There are so many generative AI models out there, from Flux and Luma to Gemini, Runway, Veo, and more. While their primary purpose is generating new content, they’ve also proven useful for editing and enhancing existing images, which can make them valuable tools for photographers.
The problem is that there are so many of these models available, and it can be difficult to keep up with their various functions, features, and benefits. Krea.ai aims to solve that issue by bringing many of the industry’s most popular AI models into a centralized creative AI suite.
Naturally, a platform like this is immensely appealing to digital artists, opening a plethora of opportunities for generating images, videos, and even 3D assets or animations. But if you want to know if it is as useful for the likes of commercial photographers, read my Krea.ai review to find out.
What Does Krea.ai Offer?
Before I look in-depth at some of Krea.ai’s key features, I’ll first provide a broad overview of what this platform actually is.
In a nutshell, Krea.ai is a creative AI suite designed to help users create, enhance, and edit either images, videos, or 3D assets with the power of AI. While it has its own flagship AI model (called Krea 1), the big selling point of this platform is that it also provides access to dozens of other AI models, including:
- Flux
- Luma
- Gemini
- Veo 3.1
- Ideogram
- Runway
Previously, if you wanted to use any of these different AI image generators or video models, you’d have to go to its website, create an account, and sign up for a subscription plan.
The idea behind Krea.ai is to eliminate all of that hassle, centralizing AI access in a single space. So, once you’ve signed up for a Krea.ai account, you can easily switch between different AI generators on the fly, using one for generating images, another for editing them, another for video content, and so on.
Unsurprisingly, Krea.ai has proven popular. The platform claims to have attracted more than 30 million users from over 190 countries, and that includes quite a diverse array of individuals, from casual users just looking to experiment with AI to professional design studios, editors, marketers, and creative teams.
Key Features of Krea.ai for Commercial Photographers
Given that Krea.ai offers access to so many different models, it has a huge range of features and functions, ranging from text-to-image generation to AI video upscaling. For the purposes of this review, however, I want to focus on the features that I feel are most useful and relevant to photographers.
As such, I won’t focus on Krea.ai’s generative capacities, like the ability to make new images, videos, and 3D objects from scratch, but will focus instead on its editing powers. Commercial photographers may like to use some or all of the following key features to fine-tune their images after a shoot.
AI Image Enhancer and Upscaler
When you work in commercial photography, it’s inevitable that you’ll end up with images that aren’t quite at the quality levels you wish they were.
Maybe the lighting let you down on the day of your shoot, or a camera hadn’t quite been configured correctly. Either way, the result is photos that are low quality, low resolution, and lacking in detail, crispness, or clarity.
Typically, you’d have to cull those kinds of images, even the ones that show obvious promise and could clearly have been so much better. However, Krea.ai’s Enhancer feature claims that you don’t have to get rid of low-res pictures; you can simply make them better.
So let’s see if it works.
First, you can choose between any of the available image enhancement models, like Krea Enhance and Topaz Generative. Note, however, that each model has its own cost and ratings in terms of speed and quality, so it’s worth playing around with different options to find your favorites.
Next, you upload the image you want to work with.
I chose a relatively low-grade landscape image which was taken on quite a gray day and lacked the color and energy I’d been hoping to capture.
Once the image was uploaded, I was presented with a range of options to enhance it.
I could upscale the image up to eight times its original resolution, for example, and adjust sliders to control the AI’s strength and the “Resemblance” of the final image to the original. There were sliders for clarity and sharpness, too.
I then clicked the “Enhance” button and waited for the AI to work its magic. This took a few minutes, as I was only using the free Krea.ai plan at the time; premium users should be able to get faster results and won’t have to wait as long.
I was pleased with the final result.
Some of the grainy and distorted areas of the landscape appeared sharper and cleaner after the AI had processed the picture, and the trees also looked clearer and more defined than before.
AI Image Editor
Perhaps the most important feature of Krea.ai from a commercial photography standpoint is its AI image editor. This is where you can upload any images you want to enhance and use AI to make whatever changes you can imagine.
If it works as advertised, it can be more effective than using a conventional editor, as it can do the same kinds of processes but in a fraction of the time. Plus, rather than having to learn and master complex workflows, you should be able to just upload your picture, tell the AI – in simple text – what you want to change, and let it do the hard part.
Let’s see if it completes the task with an illustrated example.
Here, I’ve uploaded quite a simple picture of a living room scene.
As you can see, on the right side, Krea.ai presents me with a range of options.
There’s a text box at the top where I can type in a prompt and tell the AI how to edit the image, as well as a model selection drop-down menu, letting me choose between Flux 2 Klein, Nano Banana, ChatGPT 2, and other popular editing models.
