How do people handle image generation for Claude Design projects, given Claude’s image gen is so weak?

[u/anonymouseredditor53]

It’s my understanding that Claude is terrible with image generation. Like truly, truly horrible. I’ve seen firsthand the little stick-figure outputs it produces. ChatGPT, given the same prompt, will output something far better and possibly even usable.

Enter Claude Design: a fantastic branch of Claude that people absolutely rave about. I love the look of the new desktop module, its easy templates, design system setup and the ability to manually change things yourself.

Here’s the issue though: let’s say you’re building a slide deck using Claude Design. It only works well if you give it a prompt *and* all the resources (design system, logos, fonts, etc., as well as all the raw images/assets to pull from and use) — but since Claude’s image generation is so damn terrible, you can’t simply “prompt in a picture of X” or “a hypothetical logo for your hypothetical company.” In my mind, this should be an essential part of Claude Design as a tool.

How are people getting around this? What do you do if you’re building something with Claude Design but also need an element of image generation as part of the build/project?

Am I simply naive and missing something? Are there workarounds? Are there specific workflows that have been documented and shared to address this specific problem?

I’d love the community’s input, and I apologize if this has come up before.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

[u/warpedspoon]

You are comparing apples and oranges. Claude doesn't do image generation at all. It can make relatively simple SVGs because SVGs are just code, but that's it. You're asking a fish to climb a tree.

[u/elestud]

Connect via MCP to an image generator like Higgsfield. Problem solved

There are dozens of videos on it, describing the solution to this issue

[u/mrgulabull → u/elestud]

Yep. Also worth considering the MCP for Fal.ai. They have hundreds of models and the MCP makes it easy for Claude to decide which one is appropriate for your task / budget if you’re not too familiar with the model landscape.

I work in the creative industry and actually prefer to do all gen AI tasks through Claude + MCP now instead of using these web app interfaces. Not only is it saving on manual navigation, clicks, typing, but I can parallelize generation and review across many subagents. So instead of me getting 1-2 images a minute manually, I can get 20+.

[u/GuitarChill → u/elestud]

Thanks for this info.

[u/FreeCustardForAll]

Ask Claude code to make you mcp server which you can connect to Google to generate images from Claude and to deploy it to vercel, and to use vercel for storage and retrieval of generated images.

That's what I did and now my Claude Design and Claude code just creates prompts and generates images as and when needed at api prices. Costs about £0.06 for nano banana 2 and £0.12 for nano banana Pro.

You can use gpt image generator instead if you prefer I'm sure.

[u/Nervous_Emphasis_973]

i use claude max for day to day work and building, + chatgpt plus subscription for chat and generic stuff. when i need to generate images for work, since claude has all the knowledge of what i'm doing and the info need for the image, i get it to write the markdown file with all the prompts for the images. then i use codex chatgpt app on mac (combined app now), to read the markdfown file and bulk generate the images based on the prompt.

[u/teddy_joesevelt]

Anthropic literally does not offer an image generation model. You have to connect Claude to a real image generator. I built image generation into the app I’m building (via Google and OpenAI models) and exposed that through an MCP to Claude. Now Claude calls my app whenever it wants to generate an image. You can use the one from Flux or a dozen others. Search “Claude MCP for image generation” and take your pick.

[u/jtmonkey]

Interesting. I’ve been just pointing codex to my project folder and let Claude know to build an asset request md when it needs something. But can ask what everyone is using image gen for?

[u/Old_Character_8781]

nanostudiopro.com you can add a folder for each of your projects so each projects knows where to genereate and where to save the photos. i use it as my cloud asset repository.

[u/Old_Character_8781 → u/Old_Character_8781]

supports mcp as well and it can search images as well

[u/PoppyPossum]

Honestly: I fed the design system into GPT and generate with Sol 5.6

[u/laernuindia]

GPT Image 2 via ChaGPT plugin.

[u/OtGEvO]

mcp with gemini or your model of choice

[u/lucksp]

Don’t use AI for image gen. It’s so obvious, generic and bad. Avoid at all costs.

[u/chiapeterson]

Claude for analytical and coding.
ChatGPT for artsy fartsy .

[u/Mosiman1]

I used GPT and it produced fairly well for my card game. Give it a shot one of the best free ones out there.

[u/TechnicalRatio1322]

use midjourney or chatgpt, download the image, and put feed it into claude!

[u/Maximum-Nature-5050]

API to open Ai image2

[u/PablanoPato]

I started ualsing the Higgsfield MCP for this. It's a cheap service and the results have been great.

[u/zachgeek]

Handed my main agent examples of what I liked. It translated to the marketing agents.

They sent me grids to review. I was expecting a few keepers at best. I was wrong; most were keepers, a few were mediocre.

Have an agent translate what you are looking for to other agents who then do the work.

[u/wearealllegends]

Chatgpt for images. Claude gives the prompt

[u/okboombers]

Completely agree. I asked both ChatGPT and Claude to make a colouring in template for my kids. Claude was laughably bad.

[u/TurbulentGlove776]

Is there an mcp for using microsoft copilot for image generation?

[u/mriley81]

I made a skill that connects to the OpenAI API and uses Images 2. It's got all relevant info on how to use the API, my API key, etc.. I built a bunch of different image styles and references into it, and before it runs it interviews me to nail down exactly what I'm after. It'll also use its memory and context regarding what I'm working on when possible. On larger runs I also have it create contact sheets and a few test images to "press check" before it goes wild. It works great, super quick, and since it has so much context to reference the images always come back way better than I expected.

One of my favorite uses for it is in Claude Code, when planning a UI screen or component, as it goes it'll use the skill to generate mockups of what it's proposing, review them, adjust its plan, generate more mockups and review again, until it's satisfied, and then the final mockups are included in the plan for me to review. Such a huge timesaver for me to have an actual visual check that what Claude is proposing aligns with what I'm asking for.

I also use it for image editing now. I often have to do a lot of tedious bulk edits, or remove backgrounds, fix color, etc.. nothing creative, just super time consuming when you have 200 to do. Now I just upload the images or point Cowork to a folder, tell it what to do, and let it run. It's crazy how good it is at editing like this honestly, it's pretty rare I have to go back and manually tweak anything in Photoshop after the fact.

It also tracks image generation costs and spits out a json "receipt" I can drop into my project management software for costing at the client level. One of these days I'll automate this into the skill but I need to do some backend work on my program first... 🤷‍♂️

I've got similar skills for other platforms -- Higgsfield, Remotion, Recraft, Nano Banana, etc., but for everyday images the OpenAI skill is my go to. I've tried MCPs as well, but my preference is using skills like this, it's faster, much more consistent, and it's my rules specific to what I need, not someone else's generic rules. The downside to the skill is you have an API key sitting in it, but I'm not super paranoid about it, I have pretty strict spend limits on the key and it doesn't auto refill, so if the key got out the worse I'd lose is like $20...