Which AI image tools are best for generating horizontal 'landscape' images? Here are four to choose from.
A huge number of AI-powered image generation tools have sprung up over the past couple of years. Most of these tools, such as DALL-E 2, generate square images (i.e. images with a 1:1 aspect ratio). But what if you want to generate landscape images instead?
I don't mean images of a landscape, but images with landscape orientation - wider than they are tall, otherwise known as horizontal images. 'Featured images' for blog posts or website articles are usually landscape, as are images for social media, so it's a common requirement. The size I most often use in both situations is 1200x630px, which has an aspect ratio of a little over 1.9:1. So here are four AI tools that enable you to generate landscape images:
The first tool I used regularly for generating landscape images is Lexica with its Aperture model. On the prompt screen there's a slider to set your image dimensions, from landscape (on the left) to square (in the middle) and finally portrait (on the right). The landscape sizes available are:
There are a couple of downsides with Lexica: first, you must sign up for an account in order to use the tool. Second, the free plan is very limited - allowing just 16 images per month (I believe it used to be 100, and the 'Account' page says this). As images are generated in sets of four, you'll soon run out of allowance.
After that, you'll need to move to a paid plan. The Starter plan costs $8 per month and allows 1,000 generations - but not for commercial use.
More recently I've moved over to using Stable Diffusion XL (an open source model) through Clipdrop. On the prompt screen, click on the options icon to select an aspect ratio:
The landscape sizes available are:
So you can see that Clipdrop/Stable Diffusion XL offers a wider variety of landscape sizes than Lexica/Aperture. Where both tools offer the same ratio, for example 3:2, Clipdrop provides a slightly larger image - which allows for more detail. Finally, the 'Cinematic', 'Widescreen' and 'Landscape' sizes are all easily croppable down to that commonly used size of 1200x630px.
Clipdrop has some other advantages too. There's no need to register, and as a free user you can generate 400 images a day - not a limit I've ever hit.
That said, there are a couple of downsides to being a free user. When you generate an image, you'll be placed in a queue (though I've never had to wait more than 20 seconds or so). You'll also have to tolerate Clipdrop adding a small watermark to the bottom corner of your images:
Signing up for a 'Pro' account at £7.90 per month (or £60 per year) removes both of these restrictions:
As a third option, you could look at Hotpot's AI Art Generator. It offers a number of landscape aspect ratios:
That final aspect ratio, 4:1, is the most panoramic aspect ratio I've come across for any tool so far.
Hotpot is free to use if you want to generate square images, but those landscape sizes all cost credits (ranging from 1 credit for 5:4 through to 10 credits for 4:1).
Generating a non-square image with Hotpot costs credits
Credits can be purchased in a bundle of 1,000 for $12, or obtained as part of a monthly subscription costing $10 upwards.
I would suggest testing out the tool with square images first to make sure you are happy with its art styles before taking the leap and paying for credits.
Finally, online image editing tool Pixlr X has also added an AI image generator to its offering. It has three aspect ratios - wide, square and tall:
The 'wide' aspect ratio (the only landscape one) generates an image with dimensions of 768x512px (3:2).
Admittedly, this is quite a small image. But at least it's super-easy to then open the generated image in the Pixlr X image editor and make further changes such as cropping, adding text, or changing saturation and temperature. So it depends on your requirements really.
Pixlr provides five free AI image generations each day if you are registered, and the same if you sign up for a free account. Note that the unregistered limit is based on a cookie, so it's effectively a limit per device.
To increase the daily limit, you'll need a paid subscription. This starts at $1.99 per month ($9 annual) for a 'Plus account' which give you other benefits such as going ad-free and being able to save unlimited images in the editor.
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