Is Recraft V4 actually good for generating photorealistic human faces, or are other AI image models better?

Recraft V4 is genuinely strong at one specific face-realism job: skin micro-detail. It renders pores, lines, and stubble that most models smooth away, which is why productions use it for 4K casting portraits. It is not an all-purpose winner — independent reviewers position it as a design-first model, and Nano Banana and GPT-Image-2 beat it on other portrait tasks.

Use Recraft V4 where its strength actually lies: close-up facial portraits where skin texture decides realism. In documented short-film production work it was assigned specifically to the casting stage — generating character face portraits at 4K — because it keeps the imperfections that make a face read as human rather than rendered. "ReCraft actually gives you those imperfections like pores, lines, stubble, like all the little stuff that makes a face look like an actual face," as invideo's creative team put it.

That strength comes with a boundary. Independent roundups (MindStudio covers this in several posts) position Recraft V4 primarily as a design and brand-asset model, and flag detailed human faces and hands as inconsistent outside controlled portrait setups. The honest read: Recraft wins on skin micro-detail in portrait framing, not on every face task in every composition.

Against the other current image models, the comparison splits by task rather than producing one winner. Nano Banana Pro has very high prompt adherence and outperforms Nano Banana 2 for character work — one director's verbatim note: "Nano Banana Pro, it has insane prompt adherence. Something about these images felt extremely stock photo-y to me" — meaning you get exact compliance with the prompt but a cleaner, more catalog-like skin finish than Recraft's. In one documented pipeline the split was explicit: Recraft V4 for the 4K face portraits, Nano Banana for the 360-degree character sheets (four angles plus face and mid-angle closeups, at 4K max), because sheet generation rewards adherence over texture. GPT-Image-2 is the third image model worth testing for portrait work today. If you want to settle it on your own character, run the identical prompt on two models side by side and pick the aesthetic — all of these models are available inside invideo, so the invideo agent can run that comparison in one place.

Verdict: yes for skin-real close-up portraits, no as a blanket face-realism leader. Recraft V4 takes the casting-portrait job; prompt-adherence-heavy face work goes to Nano Banana Pro or GPT-Image-2.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

ReCraft actually gives you those imperfections like pores, lines, stubble, like all the little stuff that makes a face look like an actual face.

— invideo's creative team