the map / step 3, make

Images

Describe a picture in words and get one back in about ten seconds. Good for a poster, a thumbnail, a birthday card, or a rough idea of how something could look.

It is not a replacement for a photo of a real thing, and words inside pictures still come out wrong more often than you would like.

Our picks

checked sep 2026. we say what each one is bad at on purpose.

Start herehas a free plan

ChatGPT (images)

good at: Make a picture inside the chat you already use, then say "make the sky darker" and it does.
bad at: Slow, only a few images a day on the free plan, and text inside pictures still comes out wrong.

web · iPhone · Android · desktop app

Open ChatGPT ↗

Best freehas a free plan

Ideogram

good at: Text inside images that actually spells correctly. Posters, logos, cards.
bad at: Pictures of people look less natural than Midjourney's.

web · iPhone

Open Ideogram ↗

Step uppaid only

Midjourney

good at: The best looking images, especially anything artistic or cinematic.
bad at: No free plan, a learning curve, and it runs through its own website rather than a normal chat.

web

Open Midjourney ↗

Step uphas a free plan

Canva

good at: Design with AI inside it. A flyer, a social post, a slide, with the layout done for you.
bad at: The AI part is a feature, not the point. For a pure image, the others are better.

web · iPhone · Android · desktop app

Open Canva ↗

Try this first

Open ChatGPT, paste this in, and change the parts in brackets. That is the whole first step.

Make a poster for something real

copy it, paste it into the tool, change the parts in [brackets]

A simple poster for [a bake sale on Saturday at the school gym]. Warm colours, big friendly lettering, room at the bottom for the time and place, no small text.

Go deeper

8 min read

The companies and their models

Who makes what, what each is known for, and which one is on your phone. Written for September 2026, and dated on purpose, because this changes monthly.

7 min read

Staying safe and sensible

The handful of habits that keep a beginner out of trouble. Privacy, money, mistakes, and the one trick that fools agents.

Do something with it

The fastest way to learn a tool is a real job.

Say who you are and we hand you one, in about ten minutes, with the prompt written.

Pick who you are