Comparison of Recraft and Adobe Illustrator

Adobe has updated its generative tools, and Illustrator even has new ones, now you can fill a vector form with generation and create patterns. I decided to make a full comparison with another vector neural network that many people love, Recraft.

Content:

Generating a simple line
Generating the filling of this line
Creating a series in a single style
Logos
Patterns
Mockups
Licenses
Additional comments and results

For each point, I will traditionally assign points from 0 to 1. Let's get started.

1. Generating a simple line

And to begin with, I took the most popular topic possible – Christmas aka New Year in the person of Santa Claus. Here we can immediately see the basic difference between the two neurons – the settings.

There are several styles in Recraft, divided into sections. Since we start with something simple, we need Line Art. And the prompt will be short – Santa Claus.

Adobe settings are of a different kind. There are basic effects, but none of them are what you need, so the prompt will be a little more complicated — male Santa Claus, line art style. Why did I add maleI'll explain a little later. I moved the detail slider to the minimum in order to create the most simplified picture.

Result:

Now let's take a closer look. I thought that Recarft creates contours with line art, but it turns out that it doesn't. These are white shapes on a black background, which is inconvenient in this case, but they are very neat and can be turned into contour fills with a couple of buttons:

Meanwhile, in Adobe, stroke lines are created as objects, i.e. also not contours. By the way, the style of this generation is more suitable for the task, but the lines are crooked and not connected to each other:

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
1	0

2. Generate the filling of this line

In Recraft we can modify the original image, so let's use it. Fine-tune button. Here we set the strength of the original image. I left it in the middle.

Result:

Here, too, all objects are broken down into color blocks and there is not a single outline. But unlike the previous generation, here it seems to me to be the most appropriate. As you can see, everything looks quite symmetrical and smooth.

In Adobe, as I wrote above, this is a new function – Generative fill of a figure. Here I removed the token from the prompt line art styleso as not to interfere.

Result:

Just in case, I'll zoom in, for the sake of completeness. I specifically highlighted the objects so that you could see the curvature of the joints, especially on the contours (the cap). And the clumsy snowflake-diamonds deserve special attention:

The illustration can be called good, but only for social networks and small printed media like business cards. Porting it to some large media is not the best idea. Not that it is trash and shameful, but it will take a long time to edit the jambs. The higher the detail settings, the more such artifacts, for example:

Now I'm going back to why you need to write in the prompt male. If this token is missing, 1-2 generations out of 3 (and Lustra generates in triplets) will definitely become effeminate.

This took me back to kindergarten, where the teachers dressed up as Santa Claus for the New Year, and I exposed them, which really pissed everyone off.

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
1	0

3. Creating a series in a single style

As we have already understood, in Recraft there is an opportunity to create images from a reference, BUT it takes away details rather than style, and the Snow Maiden turns out with a beard. Therefore, we leave the reference at the average value and add a color palette from the grandfather (and then pray). I changed the style to Vector art.

As a result we get relatives, but distant ones:

Recraft has another feature for creating an image in a single style, but you can't attach references to it at all. It's called the function Image Set. You can create it in it before 6 images in a single style according to the prompts and add the necessary colors:

The result is a family like this:

And if the “dancing colors” can be easily corrected, then the devil crawls out of the details very aggressively:

For example, the pattern on the deer had to be cleaned up, since it is much easier to remove these crooked diamonds and strange spots than to fix them. The same thing with the Christmas tree and the sleigh:

Let's move on to Adobe. There is no set function here, but there is a reference style:

Result:

It takes the style very well, unlike Recraft (colors, drawing, contours), although there are questions about why the image became round (all generations, not just one):

It is important to clarify that here the generation of the number of images in a single style is not limited.

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
0	1

4. Logos

In Rekraft the logo is implemented in a separate style. Continuing the Christmas theme, I decided to create a logo for the company “Happy Santa”.

Spoiler: I would give both of them -1 here. Logo section in Recraft doesn't listen to the prompt at all, there are always only two colors and essentially monochrome iconography. In Adobe there is no logo style as such, there is only icon customization and the more details in the prompt, the worse the generation.

A series of images is created at once, a kind of adaptive one:

There is no logo creation function as such in Adobe at all, you can only create thematic icons. And here the only powerful advantage of Adobe over Recraft is revealed: when creating icons, editable contours are generated – lines, while in Recraft these are ALWAYS fills. I have highlighted for demonstration:

I decided to vote for Adobe purely for the icons.

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
0	1

5. Patterns

In Recraft, patterns are implemented only within the Logo section and are created by the logo pack:

In Adobe, patterns look good from a distance:

And up close you can see not only artifacts, but also joints that shouldn’t be there:

It's also worth mentioning that there are only a couple of styles available for patterns at the moment and there is no option to use references.

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
0	1

6. Mockups

In Recraft there is a separate section for this, where you can create a mockup object directly in the neural network and apply an image generated there to it. Here are the instructions.

There are no layer masks here, so the editing is very conditional, only the size is slightly tightened. I wanted a smaller pattern and only on the fabric part of the sneakers, but alas. It copes better with T-shirts and mugs.

With Adobe it's just death. Again, it stretches easily on T-shirts and mugs, but with sneakers it's a disaster. I generated the sneakers themselves in Midjorni.

The most that Adobe has is a few ready-made layouts of clothes and objects.

Recraft	Adobe Illustrator
1	0

7. Licenses

Well, the most difficult thing, unloved by many, but important in my subjective opinion.

Recraft

Free tariff:

Users can use the created images for personal or commercial purposes, but all rights to the images remain with Recraft. This means that Recraft and other users can also use your image, and the user does not have the right to sell such pictures on stocks.

Paid plan ($25):

Paid plan users receive full rights to the images they create using the service for their personal or commercial use.

You can find out more about this read here.

Adobe

Free tarifftaken under the black flag, does not allow the use of generative tools.

Paid plan (from $23):

The user cannot use the generated images to train any AI.
“In general, you may use the results of generative functions for commercial purposes. However, if Adobe specifies in a product or elsewhere that a beta generative function may not be used for commercial purposes, then the generated results of that beta function are for personal use only and may not be used for commercial purposes.”

The most unpleasant thing here is that Adobe has a lot of similar pages with explanations, licenses, manuals, etc. It seems that the most relevant information on this issue is lies here. It is worth considering that Adobe always has a lot of “ifs” and “buts”, and Recraft is constantly introducing updates (they initially did not have a personal agreement on the site at all).

For residents of countries on the sanctions list, both services are difficult to pay for.