Nano Banana Gets You Halfway, This Tool Gets You Done

I used to bounce between three or four different tools just to finish a single visual. Recraft changed that. Here’s how.

Oct 30, 2025

TL;DR

This is my hands-on review of Recraft, a design platform that brings image generation, editing, and vector design into one workspace, replacing the usual shuffle between different tools.

Here’s what stood out while testing (you’ll see my examples later on):

Consistent and custom styles — keep every asset on-brand by applying built-in or custom visual styles
Vector and color precision — generate or convert to editable SVGs, recolor elements with exact hex codes, and maintain brand palettes
Mockup and poster creation — turn ideas or products into realistic visuals for campaigns, packaging, or presentations
Photorealistic generation — create marketing-ready imagery that looks natural, not “AI-made”
Post-generation editing tools — outpaint, inpaint, remove backgrounds, adjust proportions, or refine elements directly in place

This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Recraft, but all opinions and examples are my own.

I’m not a graphic designer. But like most people working online today — whether you’re a marketer, content creator, entrepreneur, or just someone selling something — I spend a surprising amount of time doing design work every week.

Thumbnails for articles. Graphics for social posts. Mockups for presentations. Brand assets that need to look consistent.

But the design workflow is messy. It’s a constant shuffle between tools and tabs: one for generating, another for resizing, another for removing backgrounds or fixing small details, and a few more open for inspiration.

If you’ve ever done any kind of design work, you’ll know what I mean.

Take article thumbnails, for example. I usually go to Nano Banana to create a visual. If I want to tweak it, I can’t fully control or edit the elements precisely, so it becomes a lot of hit or miss. Then I open Canva to resize it for Substack’s aspect ratio, since Nano Banana doesn’t match it exactly. I also use it to remove the watermark Gemini adds or make other quick post-generation edits.

Social posts are worse. I open Canva, search for templates, tweak endlessly, browse stock photos or generate new images, try to match colors manually to my brand, make multiple versions, and hope it looks consistent enough. It’s a lot of patchwork just to get a single final visual.

So when I heard about a tool that could bring all those scattered steps into one creative workspace, I had to try it.

And my first reaction was: I’ve been looking for a tool like this for so long.

If I’m getting this much value as someone who just needs to create visuals occasionally, I can only imagine what it’s like for designers and creatives who do this work every day.

And I’m clearly not the only one who feels this. Recraft is used by more than 5 million people around the world and has been holding the #1 spot on popular benchmarks for months this year, outperforming even DALL-E and Midjourney. Teams at companies like Ogilvy, HubSpot, Netflix, Asana, and Airbus use it too.

So today I’ll show you what’s possible with Recraft and share a few examples of what I’ve created using it.

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What Recraft is and who’s it for

Recraft is an image generation model with an integrated design tool. Instead of bouncing between multiple platforms, you generate and edit in one workspace.

What I like most about it is how much of it works through prompts. As someone without a design degree who doesn’t always know the rules of composition or layout, being able to describe what I want in plain English is huge. We’re used to prompting for image generation, but precise editing through prompts? That changes the game.

And it’s not just useful for people like me. Different types of people will find different kinds of value in it:

Designers, illustrators, creative teams
Creating with Recraft gives you real control without constantly jumping between tools. You can keep styles consistent across icon sets, illustrations, and brand systems, work with precise color palettes, create clean vectors, and edit directly in place. Custom styles keep textures, characters, and compositions aligned across projects, and vector output makes everything print-ready.
Marketers and sellers
Skip the stock photo hunt and the back-and-forth with external tools. Recraft lets you generate photorealistic campaign visuals, swap product backgrounds, and keep everything on brand. It’s ideal for product mockups, ads, emails, and landing pages where speed matters but quality can’t slip.
Content creators and founders
Recraft turns what usually takes multiple platforms into one clean workflow. You can prompt the layout, outpaint for different formats, refine with lasso or inpainting, and export ready-to-use assets. It’s perfect for thumbnails, social posts, pitch decks, product previews, and everything in between.

Three of my favorite use cases

Let me show you three of my favorite ways to use Recraft.

For each one, you’ll find a short video walkthrough of how I created it, along with a breakdown of the features I used and other ways you can apply the same workflow to your own projects.

1. Design any kind of visual (and fine-tune it with precision editing)

For this first example, I designed a simple postcard-style visual of a fictional desert library.
What made the process smooth was being able to set the final aspect ratio from the start, place clean text directly on the visual without worrying about placement or messy lettering, and then make quick edits after generation (like removing or adding objects) without restarting the design from scratch.

Key features I used:

Image generation + styling to create the base visual and pick the look I wanted
Frame setup to set the aspect ratio right from the start
Text can be added directly on the canvas or prompted into the visual, with clean, accurate lettering
Prompting for layout to combine everything into a single composition
Editing tools to make quick adjustments without regenerating

Where this is useful:

For designers and illustrators: posters, covers, and any visual that needs clean composition and precise editing.
For marketers and sellers: campaign visuals, mockups, ads, and other assets that need to look polished fast.
For creators and founders: thumbnails, blog visuals, and presentation assets that usually require juggling multiple tools.

