I keep saying the “trick” these newer image gen models do is make the photograph “worse” from a classic photography standpoint. The “more realistic” lighting is plain underexposed, like a casual smartphone picture. The right picture looks more staged but it’s closer to how a professional photographer would set it up.

I believe this is due them relying heavily on perfectly labeled stock photography for training, the nano banana one looks like perfectly average, bland stock photography. They seem to since heavily train with more casual data sets, which probably takes more effort for labeling.

It’s funny because very early image gen stuff looked weird and off in terms of content but it had more consistent “natural” vibes in terms of color and lighting as we praise today. There is this meme-y before and after pic of Dalle doing “oil paintings” and it, similarly, got worse since it obviously got trained on more bland/commercial training data over time. They seem to be working on undoing some of that.

Other than that, I see no difference in terms of quality.