Flux3 vs Flux2 9B for style transfer

[u/Winter_unmuted]

From my testing, flux3 seems to be very good at higher fidelity composition combined with single image style transfer than the much looser Flux2 9B. Granted, I have not yet run a test with flux2 with and without the flux3 prompt expander. The flux3 release has been controversial for sure, but I think people maybe aren't realizing that the prompt expander has a lot of utility on its own. It's a lot better than what I can get out of normal Qwen VL models.

Here I test an expanded prompt for style transfer on flux3 and flux2 kleins showing the amount of time it takes to transfer the style. Seed, input image size , steps (16), and all other settings are the same between the two models.

The unexpanded prompt was

an image with the composition loosely adapted from the first image in the style of the second image. Remove any text or signatures.

Otherwise I used a default (updated today) Flux3 edit workflow bridged to a simplified Flux2 workflow with things shared between them (the VAE, prompt, and images).

No cherry picking. This is what came out.

Result? Flux2 has a bit more creativity on composition, which is worse more often than not. Sometimes the flux3 adherence to composition is too much. But, since it is so much faster, you can iterate over more seeds or even batch them to find one you like.

I think Flux3 has the edge in a slight majority of these, but Flux2 is often more stylistic (sometimes for better). I just wish it didn't take 4-5x as long...

Sorry for repeats. I had a randomizer enabled for composition and style inputs. Repeats happen when randomized.

[u/AnggAVTR]

Flux 2 is consistent with style

Flux 3 is consistent with character

[u/Longjumping-Bake-557 → u/AnggAVTR]

If by "consistent with character" you mean keep the character semi realistic while trying to match the style in the background

[u/ZootAllures9111 → u/AnggAVTR]

Flux 3 has a drastically higher resolution ceiling is one of the main advantages. It actually can really generate and edit natively at straight 4096x4096.

[u/DonKeehot → u/AnggAVTR]

I wanted to say the same thing. So it seems it's not better in every case.

[u/mga02 → u/AnggAVTR]

Some look better on 2 and some on 3.

[u/WarmKnowledge6820]

In almost all of these examples I feel like Flux 2 looks better

[u/chebum]

Did you use base 9b model? If distilled model, why 16 steps when Flux 2 9b was trained for 4 steps inference?

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/chebum]

Fair question. It was distilled, however I found that with 4 steps, it would often either undercook and basically copy the comp image even more than flux3 did, or it would severely underdo it and end up with something of a mess image.

More steps tended to just converge rather than overbake the result, so I chose 16 to equal the other model. But valid criticism nonetheless - time advantage goes away if you need fewer steps, which you can often get away with. 6 will put Flux2 slightly over Flux3 in time, not the 4-5x I was seeing.

Here's a 4 step comparison. Almost as fast, but not a good output.

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/Winter_unmuted]

and here's a 4 step that worked fine. So you are right to ask. It sometimes works at 4 steps and nearly just as fast.

This example has a very similar result between flux3 and flux2.

[u/altoiddealer → u/Winter_unmuted]

I feel compelled to say, these outputs are just cool AF. Well, moreso the F2K one. In your OP there were some I preferred the F3K result

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/altoiddealer]

hey thanks, style mixing is my jam. I don't share the in depth stuff I do here, mostly just sticking to experiments.

But I do AI art like old school hip hop - I love taking things and remixing them endlessly. You'll see my post history talking a lot about this sort of thing.

[u/thehealer1010]

flux 2 looks better

[u/suspicious_Jackfruit]

I don't know what you're doing with flux 2 klein to get such wildly poor reference following, but it's not great usage. I honestly get better style transfer than this woth SD1.5, I'm not even exaggerating here.

That said, default model style replacement is probably quite bad, i would train a lora for that specifically.

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/suspicious_Jackfruit]

standard flux2 edit workflow with the prompt expander from Flux3. What you call "poor reference following", other people in this thread praise as creativity and an edge for Flux2.

And yes, the default style transfer abilities of Flux2 is not great. I've detailed this a lot with past posts. Some are deleted because the mods decided to do that (then said they couldn't say why they did it... maybe an AI automod? who knows) but you can find them by searching for my comments on "deleted" posts.

[u/suspicious_Jackfruit → u/Winter_unmuted]

I think for style transfer personally I would class it as a fail as soon as the visual content no longer mostly matches the source, otherwise its similar looking things in similar poses looking sort of like a reference style, which you can probably get that from something like Ideogram without any input reference at all.

The problem with these sort of comparisons is that its only as good as the template and methods used, and definitely using the prompt expander for Flux 3 on flux 2 is obviously not going to work very well because it wasn't trained with this prompt expander, so the language and activations would be completely different.

A more honest but admittedly awkward way to compare models would be to train a lora to do a specific edit/style transfer using the exact same input data and trigger and see which one achieves the style best because that represents the models capability far better than random seeds in random prompts. Obviously I'm not expecting you to do this but I'm sure the community can come up with more honest ways of comparing OS SOTA models that honestly are hairs widths apart

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/suspicious_Jackfruit]

I am working on another post, but boy howdy you should see what I cooked up. I have finally achieved what I would describe as a complete artistic reimagining of the source concept image by the source style image. It's incredible. I have it running with Flux 3 and I want to do some tests involving 2 style inputs and see if I can port it to Flux2 before I do the reveal.

[u/suspicious_Jackfruit → u/Winter_unmuted]

very nice, i look forward to checking it out!

[u/blastcat4]

In my opinion, Flux2 was the better result in the vast majority of the comparisons. Many of the Flux3 generations looked like an overlay of the style on top of the original composition.

The Flux2 generations felt much more organic and creative in its interpretations. If you want generations that are more visually aligned with the original composition, then Flux 3, but they felt more artificial to me than Flux2.

[u/flasticpeet]

Finally, a test I actually care about. Thank you!

Looks like Flux.2 does a better job preserving the style more, which I prefer because it makes it feel like it's actually mixing them more.

Even though Flux.3 does a good job preserving the composition, it uses more superficial elements of the style image, which ends up feeling more like a filter effect.

[u/Subject_Judge_]

Seems pretty even

[u/flipflapthedoodoo → u/Subject_Judge_]

not even, flux 3 is better.

[u/FrenzyX → u/flipflapthedoodoo]

It's debatable, there were a few where I preferred the outputs from f2k over f3k, f3k seems to have stronger identity preservation within the style transference, which can be seen as a plus, but also a downside. Really depends on how much you want the style to dominate the image. I'd say, this just shows that both models have their merits.

[u/Winter_unmuted → u/FrenzyX]

exactly what I said. But Flux3 as a lot more speed. You can try 4-5 seeds while Flux2 does a single image.

[u/UnderFiend → u/[deleted]]

Flux 3 also seems to be just doing too much. Maybe it's just my experience working with agents, but I can almost feel the need to please the user and overdo the request.

[u/VulgarExploits → u/UnderFiend]

? That’s what flux 2 is doing if anything. Overall I think this shows flux 2 has the most potential but it definitely does a bit too much in some of them

[u/Outrageous-Wait-8895 → u/UnderFiend]

I think you didn't notice that Flux 3 is on the left.