cre­ator" or go to designer.microsoft.com.
2. Sign in: You’ll need to sign in with your Microsoft account. If you don't have one, it's free to cre­ate.
3. Find the prompt box: You'll see a bar at the top where you can type. This is where you tell the AI what you want it to make.
4. Write your prompt: This is the most impor­tant part. Be descrip­tive. Don't just write "a dog." Write "A hap­py gold­en retriev­er pup­py, sit­ting in a field of wild­flow­ers, vibrant col­ors, sun­shine, detailed illus­tra­tion." The more detail you give, the bet­ter the result.
5. Hit 'Gen­er­ate': The tool will cre­ate a few dif­fer­ent images based on your prompt. You can then pick the one you like best and down­load it.

A real-world exam­ple: I want­ed an image for a blog post about cof­fee. Instead of a bor­ing stock pho­to, I typed in: "A cozy café cor­ner on a rainy day, steam ris­ing from a cof­fee mug on a wood­en table, soft light­ing, pho­to­re­al­is­tic." The results were per­fect. They had the exact mood I was going for, some­thing a gener­ic pho­to search would have tak­en for­ev­er to find.

For get­ting bet­ter results, think like you're describ­ing a pic­ture to some­one who can't see. Men­tion the style (like "oil paint­ing," "3D ren­der," or "pix­el art"), the light­ing ("dra­mat­ic light­ing," "soft morn­ing light"), and the com­po­si­tion ("close-up shot," "wide-angle view").

Leonardo.Ai

Next up is Leonardo.Ai. This one feels a bit more like a tool for peo­ple who want to get cre­ative, like artists or design­ers, but it's still very begin­n­er-friend­­ly. Leonar­do gives you a dai­ly allowance of free tokens—150 per day, to be exact. These tokens don't car­ry over, so if you don't use them, you lose them. Gen­er­at­ing an image costs a cer­tain num­ber of tokens, depend­ing on the set­tings you choose.

What makes it dif­fer­ent?

Leonar­do has a few fea­tures that set it apart. First, it has a "Prompt Mag­ic" tool. This fea­ture can take a sim­ple prompt and auto­mat­i­cal­ly add more detail to it, which helps the AI under­stand what you want and often gives you much bet­ter images. It also has a real­ly strong com­mu­ni­ty aspect. You can browse what oth­er peo­ple are cre­at­ing and, more impor­tant­ly, you can see the exact prompts they used to get those results. This is an amaz­ing way to learn how to write bet­ter prompts.

Anoth­er key dif­fer­ence is own­er­ship. If you're on the free plan, Leonardo.Ai tech­ni­cal­ly holds the rights to the images you cre­ate, but they grant you a license to use them com­mer­cial­ly. This is dif­fer­ent from a paid plan, where you retain full own­er­ship. For most casu­al users, this isn't a prob­lem, but it's some­thing to be aware of.

How to get start­ed with Leonardo.Ai

1. Cre­ate an account: Head to the Leonardo.Ai web­site and sign up. You can use a Google, Apple, or Microsoft account to make it quick.
2. Nav­i­gate to Image Gen­er­a­tion: Once you're logged in, look for the "Image Gen­er­a­tion" tool.
3. Write your prompt: Just like with Microsoft Design­er, be spe­cif­ic. A good way to struc­ture it is by list­ing details sep­a­rat­ed by com­mas: Subject, Medium, Style, Color, Lighting. For exam­ple: A wise old owl, detailed digital painting, fantasy style, deep blues and purples, moonlit forest.
4. Choose a mod­el: Leonar­do lets you choose from dif­fer­ent "Fine­tuned Mod­els," each with its own style. For pho­to­re­al­is­tic images, a mod­el like "Absolute Real­i­ty" is a good choice. For more artis­tic or dreamy looks, you could try "Dream Shaper." Exper­i­ment­ing with these is part of the fun.
5. Gen­er­ate and refine: Click gen­er­ate and see what you get. You can adjust set­tings like the num­ber of images to gen­er­ate or the aspect ratio. If the image is close but not quite right, don't start from scratch. Tweak your prompt. Maybe change a sin­gle word, like swap­ping "moon­lit for­est" for "sun-drenched for­est," and see how the mood changes.

Craiyon

Craiy­on (which used to be called DALL‑E mini) is prob­a­bly the most acces­si­ble tool on this list because you don't even need to cre­ate an account. You just go to the web­site and start typ­ing. It's com­plete­ly free and offers unlim­it­ed image gen­er­a­tions.

So, what's the down­side?

The trade-off for this ease of use is image qual­i­ty. The results from Craiy­on are often less detailed and can some­times look a bit dis­tort­ed or blur­ry, espe­cial­ly faces and hands. Also, the free ver­sion has ads and puts a small water­mark on the images. Gen­er­at­ing images can also be a bit slow, some­times tak­ing a minute or two.

But here's why it's still great: Craiy­on is per­fect for exper­i­ment­ing and get­ting ideas quick­ly. Because it's unlim­it­ed, you can try out dozens of prompts with­out wor­ry­ing about using up cred­its. It's a fan­tas­tic start­ing point to fig­ure out what kind of prompt gets you the kind of image you want.

Using Craiy­on effec­tive­ly

1. Go to Craiyon.com: That's it. You're ready to go.
2. Enter your prompt: The prompt box is front and cen­ter. Type in your idea.
3. Use the 'Neg­a­tive Prompt' field: This is a fea­ture I real­ly like. Below the main prompt box, there's a field to type in words for things you don't want to see in your image. For exam­ple, if you're get­ting weird, man­gled text in your images, you can add "text, words, let­ters" to the neg­a­tive prompt. If faces look strange, you might add "deformed face."
4. Choose a style: Craiy­on gives you a few style options like "Art," "Draw­ing," or "Pho­to" to help guide the out­put.
5. Click 'Draw': After a short wait, Craiy­on will show you a grid of nine dif­fer­ent images. This is great because you get a lot of vari­a­tion from a sin­gle prompt. You can then click on the one you like best to see a larg­er ver­sion and down­load it.

I often use Craiy­on for brain­storm­ing. For instance, I need­ed a con­cept for a logo. I typed in "min­i­mal­ist logo for a tech com­pa­ny, a styl­ized fox head, clean lines, vec­tor art." Craiy­on gave me nine dif­fer­ent start­ing points. None of them were per­fect, but a cou­ple had inter­est­ing shapes that I could then refine myself or use as inspi­ra­tion for a more detailed prompt in a high­­er-qual­i­­ty gen­er­a­tor like Leonar­do or Microsoft Design­er.

Ulti­mate­ly, the best tool is the one that fits what you need. If you want high-qual­i­­ty images quick­ly and for free, start with Microsoft Design­er. If you want more cre­ative con­trol and a com­mu­ni­ty to learn from, give Leonardo.Ai a try. And if you just want to play around, exper­i­ment with­out lim­its, and get ideas flow­ing, Craiy­on is the place to go. Just start typ­ing and see what hap­pens.