Recraft V4: image generation with design taste

Recraft V4 is Recraft’s latest image generation model, rebuilt from the ground up. The big idea behind it is what the Recraft team calls “design taste” — the model makes visual decisions about composition, lighting, and color that feel intentional rather than generic. Images come out looking art-directed, even from simple prompts.

V4 comes in four versions — two raster, two vector:

All four share the same design taste and prompt accuracy. The differences are output format, resolution, and speed.

Some examples

Here’s a jazz poster generated with Recraft V4. Notice how the typography is integrated into the composition — the text isn’t floating on top of the image, it’s part of the design:

“A minimalist poster for a jazz festival. Bold text reads ‘BLUE NOTE SESSIONS’ at the top. A saxophone player silhouetted against a deep indigo gradient, with warm amber stage lighting cutting through fog. Clean typography, editorial design.”

Product photography is another strength. V4 understands that the product should be the hero of the frame:

“High-end product photography of a luxury perfume bottle on a polished black marble surface. The bottle is frosted glass with gold accents. Soft directional studio lighting with a single reflection streak.”

And even simple prompts produce polished results — V4 does a lot of the visual decision-making itself:

“Close-up macro photograph of a fresh strawberry on a white background, water droplets on the surface, vibrant red color, sharp detail on seeds and texture, clean food photography with soft diffused lighting”

Native SVG generation

This is the really interesting part. Recraft is the only image generation model that produces native vector output — actual SVG files with real paths, structured layers, and clean geometry. Not traced rasters. Not bitmaps wrapped in an SVG container. Real, editable vector graphics.

The output opens directly in Illustrator, Figma, or Sketch. You can edit paths, recolor elements, scale to any size. No tracing, cleanup, or conversion steps.

Here’s a set of coffee shop icons generated with Recraft V4 SVG:

“A set of four minimalist coffee shop icons: a steaming cup, a coffee bean, a pour-over dripper, and a croissant. Clean line art style, consistent stroke weight, warm brown color palette on white background”

And a botanical illustration:

“A vintage-style botanical illustration of a monstera deliciosa leaf. Detailed vector art with clean outlines, subtle shading using flat color fills, dark green with lighter green highlights, cream background, scientific illustration aesthetic”

These aren’t screenshots — the SVG model returns actual .svg files. The coffee icons SVG is about 43KB of clean vector paths. The botanical illustration is 282KB with gradients and detailed geometry. You can drop these directly into a design tool or onto a webpage.

This is useful for brand assets, icon sets, illustrations, logos, and anything that needs to scale cleanly or be edited after generation.

What’s new in V4

Most image generation models are tuned for broad general preference. V4 takes a different approach: it was developed in collaboration with designers and tuned specifically around design aesthetics and professional expectations.

In practice, this shows up in a few ways:

Art-directed composition. V4 makes choices about how elements are arranged, how colors relate to each other, and where the eye moves through the frame. When you compare its output side-by-side with other models, V4’s images tend to feel more like they were art-directed and less like stock photography.

Strong prompt accuracy. Whether your prompt is a few words or a detailed paragraph (the model accepts up to 10,000 characters), V4 follows it closely while keeping the overall image coherent.

Integrated text rendering. V4 treats typography as a structural part of the image, not an afterthought. Text interacts with the scene — bridging visual elements, responding to spatial context, and fitting naturally into the design. This is a standout feature for posters, packaging, editorial layouts, and any work where text is part of the composition.

Native vector output. The SVG models produce actual editable vector files with clean paths and structured layers. This is unique to Recraft — no other image generation model does this.

Running the models

Here’s a raster example using Replicate’s JavaScript client:

import Replicate from "replicate";
const replicate = new Replicate();

const output = await replicate.run("recraft-ai/recraft-v4", {
  input: {
    prompt: "A minimalist poster for a jazz festival. Bold text reads 'BLUE NOTE SESSIONS' at the top. A saxophone player silhouetted against a deep indigo gradient, editorial design.",
    aspect_ratio: "3:4",
  },
});
console.log(output);
// => "https://replicate.delivery/...webp"

And here’s the SVG model — same API, but the output is an SVG file:

const svg = await replicate.run("recraft-ai/recraft-v4-svg", {
  input: {
    prompt: "A set of four minimalist coffee shop icons: a steaming cup, a coffee bean, a pour-over dripper, and a croissant. Clean line art, consistent stroke weight, warm brown palette",
    aspect_ratio: "1:1",
  },
});
console.log(svg);
// => "https://replicate.delivery/...svg"

In Python:

import replicate

output = replicate.run(
    "recraft-ai/recraft-v4-svg",
    input={
        "prompt": "A vintage-style botanical illustration of a monstera leaf, detailed vector art with clean outlines, dark green with lighter highlights, cream background",
        "aspect_ratio": "3:4",
    },
)
print(output)
# => "https://replicate.delivery/...svg"

All four models accept the same three inputs:

• prompt — your text description (up to 10,000 characters)
• aspect_ratio — common ratios like 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 9:16, and more
• size — explicit dimensions like 1024x1024, 1536x768, etc. (ignored if aspect ratio is set)

Which model should you use?

• V4 — Fast raster output for web, social media, concept exploration, and rapid iteration.
• V4 Pro — High-res raster for print production, large-format displays, and detailed work.
• V4 SVG — Vector output for icons, logos, brand assets, illustrations, and anything that needs to scale or be edited.
• V4 Pro SVG — High-detail vector for large-format print, detailed illustrations, and design system components.

Licensing

Images generated with Recraft V4 on Replicate can be used commercially. See Recraft’s terms for details.

Give them a try: Recraft V4, Recraft V4 Pro, Recraft V4 SVG, and Recraft V4 Pro SVG.