I Gave the Same Idea to 6 AI Image Generators

I had one idea.

A lone lighthouse on a cliff at night. Storm rolling in. Light cutting through the fog.

Simple, visual, cinematic. The kind of image that should be easy for any AI to nail.

So I typed the same description — word for word — into six different AI image generators and hit generate on all of them.

The results were not what I expected.

The Prompt I Used

Here’s exactly what I typed into each tool:

“A lone lighthouse on a dramatic rocky cliff at night, violent storm approaching, lightning on the horizon, beam of light cutting through thick fog, crashing waves below, cinematic wide shot, photorealistic, highly detailed”

Same words. Same punctuation. Six tools. Here’s what happened.

ChatGPT (GPT Image)

ChatGPT gave me the most literal interpretation. The lighthouse was there, the storm was there, the fog was there — everything I asked for, placed exactly where you’d expect it. Clean. Accurate. A little safe.

What surprised me: the lightning was spectacular. Sharp, branching, genuinely dramatic. Text-in-image has always been ChatGPT’s strength, but apparently dramatic weather is too.

What this taught me: ChatGPT is your most reliable tool when accuracy matters. It won’t surprise you — but it also won’t disappoint you.

Prompt tweak that improved it: Adding “shot on a Canon EOS R5, anamorphic lens flare, teal and orange color grade” pushed it from accurate to cinematic.

Google Gemini

Gemini’s output felt the most like a photograph someone actually took. The rocks had texture. The water looked cold. The lighthouse looked like it had been standing there for a hundred years and had the weathering to prove it.

Where it stumbled: the storm felt distant. Dramatic on paper, but the emotional weight of “violent storm approaching” didn’t quite land the way I imagined.

What this taught me: Gemini responds better to scene direction than mood description. Don’t tell it the storm is violent — describe what a violent storm looks like in physical terms.

Prompt tweak that improved it: Replacing “violent storm approaching” with “walls of rain visible on the horizon, whitecaps on black water, purple-green storm sky” made an immediate difference.

Midjourney

This is where things got interesting.

Midjourney didn’t give me a photograph. It gave me a painting — specifically, the kind of painting that hangs in a maritime museum and makes you stop walking. Deep contrast. Almost theatrical lighting. The lighthouse wasn’t just in the scene, it owned the scene.

It also added things I didn’t ask for: a faint ship on the horizon, barely visible through the fog. A detail I never specified, but one that made the image feel like it had a story.

What this taught me: Midjourney fills in narrative gaps with its own creative instinct. Sometimes that’s annoying. In this case, it was the best thing in the image.

Prompt tweak that improved it: Adding “—style raw —ar 16:9” stripped away some of Midjourney’s default beautification and made it feel rawer and more authentic.

Adobe Firefly

Firefly gave me the most polished, commercially usable image of the group. Crisp. High resolution. The kind of image you could drop into a travel magazine or a hotel website without any editing.

What it lacked: soul. Everything was technically correct but somehow too perfect. The storm didn’t feel threatening. The waves were impressive but not dangerous. It was a lighthouse image for a calendar, not a thriller.

What this taught me: Firefly is exceptional for professional, brand-safe work. For raw emotion or dramatic storytelling, it needs more help.

Prompt tweak that improved it: Adding “inspired by Turner’s seascape paintings, dramatic impasto texture, emotionally intense” pulled Firefly away from its default commercial polish.

Stable Diffusion (FLUX)

The most unpredictable of the six — and the most interesting to iterate with. My first result was oddly dark, almost horror-adjacent. The lighthouse looked abandoned. The storm felt less “approaching” and more “already here and destroying everything.”

I actually liked it more than the prompt deserved.

What this taught me: Stable Diffusion interprets prompts with the most creative latitude. What reads as a flaw in one context is a feature in another. If you want to be surprised, this is your tool.

Prompt tweak that improved it: Adding a negative prompt — “no people, no text, no extra structures, no blurry areas” — cleaned up the weirdness and let the drama breathe.

Ideogram

Ideogram surprised me. I didn’t expect much from a tool known primarily for text-in-image work — but its lighthouse output had a distinctly illustrated quality, almost like a book cover. The composition was unusually strong, with the lighthouse placed off-center in a way that felt intentional rather than accidental.

It’s not the tool I’d reach for first for photorealism. But for editorial illustration or poster design? It’s seriously underrated.

What this taught me: Don’t box tools into one use case. Ideogram’s strengths translate beyond typography.

What Six Outputs Taught Me About Prompting

After running the same prompt through six tools and tweaking each one, here’s what I know now that I didn’t before:

1. “Mood” words need to be translated into physical details. “Violent storm” means nothing to an AI. “Walls of rain, whitecaps on black water, purple-green sky” means everything. Describe what the mood looks like, not what it feels like.

2. Every tool has a default aesthetic — and you have to push past it. ChatGPT defaults to accuracy. Midjourney defaults to beauty. Firefly defaults to polish. Gemini defaults to realism. Know the default, then write your way past it.

3. The best prompt isn’t the longest — it’s the most specific. I improved every single output not by adding more words, but by replacing vague words with precise ones.

4. Your first generation is a rough draft. Not one of my six first outputs was the best version of the image. Every single one improved with one targeted tweak. Treat your first result as a starting point, not a final answer.

The Final Prompt (After All Six Rounds of Testing)

Here’s what I ended up with after iterating — the version that worked best across all tools:

“A solitary lighthouse on storm-battered black rocks, walls of rain sweeping across dark churning water, purple-green storm sky broken by a single bolt of lightning, beam of white light cutting through rolling fog, crashing surf catching the flash, cinematic wide angle, photorealistic, Rembrandt-level dramatic lighting, deep shadows and luminous highlights, ultra-detailed, award-winning photography”

The difference between that and my original prompt? Seven more specific details. Zero extra vague words.

Skip the Six Rounds of Testing

The process above took me an afternoon. If you’d rather start with prompts that have already been refined and tested across every major tool, GetPromptSnap.com is a free AI prompt generator with thousands of prompts that are already past the rough draft stage.

No signup. No cost. Just prompts that work from the first generation.

👉 Browse the free prompt library at GetPromptSnap.com

GetPromptSnap.com — Free AI image prompts, already tested so you don’t have to.