There are also separate features for cropping, expanding, lighting adjustments, changing specific regions of the picture, and even adjusting the camera angle.
To give you an idea of what this tool can do, I asked the AI to change the color of the sofa.
I then asked the AI to change the wall art to a picture of a dog.
Here, we can see how the system isn’t always perfect.
My prompt asked the AI to change the existing picture to one of a dog, which it did, but it also chose to add a second piece of wall art that I hadn’t asked for.
The image still looks impressive and realistic, but this shows how you will have to play around with different models and prompts sometimes to get the exact results you’re hoping for.
Next, I tried using the “Extend” tool which involves using AI to extend the existing image, adding new, AI-generated content to the edges to make a single scene appear larger, broader, and more detailed.
I selected the widest aspect ratio available, then used the Flux Inpaint model to extend the picture.
As you can see, the results are, once more, quite impressive, if a little imbalanced. The AI has worked well on the right side of the image, extending the window and radiator in a natural way, and has also extended the sofa on the left side, but added a curtain in the background that doesn’t quite fit.
Again, this shows how you will need to play around with different models and settings if you have a very specific end result in mind.
If you just want to make light and simple changes, however, like improving lighting, adjusting brightness and contrast, and so on, Krea.ai will deliver great results much more often than not.
Private and Secure by Design
Lastly, if you’re in the commercial photography field, you have to be both security- and privacy-conscious when using any kind of third-party tool like this; you won’t want to upload images to a platform that shares them with other companies or has poor standards of cybersecurity, for example.
Fortunately, Krea.ai appears to take security seriously.
The platform uses end-to-end encryption to protect user data at all times, both at rest and in transit. It also enforces strict data privacy policies and vows to never use customer data to train or improve its own AI models.
For businesses – like commercial photo studios – Krea.ai even offers the ability to create custom data processing agreements (DPAs) that align with your company’s security policies and compliance requirements. On top of this, you retain all commercial rights to any images made/edited with Krea.ai.
Pricing
Given that Krea.ai provides access to so many different AI models (many of which typically come with their own subscription fees), one wouldn’t expect this to be a particularly affordable platform, and the highest-tier plans certainly aren’t cheap.
However, one thing I admire about Krea.ai is that it offers quite a broad range of payment plans to suit users of varying needs. As a result, you don’t need to feel forced into paying over the odds for tools and functions you won’t use, and can opt for a more budget-friendly plan, if that’s all you need.
In fact, Krea.ai even has a completely free plan for new users to try that gives them 100 compute units (essentially credits) per day. You cash them in every time you use an AI-powered function.
You don’t need to enter any credit card information as a free user and you will continue to get more credits each day for testing out the platform’s tools and features. However, some of the more advanced tools and models are off-limits and reserved only for paying customers.
The Basic plan is the next level up, costing just $7 a month if you pay annually. It gives you 5,000 compute units monthly, plus full access to image, 3D, and lip sync models, 4K image editing, and access to video models, too.
The Pro plan is arguably the best all-around plan and the one I’d recommend for professional photographers. It costs $28 per month (paid annually), and gives you access to all models, plus the benefits of workflow automation and 8K image upscaling and enhancements.
Finally, at the highest levels, Krea.ai also offers a flexible Max plan that can give you up to 100,000 compute units monthly (for $84 paid annually), as well as a Business plan ($160 annually) with even more units and custom enterprise pricing for the biggest businesses and creative studios.
The Final Verdict: Is It Worth It for Commercial Photographers?
When I began this Krea.ai review, I could see that this platform had huge potential for those interested in generative AI. Bringing together so many models in a single space is obviously a smart idea and can save digital artists and designers hours of time, and a significant amount of money, too.
However, as a photographer, I’m less interested in AI’s generative powers and more in its editing capacities, and that’s what I wanted to focus on in this review. How effective could Krea.ai be for someone who creates their own work but sometimes needs help fine-tuning it?
Overall, having spent several hours editing images on the platform, I’m impressed.
While commercial photographers won’t necessarily have much interest in a large part of Krea.ai’s feature set, they will no doubt find value in its image enhancements, upscaling, and pinpoint editing abilities.
It can improve bland and simple images and manages to bring out the best in pictures that you might otherwise delete or spend too much time applying complex edits, and does so in a fraction of the time it would usually take with a conventional editor.
It’s an AI image editing assistant that, in some situations, makes your life easier, take on the tasks that you’d rather not waste time with, and power up your editing workflows with ease.
It’s still not for everyone, and you may find that a more editing-oriented platform is more to your liking. But if you want quick and easy access to some of the best AI image editing models, like Nano Banana, with a clean interface, reasonable pricing, and effective results, Krea.ai is absolutely worth considering.
