Three new open-source image models, a major VFX acquisition, and a music generator that inferred our identities from almost no context. We test FireRed, Recraft V4, and ByteDance's BitDance, debate what Foundry's acquisition of Griptape means for Nuke pipelines, and discover that Google Lyria 3 knows more about you than you told it.
Quick Take
Open-source image models matter less for competing with API-based tools and more for what they teach the community. We test three new releases, debate why Foundry's acquisition of Griptape signals the future of VFX pipelines, and discover that Google Lyria 3 can infer context from almost nothing — a capability that felt "creepy" to us.
What We Tested: Three New Open-Source Image Models
The case for open source. Addy opened with a defense of open-source models that cuts through the quality conversation. "Not because the quality is the best," he said, but because these models "move an inch each one of us forward in terms of testing, learning, building other things and sort of modifying, working in Comfy." The real value isn't competing with Nano Banana Pro or API models — it's the ability to experiment, iterate, and build on top of existing work.
Joey added context from his own experience: token costs are real. Running large models through APIs adds up fast. Open-source alternatives that run locally eliminate that friction, even if they require beefier hardware.
FireRed: Image Editing Specialist
FireRed-Image-Edit-1.0 comes from a team with minimal public presence. Unlike the first wave of text-to-image models, FireRed targets a specific problem: editing existing images with high quality and consistency.
Addy tested it with his standard benchmark — a 1970s busy street in New York — and found it lands somewhere between Z Image and Nano Banana Pro in quality. "It's like maybe 75% there," he said, noting issues with text rendering, car coherence, and overall detail. For an open-source model, it's a meaningful step forward.
What stood out: FireRed can correct errors in images using world knowledge. Given a blue pencil with a red line and the prompt "correct the errors," it changes the line to blue. A tricycle with triangle wheels becomes a tricycle with round wheels. This suggests the model combines a visual language model to understand the image, an LLM to reason about corrections, and a diffusion model to regenerate. It's not just pixel-space editing — there's logic underneath.
The architecture question: Addy suspects FireRed may be built on frameworks shared by other Chinese companies. The model acknowledges Quen Image in its acknowledgments, suggesting possible shared architecture or team overlap. "Most of the chassis and the engine are already there," he said. "You're just building on top of that."
Recraft V4: The Instagram Model with SVG Output
Recraft V4 landed in ComfyUI and immediately impressed us. "It's the most Instagramable model to date," Addy said. "Everything just comes out cool."
The model excels at what it was designed for: professional, polished imagery. Sharp text, consistent humans, vibrant colors. Joey called it "the Hype model" — everything looks like it belongs in a high-end marketing campaign.
But the real innovation is the SVG output. Recraft V4 can generate vector graphics directly, not just raster images. Joey flagged this immediately: "I've not seen anyone. It's really hard to find a model that will just do a transparent PNG output, let alone I have not seen anything that could do a vector output."
Addy noted that most models convert from pixel space to vector space as a post-processing step. If Recraft has figured out native latent-to-vector generation, that's genuinely novel. For designers needing scalable assets — logos, icons, brand elements — this workflow eliminates a manual step.
The enterprise angle: Recraft V4 is positioned as enterprise-grade, which means higher cost per generation but more customization. It's purpose-built for professional design work, not general-purpose image generation.
