Image & Video

Leonardo AI Review 2026 — The Best AI Image Generator You've Never Heard Of?

By Alex · Updated May 26, 2026 · AI Pickz

How we tested: Standard plan tested of Leonardo AI over multiple days. Full methodology on my About page.

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7 min read

Midjourney gets the hype. DALL-E has the brand recognition. But Leonardo AI has quietly been building one of the most powerful AI image generation platforms on the market, with features even its bigger rivals don't offer. I spent two weeks putting Leonardo through its paces: real-time generation, game asset creation, image-to-image, custom model training, and the new video features. .

What Is Leonardo AI?

Leonardo AI started in 2022 as a specialized tool for game asset generation, but it's grown into a full-featured AI creative suite. The platform offers text-to-image, real-time canvas (generate as you draw), image-to-image, character reference (consistent characters across generations), motion generation (animate still images), and custom model training (fine-tune on your own dataset).

It runs on a credit system. The free tier gives you 150 credits per day (each generation costs 1-20 credits depending on model and resolution). Paid plans start at $12/month for 1,080 credits. For context, the Phoenix model at 1024x1024 costs about 5 credits per generation, so free users can generate roughly 30 high-quality images per day.

Test 1: Text-to-Image. Phoenix Model

The Phoenix model is Leonardo's flagship. I tested it across a range of prompts: "A cyberpunk street market at night, neon reflections in puddles, photorealistic, 8K," "A watercolor painting of a Japanese temple in autumn," and "A steampunk airship docked at a Victorian train station."

The results were consistently strong. Style adherence was excellent, the cyberpunk prompt gave me proper neon glow, wet pavement reflections, and atmospheric fog. The watercolor prompt produced genuine watercolor texture, not just a filter slapped on a digital image. The steampunk airship had coherent mechanical details that held up under zoom.

Compared to Midjourney: Leonardo's Phoenix matches Midjourney v6 on photorealism but edges ahead on style diversity. Midjourney has a distinct "Midjourney look" — glossy, saturated, painterly. Leonardo is more flexible. Want hyperrealistic product photography? Leonardo delivers. Want a flat vector illustration? Same model handles it naturally, without you fighting the default aesthetic.

Caveat: Faces are still hit-or-miss. Leonardo struggles with group shots, someone's face will be slightly off, eyes misaligned, or features blurry. Single portraits are fine, but three or more people in a frame and the AI starts hallucinating anatomy.

Test 2: Real-Time Canvas. Draw and Generate Simultaneously

This is Leonardo's standout feature. You open a blank canvas, start painting rough shapes with a brush, and the AI fills in the details in real-time as you draw. It's like having an art director inside Photoshop who reads your mind.

I drew a rough green circle on a brown rectangle. The AI turned it into a tree on a hill, with sky and grass, in about 200 milliseconds per frame. I added a blue squiggle, it became a river. I erased part of the sky, clouds appeared. Every brushstroke changes the output instantly.

This is useful for concept artists and game designers who want to iterate fast. You can rough out a scene composition in seconds, then keep refining until the AI gives you something worth polishing.

Test 3: Custom Model Training

Leonardo lets you train your own model on as few as 10 images. I uploaded 12 photos of a specific art style, retro sci-fi book covers from the 1970s, and trained a custom model in about 15 minutes.

The results were surprisingly good. Generations using my custom model captured the pulp aesthetic: muted colors, airbrushed shading, dramatic lighting, and that specific 70s typography vibe (even on elements that weren't text). It's less flexible than a full Stable Diffusion LoRA setup, but for a web-based tool, it's incredibly accessible. Any designer can train a model without touching a command line.

Limit: You only get one active custom model on the free plan, and training takes a chunk of your daily credits. The model also degrades if you train it on too many unrelated images, stick to 10-20 tightly themed images for best results.

Test 4: Image-to-Image and Inpainting

Upload an image, describe what you want changed, and Leonardo regenerates it. I took a photo of a plain white coffee mug and prompted: "Make it a ceramic mug with a hand-painted floral pattern, morning sunlight from the left."

The result was convincing. The AI preserved the mug's shape, handle, and shadow while adding floral details and changing the lighting direction. The pattern looked painted on, not pasted. For product photography, this could save hours of reshoots.

I also tested inpainting (select an area and regenerate it). I removed a power line from a landscape photo by selecting it and typing "remove." It took about 5 seconds and the fill was seamless, better than Canva's Magic Eraser, nearly as good as Photoshop's Generative Fill.

Test 5: Motion Generation (AI Video)

Leonardo's motion feature turns still images into short animations. I took a generated image of a woman walking on a beach and applied the "walk cycle" motion preset. The result was a 4-second looping video where the character walks in place, hair moving, waves rolling. It's not Runway Gen-3 quality, the motion is jerky and the character's legs sometimes clip through each other, but for social media content and game sprite mockups, it's usable.

Real Stories

Marcus, a solo game developer from Melbourne, uses Leonardo for all his game's art. "I can't afford a full-time artist. I trained a custom model on my character concepts, and now I generate consistent assets across all my scenes, weapons, environments, UI elements. The real-time canvas alone saved me three months of iteration time. I launched my game's Steam page last month with art that looks like a small studio made it." His complaint? "The character consistency isn't perfect. Same face, different pose, the AI changes proportions slightly every time. I still have to fix anatomy in Photoshop."

Priya, a freelance illustrator in Mumbai, uses Leonardo as a brainstorming tool. "Client briefs are often vague. I use Leonardo to generate 20 visual directions in 10 minutes, pick the three strongest, and present them. Clients love seeing options, and I get to the final design faster. But I never use AI output as final art, it's always a starting point. My paid work is still 100% hand-drawn."

The Downsides

Final Verdict

Leonardo AI is the most versatile AI image generator that professionals should actually consider. The real-time canvas and custom model training are innovative features that no other major platform offers in a web interface. If you're a game developer, concept artist, or designer who needs to generate lots of images with specific styles, Leonardo gives you more control than Midjourney or DALL-E.

But it's not for everyone. Casual users who want "generate a pretty picture and move on" will find Midjourney's UX smoother and its results more consistently beautiful out of the box. The credit system is also a real friction point, every generation feels like you're spending tokens, which kills the playful experimentation vibe that makes AI image generation fun.

For professionals who need control, consistency, and the ability to train the AI on their own styles? Leonardo is the best option right now. Just budget for the $36/month plan if you're using it daily.

Tested May 2026 on Leonardo AI Web Platform. Features may vary by plan level. Free tier available with daily credit cap.

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