The prompt comes last.
Taste comes first.

Nine models, and not one of them does everything. The choice comes before the prompt: what I want from the image decides the tool, and every tool asks to be written for differently.

Which model for what

• Seedream 5 Pro — when the image has to pass as a photograph
• Soul 2.0 — when the image is a place, not a face cut out of one
• Nano Banana Lite 2 — when I want to generate many, cheaply, and choose afterwards
• Recraft V4.1 — when the result goes into a layout, not into an album
• Flux.2 Pro — when the image has to survive a close crop
• Grok Imagine 2.0 — still an early test here
• Ideogram 4 — when I describe the scene in prose, not as a list
• Krea 2 — when I do not want to direct the light
• Luma Uni-1.1 — when the prompt is short and the framing is everything