A widely accessible AI image generation model has finally emerged for users in China. While Midjourney (MJ) and Stable Diffusion (SD) have been prominent, MJ faces accessibility issues and SD requires significant hardware investment and technical knowledge, including prompt engineering and complex interfaces like ComfyUI. More recent models like Sora and Nano Banana remain largely inaccessible. Seedream 4.0 from Doubao presents itself as a powerful and user-friendly alternative.

Multi-Image Fusion

Creating a poster concept that merges two distinct characters, such as Donkey Kong and King Kong for a historical narrative, illustrates this capability. Instead of crafting complex prompts and sourcing models, the process is streamlined: provide two source images and a descriptive prompt.

Generate a movie poster where the Donkey Kong from Image 1 and the King Kong from Image 2 confront each other. Place Donkey Kong on the left with a slightly cartoonish style, and King Kong on the right with a realistic style, ensuring overall stylistic cohesion. Use "VS" in the center to signify their rivalry. Employ a dark aesthetic with strong red-black lighting, high contrast, and a tense atmosphere.

The model generates multiple options. While minor imperfections like inconsistent details may appear, the core concept is effectively realized. The style can be further adapted, for instance, to a cave painting aesthetic by providing a reference image and a corresponding prompt.

Applying Material Textures to Text

This feature simplifies the process of visualizing text with different material effects on existing graphics, a task traditionally requiring significant manual design work. Given an existing promotional image, a prompt can request specific material changes:

Rearrange the text into two lines: "Doubao" on top and "Seedream 4.0" below. Apply a rainbow texture to "Doubao" and a cloud texture to "Seedream".

The model produces variations where the specified text elements adopt the requested materials, allowing for quick visual comparison.

High-Definition Restoration of Old Photographs

Beyond simple repair, this function aims to preserve historical character while enhancing clarity and adding color. When provided with a damaged, folded, and faded black-and-white photo and a prompt like Restore this photo in high definition, add color, and improve clarity, the results maintain period-appropriate textures and coloring, avoiding an overly artificial, smoothed appearance.

Background Removal

Testing with a complex image of a person on a horse against a detailed background, the prompt Extract the person and the horse, placing them on a pure white background yields clean cuts. The output includes options with the subject isolated or expanded upon, demonstrating precision suitable for routine graphic tasks.

Generating ID Photos

This function can create standard ID photos from casual portraits. Using a source image where the subject is not perfectly facing forward, the prompt Extract the woman, change her clothes to a white shirt, and create a blue-background ID photo results in compliant images with consistent subject likeness across different expressions.

Pose Transfer

This more advanced task involves applying a specific, complex pose from a reference image to a different subject. Using a generated ID photo and an image of a character in a distinctive stance, the prompt instructs: Use the core subject from Image 1, strictly preserving their features. Apply the complete pose details from Image 2, generate a full-body image (including feet), change the subject's clothes to a T-shirt and jeans, and set the background in a park. While challenging, the model maintains facial features reasonably well during the pose transfer.

Garment Replacement

This is useful for visualizing clothing on a different person. By providing a photo of a person and a reference image of a desired garment, the prompt Change the upper garment of the person in Image 1 to match the upper garment in Image 2 successfully transplants the clothing style onto the target subject, applicable for both cosplay exploration and e-commerce previews.

Expression Adjustment

To alter the mood of a photo where everything is satisfactory except the subject's expression, a simple prompt like Change the person's expression to a smile can modify the facial emotion. Providing multiple reference photos of the subject can improve feature consistency in the result.

Style Transformation

The model can readily apply various artistic styles. For example, the prompt Convert the image to a clay animation style effectively re-renders the photo in that specific aesthetic. Other styles like wool, frosted glass, or metal are equally applicable.

Lighting Adjustment

This feature allows for post-capture modification of lighting direction and quality. A prompt such as Change the lighting in the scene to backlight can transform the image, potentially altering background elements (like adding a window) to logically source the new light direction, useful for photography education or salvaging shots with suboptimal natural light.

Interior Design Visualization

For exploring room design concepts, minimal prompts are effective. Inputting just Nordic style for a room photo prompts the model to reimagine the space in that aesthetic. Trying other styles like New Chinese or Japanese is equally straightforward.

Consistent Character Storybooks

Maintaining character and prop consistency across a series of images is a key strength. When generating a visual story from a text prompt—like a tale about a hedgehog and a magical stone—the model ensures the protagonist and key objects remain recognizable and consistent throughout all generated scenes, which is crucial for creating coherent narratives.

Comic Strip Generation

The model's dedicated comic feature can generate a sequence of panels from a simple story outline. A prompt specifying the number of panels, aspect ratio, style, and core plot will yield a complete, visually consistant short comic, with the model often logically extending the narrative.

Summary

Seedream 4.0 demonstrates robust capabilities for commercial graphic design, photo restoration, and creative image manipulation, offering a accessible tool for content creators. For optimal results when using reference images, note that image width should not exceed 6000 pixels, and the aspect ratio should be less than 3:1. When fusing multiple characters, a horizontal composition is recommended. A suggested interface improvement would be the ability to reorder uploaded images via drag-and-drop.