>Does being easier not influence whether it's better?
As mentioned, what is better, MS Paint or photoshop? If MJ ignores your prompt and spits out a half related picture, are you going to continue using it?
If anything MJ is a stepping stone to SD. You get a taste of AI art, but want to do something specific that MJ cannot do. You learn about control-net, alternative models, inpainting, etc... and you decide you need to move on from MS Paint to Photoshop.
I personally used free AI art(cant remember which), it was super cool, but quickly I wanted to use different models and generate thousands of pictures at a time. I wanted to make gifs, img2img, etc... and the only people doing that were on SD.
I think you actually have that backwards, because your conception of "easier" is a bit skewed.
The question is not "which is easier?", but rather "which is easier to use to produce high-quality output". In your analogy, I'd argue the answer to that question is actually Photoshop. Likewise the answer in the MJ/SD case is MJ.
> As mentioned, what is better, MS Paint or photoshop?
Metaphor is useful, but this feels overly-reductive. The gap between the amount of effort it takes to make something great or approaching the vision you had is massive between MS Paint and Photoshop. Not so for SD and MJ.
However, I am appreciating that SD seems to be clearly better if you need something more specific / precise. I don't think I'm convinced (yet) that because it can get more precise inherently makes it a better tool.
It's the old consumer/professional distinction at play: "If it's a professional tool, it's a job to know how to use it."
There are definitely some professionalized paradigms emerging in the use of SD: one video tutorial I saw this morning covering basic photobash + img2img and use of controlnet had a commenter saying that they preferred using the lineart function in controlnet to get more control and leverage their drawing skills.
When you see that kind of thing it's a huge signal for professionalization, because someone suggesting the optimal first step is "learn how to draw" deviates so completely from the original context of prompt-based image generation: "just type some words and the image magically appears".
As mentioned, what is better, MS Paint or photoshop? If MJ ignores your prompt and spits out a half related picture, are you going to continue using it?
If anything MJ is a stepping stone to SD. You get a taste of AI art, but want to do something specific that MJ cannot do. You learn about control-net, alternative models, inpainting, etc... and you decide you need to move on from MS Paint to Photoshop.
I personally used free AI art(cant remember which), it was super cool, but quickly I wanted to use different models and generate thousands of pictures at a time. I wanted to make gifs, img2img, etc... and the only people doing that were on SD.