As a graphic designer for more decades than I care to admit to, it used to take eons to get the image on the left above to look like the one on the right above. If you look closely, you’ll notice the bottle shot was made under studio lights, rather flattening out the image and giving the bottle a bluish cast.

Today, I can click a couple of settings in Photoshop, and it automatically vastly improves the quality of the image on the right. (Would I take it further, erasing the reflections from the studio lighting and making more improvements? Depends upon the client’s budget and priorities.)

It is like Jeannie crossing her arms and blinking her eyes. Magic!

Photoshop offers a number of professional refinements to improve imagery. For example, if that wine bottle on a table absolutely must accompany a meal (but you didn’t shoot it that way with the photographer), you can add it in:

I simply prompted: “Add dinner plates, side dishes, elegant stemware with cabernet, flatware and steak, salad, etc. to this table.” Voila!

Caveat: NOTHING takes the place of a bonafide professional photographer. They run circles around the rest of it when it comes to image composition, lighting, and ultimately producing the most high-quality imagery available.

You get what you pay for!

If, however, a pro photographer’s not in your budget, there are several AI image generation tools available. But just like the difference in shooting on your iPhone using the “Pro” image settings versus hiring a pro photographer, you still need to know how to prompt the program to achieve the image in your mind’s eye.

Here are some of the top AI image generation engines:

• Midjourney is the gold standard in AI image generation. They offer plans beginning at $10/month, 20% discounts are offered for paying a year up front.
• Microsoft just released a new AI image generator with the sexy name, MAI-Image-2, and it’s already unveiling it on Copilot and Bing Image Creator. They tout it provides consistent creation of infographics, slides, diagrams, and more, with little lost between direction and creation. If you don’t already have a free MS account, you can test it out first.
• Reve is another fascinating image generator I urge you to simply explore. They offer both a free subscription and a $20/month that will also produce videos.
• At the Google Gemini 2.5 Flash app, try uploading a selfie and paste a prompt like: “Transform my selfie into a fresh but professional image suitable for a social media profile. Set the lighting to be natural and flattering. Make it look like I’m in a modern office building.”
• Global GPT not only produces AI images but also videos and incorporates all the major automation platforms, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and more.
• Within Google AI Studio, you can produce AI images using Nano Banana and Imagen, among many other features.
• Of course there are other Nano Banana offerings that give options for image aspect ratio, resolution, formats, and volume production.

For some wild effects or practical headhost updates try:

• Canva Face Swap – I used this to swap my face with Rosalind Russell’s in a still from His Girl Friday on my Newsletter Services page. Use it to fix a blink or facial expression. And Canva also has its own Headshot Generator.
• Pixlr Face Swap – Free with registration. See the many templates and styles offered.
• InstaHeadshots – Downloads may have a fee, but you upload 10 selfies for it to create a variety of AI options to get exactly what you’re trying to achieve with an image you don’t have.
• HeadshotPro – Similar. Requires only 3 selfie uploads to create your AI image. Tiered pricing.
• AragonAI – Also similar to HeadshotPro. Requires 6 selfie uploads. Upwards of 45 minutes to get 45 images.

The real question isn’t which platform to use for which image project, but where are my priorities? Learning AI image production, or growing my business? The answer is different for every business owner and perhaps for different projects.