Most AI generated images these days look AI generated. You know the vibe that's overly sharp edges, surreal lighting, weird textures. Even top tier models need detailed prompting other wise they fall into trap of oversaturated, plastic like visuals. Developed as the open-weights version of Krea 1 by KreaAI handles to some an extent.
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| Flux Dev Krea Samples (Ref-Official page) |
FLUX.1 Krea Dev is a 12B-parameter rectified flow transformer that goes head-to-head with closed models like FLUX1.1 pro in human preference tests. The model is registered under Flux Dev non commercial license for research and educational purpose. It's been trained with a deep focus on overcoming the aesthetic pitfalls of previous models that specifically the oversaturated textures and robotic consistency that kill realism.
It's architecturally compatible with the original FLUX.1 Dev setup, which means you can use it as a drop in replacement, tweak it for your own applications, or just run it out of the box.
Table of Contents
Features
1. Stunning Output Quality- Designed for aesthetic, photorealistic images that feel more human than machine.
2. Excellent Prompt Following- Competes with top closed-source models in following complex text prompts with precision.
3. Distinctive Aesthetic Engine- Delivers diverse, visually interesting images without falling into oversaturation traps.
4. Guidance Distillation Training- Smarter, more efficient training means faster inference and improved results.
5. Open-Weights Model- Built to power research, experimentation, and creative workflows.
6. Flexible for Any Workflow- Seamless integration with any FLUX.1 dev compatible system.
7. Commercially Friendly (With Terms and agreement)- Images can be used in personal, scientific, and many commercial contexts just review their commercial license terms.
Installation
1. First, install ComfyUI. Update from the Manager if you are already using it.
2. There are different model variants compressed by the community. Choose the one that suits your system requirements:
(a) Download Flux.1 Krea Dev (flux1-krea-dev.safetensors) from Black Forest labs hugging face repository that needs accepting their agreement.
(b) If you have low VRAM then choose the Flux Krea Dev Fp8 scaled model (flux1-krea-dev_fp8_scaled.safetensors) by Native ComfyUI and save this into your ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models folder.
(c) Download the GGUF Flux Krea Dev from Quantstack's Hugging face repository and save this into ComfyUI/models/unet folder. It ranges from Q2(for fastest generation with lowest quality) to Q8(for highest quality with slowest generation). Choose any of them that's suitable for your use case and system requirements.
You need the ComfyUI GGUF custom node setup by City96. Install it from the Manager, select custom nodes manager, then search for ComfyUI-GGUF and hit install.
3. Now, these are the same models (clip, text encoders, vae) that already used in Flux dev workflows. So, downloading again is not required. But even though you want then:
(a) Text encoder FP8 (t5xxl_fp8_e4m3fn.safetensors) For Lower VRAMs or Text Encoder FP16 (t5xxl_fp16.safetensors) if your VRAM is greater than 24GB. Now, Clip model (clip_l.safetensors)
Save these into your ComfyUI/models/text_encoders directory.
(b) VAE (ae.safetensors) and place this into your ComfyUI/models/vae folder.
4. Restart and refresh Comfyui to take effect.
Workflow
1. Download the workflow (Flux_1_Krea_Dev_workflow.json) from our Hugging Face repository.
2. Drag and drop into ComfyUI.
(a) Load Flux Krea model into Load Diffusion model node.
(b) Select and upload all clip models, text encoders, and Vae into its respective node.
Set KSampler settings
Width - 1024
Height- 1024
CFG- 4.5
Steps-28
Sampler -euler
(d) Put prompts into prompt box and hit Run button to start generation. The testing has been done with realism, and are not cherry picked.
The model is trained specially for art with realism. So, we are trying to be simple to challenge the model. No, detailed long prompting, for realism. Lets see how this works.
Test 1:
Prompt: realistic mirror selfie, taken on an iPhone 14 in a well-lit modern gym, Instagram model
Test 2:
Prompt: realistic shot of bar girl in the new york city streets, casual in the moment
Test 3:
Prompt: Pikachu caught on trail cam, grainy, cute
So, here is the Flux.1 Krea Dev is a seriously solid upgrade over the original Flux.1 Dev model. Its a new fine tuned version developed by Black Forest Labs and KreaAI, and right off the bat, it looks way more realistic.
They have really worked on removing that AI plastic look, especially when it comes to human characters that you know, like the skin texture, the hands, clothing details, all of that just feels more natural now.
When testing side by side with the older Flux.1 Dev, the Krea version gives better lighting, sharper textures, cleaner water reflections, and even gets small stuff like fingers and clothing details right. The backgrounds and text on things like banners look more diverse and lifelike, instead of copy pasted even with less prompting.
