Just jumping in here! If you're doing professional product shoots for a client, you really need to check out Adobe Firefly Image 3 Model. I love it because the training data is legally clean and safe for commercial use, which is a massive reliability boost compared to some random LoRAs you find online. It handles light bounce and skin textures way better than SDXL without that nasty AI sheen! For hardware stability, im running my local tests on a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB VRAM setup and the results are fantastic. Honestly, the dynamic range is amazing and it feels way more like a raw DSLR shot than anything else out there right now. Its gonna save your skin for that Friday deadline, definitely worth a look!

Honestly, Flux is way too heavy on hardware and the subscription costs are getting ridiculous for high volume work. I had issues with the pro version feeling just as plastic as SDXL anyway, its super frustrating. If you want to save money and actually get that raw look, I'd stick to Stability AI SDXL 1.0 Base Model but stack it with the RealVisXL LoRAs from Civitai. It is basically a waste of money paying for cloud compute when the results still have that sheen. The compute costs for something like an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB GDDR6X just to run local Flux at decent speeds is a massive barrier. Check out the Realism Engine LoRAs on Civitai instead. Theyre free and look way more grounded. Paying for monthly credits for a mediocre result is just not as good as expected for freelance margins... kinda makes the switch feel pointless tbh.

I'd be careful with the guidance scales. Make sure to test Black Forest Labs Flux.1 dev as I found it much more reliable for avoiding that uncanny sheen lately.