2. Create product mockups from scratch

For this second example, I created a fictional specialty coffee brand called Roast & Toast to test the mockup workflow.
Within minutes, I had a logo and product mockups placed in different backgrounds, ready for marketing use. What I liked most was how quickly I could go from idea to a polished, realistic visual. The outpainting feature is also one of the best I’ve tried for extending and adapting scenes without breaking the composition.

Key features I used:

Product Photo style to generate the base image
Logo creation style to generate the logo (I used the “Handwritten Logo” style in this example)
Make Mockup to place the logo onto the product and adjust its position
Change background to generate different visual backgrounds for the product through prompts
AI outpainting to expand the image

Where this is useful:

For ecommerce brands: realistic product mockups, packaging visuals, and catalog-ready images
For marketers and designers: ads, campaign visuals, and lifestyle product shots that feel authentic
For creatives and entrepreneurs: early product concepts, portfolio showcases, or merch previews without needing Photoshop

3. Create your own custom style (and keep your visuals consistent every time)

For this third example, I created a custom style for my “Ahead with AI” series.
I wanted thumbnails that looked more cinematic and photorealistic than my usual Thursday articles. Now I can recreate that exact look every single time, without manually adjusting colors, textures, or layout.

Key features I used:

Custom style builder (in the Create New menu under “Style”) to upload reference images and build a consistent visual identity you can reuse in future generations

Where this is useful:

For designers and illustrators: maintaining a consistent visual identity across projects and campaigns
For marketers and creators: producing brand-safe, cohesive assets without redoing colors or textures every time
For teams and clients: building reusable, shared styles to keep visuals aligned across content and formats

More ways to use Recraft

If you liked these examples, you’ll probably enjoy a few of Recraft’s own tutorials and demos. They go much deeper into what’s possible and give you more ideas to experiment with.

One Photo → Full Brand Shoot: Start with a single photo, recreate multiple variations in the same style, then place your product in them for a complete professional photoshoot
Nano Banana Image Editing: Use external AI models for natural language editing, like changing hair color or swapping elements in photos.

And if you want a closer look at how everything works, watch the Recraft walkthrough to see the full workflow in action.

A breakdown of Recraft’s main capabilities

Up to this point, I’ve shown you a few of my favorite workflows and how I used Recraft to build visuals, mockups, and custom styles. But that is only part of what it can do.

What makes Recraft stand out is how much control it gives you over every stage of the design process: generation, editing, consistency, and delivery.

Here are some of the features that make it powerful.

Consistent visual styles

One of the hardest parts of design is keeping everything aligned when you create multiple assets over time. Recraft makes that easier. You can apply the same preset style, create image sets for related assets, or train your own custom style.

Keep logos, icons, and illustrations visually aligned without regenerating from scratch
Build a distinctive visual language for your brand or client
Reuse styles across campaigns or product lines to keep everything cohesive

Precise color control

Colors are a big part of brand identity. Recraft gives you full control over color palettes during both generation and editing.

Apply predefined or custom color palettes with exact hex values
Extract colors from any image and build a matching palette
Recolor vector illustrations or grouped elements in one step

This is especially helpful for teams that work with strict brand guidelines or accessibility requirements.

Vector art and vectorization

This is one of Recraft’s most unique strengths. You can not only convert raster images (PNG, JPG) into fully scalable, editable SVG vector graphics, but also generate new vector graphics directly from prompts.

Scale designs infinitely without quality loss
Adjust and recolor specific elements directly
Revive legacy assets or hand-drawn sketches into clean, print-ready files

This is a big win if you work with logos, print materials, or any format that needs sharp, clean lines.

Natural photorealism

Most AI-generated images still have a recognizable “AI look”. Recraft’s photorealism styles produce marketing-ready imagery that feels natural and editorial.

Create lifestyle product photography that looks real
Adjust the artistic level for different outputs, from stock-style clean to editorial shots
Generate visuals that can be used directly in campaigns without heavy post-production

Post-generation editing

This is one of the features that changed my workflow the most. Instead of starting over, you can refine what you already have.

Lasso, erase, clone, and brush tools for precise local edits
Outpainting to adapt an image to a new aspect ratio (perfect for different platforms)
Inpainting to adjust details like facial expressions or remove unwanted elements
Integrated natural language editing with external models like Nano Banana or GPT-4o for quick changes without manual clicking

Custom style creation

Once you find a visual direction that works, you do not need to rebuild it each time. You can upload reference images, adjust their influence, and save a reusable style that locks in your visual identity.

Build branded styles for your business, clients, or projects
Control how much layout versus color or texture gets reused
Share saved styles across your team so everyone works from the same foundation

Want to try it?

Check out Recraft. Their free tier gives you plenty of room to explore the platform, test the core tools, and create up to three images a day.

If you want full creative control, the Pro plan starts at $12 per month and gives you private projects, commercial usage rights, 4K creative upscaling, and access to external models like Nano Banana, GPT-4o, and Flux.

And if you end up creating something with it, I’d love to hear how it goes.

AI blew my mind

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