Every build that leaves Lucid has every image custom-generated for it. No stock photography, no vector clipart, no AI-generated Unsplash. Quality mode on Nano Banana Pro, one image at a time, with a prompt that describes your specific project in the specific visual language of the kit you picked. It is non-negotiable, and it is also the most expensive thing Lucid does.
The quick thing we could do is what everyone else does: run a batch of medium-quality images, pick the least bad, ship it. Our competitors do this because their economics don’t support the slower path. Ours do, because we’re a spec-first tool, not a chat-first tool: the BuildSpec is generated free, you see where every image will go before a single cent is spent, and credits only consume on the final render. That gives us room to do the expensive thing right.
What quality mode actually looks like
A typical hero image takes 20–40 seconds and costs roughly a tenth of a build’s credits. The prompt Lucid sends includes the brand’s mood, the kit’s image style guide, negative prompts for anything that would scream “AI-generated,” and the specific compositional details for where the image sits on the page. The output is then run through rembg if transparency is needed, because AI image models produce checkerboard fake-alpha rather than real alpha, and you can spot it on a Tuesday.
Credits, honestly
A full marketing site ends up being around 18 credits in practice — the site, the imagery, one preview deploy, a publish. If you don’t like two images, regenerate just those two for 1 credit each without rebuilding the project. That’s the whole pricing model in one paragraph. Credits never expire, specs are free, there’s no per-message billing. You get what you pay for. Nobody’s subsidising mediocre images.