This is what I actually use, and everything I have access to. What each tool is good at, and where it fights me. My brand partnerships are disclosed right here on the page, so you know exactly where I stand.
The unpartnered tools are on this page because they earn it, nobody is paying for those entries.
My image model for the Creature Comforts and Old Magic series. Krea reads tokens more like an artist than a literal transcriber, and paired with moodboards it builds art styles you can actually call your own. Character consistency is where it fights you, but you can train a LoRA to hold a face in place.
The balance model, legible detail that survives hard lighting, and my character consistency and reference workhorse. I use it to build keyframes that hold style and character across a video, hook images for articles and posts, and the scenes for my Hidden Object puzzles, since you can edit an image without it changing everything else you already had right.
Home base. Boards is a massive canvas where I generate images and video side by side and keep every reference laid out in front of me, and because Firefly runs inside the rest of the Adobe suite the whole toolchain connects without exporting between apps. I build the bulk of my social images here, usually Nano Banana 2 on the Boards canvas. The content filter is stricter than most platforms, but that is the tradeoff for being one of the few tools that can call itself commercially safe in most cases, so now and then a flaggable token stops a prompt, and it is worth it.
Where my videos get made, run daily through Runway. Multi-shot prompts with hard cuts, full shot lists, audio direction, and it holds up on complex scenes that break other models. Its favorite failure is spawning a second copy of your character, so constraint language earns its place. People will tell you Seedance ignores negative prompts. It has no separate negative field, but it does respect what you tell it to leave out, written into the prompt, and I use that every day.
My voice tool. I use it for voiceover on my Stor-AI Time videos and brand work when a piece needs narration, and I reach for its sound effects too. v3 is the expressive one, worth the extra prompt effort when the read has to carry feeling.
My music tool, for soundtracks and full tracks behind my music videos. I have my own thing I keep coming back to, a kind of acid jazz lofi, and v5.5 is the model that gets me there. Outputs can still need a final mix, but more often than not the work is minimal.
My finishing pass, and I lean on both equally. Astra 2 is the creative upscaler, you can prompt it to guide the generation, so it does more than clean up, it makes decisions. Starlight Precise 2.5 runs purely off the input and upscales incredibly, no prompting, just faithful. I run the standalone Topaz app for professional work, but Topaz shows up inside so many of the platforms I already work in that I can upscale wherever I am without breaking stride, at quality that holds. It can take its time to render, but the output earns the wait.
My main editor on the PC. Where the shots get assembled into something that holds together.
The mobile counterpart to Premiere. When I'm editing away from the desk, this is where it happens.
My powerhouse assistant. This whole site was built by describing it, and when a project needs a tool that doesn't exist, a puzzle zone editor, an answer-key collector, a form to log how each video got made, I build it here. The work behind the work runs through this.
The curated list is what I reach for. This is everything on the bench, captured from the actual model menus on each platform.
Seedance's native home, unrestricted.
The standalone suite, plus embedded in Firefly, ElevenLabs, Runway, Nim, and Krea.
See what this stack makes. And if you are a brand wondering what it could make for you, start at work with me.