>>51329for one thing, none of my 10yo pcs or ultra light laptops even *can* generate anything with reasonable speed
there are free online sites that you can use, but often with the hassle of rate or workflow limits
and even if i could generate anything i want, deciding what i want is easier by browsing a gallery of "samples" than figuring out all the models, loras, controlnets and prompts on my own.
of course, said galleries could be free instead of paywalled. most of the stuff i like actually comes from pixiv. its actually too bad photorealistic generations are banned on it, cos the alternatives where they aren't (deviantart, civitai) are way worse in organization and ease of finding good stuff.
but every so often an artist on those free galleries also paywalls some of his stuff. hey, if it works for them, why bash it? people pay for even stupider stuff after all - like just for watching someone play a game, or even just chat and act stupid. how is this any worse?
and even then i'm not paying for it - i'm on this site after all right? but it wouldn't work if someone didn't pay, so be glad.