Ive been trying to get into some proper high-quality image generation lately because Im finally starting that sci-fi graphic novel Ive been talking about for years. I really need something that looks professional and not like that weird melty AI look from a year ago.

Right now I am basically torn between Midjourney and maybe trying to run Stable Diffusion locally on my PC. I have got an RTX 3060 which is okay I guess but Im worried its gonna be a massive headache to set up and learn all those extensions like ControlNet just to get the character poses right. On the other hand Midjourney looks amazing and its so easy to use but that $30 a month subscription is a bit steep since Im trying to keep my hobby budget under $50 total for everything.

Ive also heard a bit about Flux lately which people say is the new king of detail but I dont know if I have the VRAM for it or if I should just stick to a paid cloud service. I really need to make progress on these character designs by the end of the month so I cant spend weeks troubleshooting. If you guys had to pick one for someone who wants the absolute best lighting and textures without needing a PhD in prompt engineering which one would you go with?