Back in November, I tested the image generation capabilities within Google’s Gemini, which was powered by the Imagen 3 model. While I liked it, I ran into its limitations pretty quickly. Google recently rolled out its successor — Imagen 4 — and I’ve been putting it through its paces over the last couple of weeks.
I think the new version is definitely an improvement, as some of the issues I had with Imagen 3 are now thankfully gone. But some frustrations still remain, meaning the new version isn’t quite as good as I’d like.
How often do you create images with AI? 64 votes It's a daily thing for me. 6 % Maybe once per week. 16 % A few times per month. 31 % Never. 47 %
So, what has improved?
The quality of the images produced has generally improved, though the improvement isn’t massive. Imagen 3 was already generally good at creating images of people, animals, and scenery, but the new version consistently produces sharper, more detailed images.
When it comes to generating images of people — which is only possible with Gemini Advanced — I had persistent issues with Imagen 3 where it would create cartoonish-looking photos, even when I wasn’t asking for that specific style. Prompting it to change the image to something more realistic was often a losing battle. I haven’t experienced any of that with Imagen 4. All the images of people it generates look very professional — perhaps a bit too much, which is something we’ll touch on later.
One of my biggest frustrations with the older model was the limited control over aspect ratios. I often felt stuck with 1:1 square images, which severely limited their use case. I couldn’t use them for online publications, and printing them for a standard photo frame was out of the question.
While Imagen 4 still defaults to a 1:1 ratio, I can now simply prompt it to use a different one, like 16:9, 9:16, or 4:3. This is the feature I’ve been waiting for, as it makes the images created far more versatile and usable.
Imagen 4 also works a lot more smoothly. While I haven’t found it to be noticeably faster — although a faster model is reportedly in the works — there are far fewer errors. With the previous version, Gemini would sometimes show an error message, saying it couldn’t produce an image for an unknown reason. I have received none of those with Imagen 4. It just works.
Still looks a bit too retouched
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