Just saw this pop up. If you're working for a specific client project, honestly, Adobe Firefly Image 3 Model is probably your safest bet for those coffee shop vibes. In my experience, it handles architectural shots and food textures way better than the more artistic models that tend to over-saturate everything. It avoids that weird waxy AI glow basically because it was trained on actual stock photography datasets instead of just random web scrapes. Since you're on a budget and dont have a beastly GPU, Firefly is great because it lives in the browser or inside Photoshop. Over the years, I've found that for commercial assets, you want something that understands lens properties:

• Bokeh: It actually mimics shallow depth of field correctly so the background coffee shop blur looks like it came from a 50mm lens.
• Texture: It gets the microfoam on lattes and the grain of wood tables right without making them look like plastic.
• Prompt adherence: It doesnt hallucinate extra fingers on people holding mugs as much as Midjourney v6 does. Another sleeper hit for your $30 budget is Ideogram 2.0 Text-to-Image. Its surprisingly good at Realism mode and if your client needs their actual shop name on a sign or a bag, Ideogram is the king of typography right now. I've tried many different workflows and combining these two usually gets the job done without needing a huge graphics card. Good luck with the Portland gig, coffee shop owners can be pretty picky about their crema...

Midjourney is still decent, but Black Forest Labs Flux.1 Pro is definitely winning on realism lately.

• Midjourney v6.1 Alpha : Good for consistent lighting but has that signature AI sheen.
• Black Forest Labs Flux.1 Pro Text-to-Image : Top-tier for skin and small details. Flux is usually more grounded for coffee shop shots. Both fit your budget if youre using web versions... good luck with the client project.

Adding my two cents since I just finished a similar gig for a small bakery. I was honestly pretty satisfied with Leonardo.ai PhotoReal v2 Engine for those shots. It handles the textures of wood and steam really well without that oily Midjourney look. Since you're on a budget and don't have a beastly laptop, it works well because everything runs in the cloud. Quick tip: put shot on 35mm f/2.8 in the prompt to get that shallow depth of field which makes things look way more professional. Just curious though, what exactly are you trying to frame? Are we talking wide interior shots of the seating area or just close-ups of the latte art?

Like someone mentioned, that signature AI glow is a real thing and it can totally ruin the vibe of a local coffee shop project. I've been super satisfied with how much more grounded the newer engines have become though. They finally started getting the lighting and the grit of real-life surfaces right without everything looking like a plastic toy. Since you're on a tight deadline and doing this for a paying client, I'm curious if you're focusing more on the wide interior shots or if it's more about the macro stuff like the texture of the foam and the wood grain of the tables? Tbh, some tools are great at one but struggle with the other. Also, have you double-checked the usage terms for the stuff you're looking at? I always worry about the reliability of models when it comes to commercial rights, especially for local businesses where the owner might want to use the images for print or social media later on. You definitely dont need a beefy GPU these days... most of the best stuff is cloud-based anyway and $30 is plenty to get a high-quality set of renders done. If you haven't started yet, maybe try a few small tests first to see how they handle the Portland aesthetic-sometimes AI gets a bit too perfect and loses that cozy, rainy-day feel. Are you planning to do much post-processing or do you need them to be perfect straight out of the generator?

Huh interesting. I had no idea. The more you know I guess 🤷