Assume that an e-commerce team produces 1,000 4K main images and detail images a month. Using the MiniMax H3 Image standard version, the price per image is approximately US$0.069, which is US$69; catching up with the discounted price in the first week of release, it is approximately US$0.034 per image, which is US$34.

Converted into RMB, one thousand 4K pictures costs less than a few hundred yuan.

This price is not expensive in the 4K range. The high resolution of many image models relies on first producing a small image and then enlarging it. The enlargement step requires additional fees or the image quality is compromised; H3 Image directly produces 4096×4096, about 16 million pixels, and a single image takes about 10 seconds, eliminating the need for super score in the middle.

What really needs to be thought about is how to divide the work between the standard version and the Highspeed version.

  • Standard mode: The generation speed is about 1.5 to 2 times that of mainstream tools, suitable for final drafts, big pictures, and scenes where details are required
  • High-speed mode: about 3 to 4 times, suitable for a large number of trial compositions, color trials, and batch production of drafts in the early stage

A more convenient way to use it is to use the two-stage method: first use the high-speed version to run dozens of sketches at once to select the direction, and then use the standard mode to produce a 4K finished product. The sketch stage is about speed and quantity, the finished product stage is about details, and the money is concentrated on the last few pictures.

Another variable is open weight. The weight is placed on Hugging Face. Teams with sufficient computing power can deploy it themselves. In the long run, the cost per unit may be lower, but they have to bear the graphics card, operation and maintenance and tuning themselves. If the amount of images is not large, or if no one in the team is engaged in model deployment, it is more worry-free to use ready-made services.

There are currently three types of ready-made entrances: MiniMax open platform API, suitable for those who want to connect to their own systems; official products such as Conch; and then there are MiniMax's official cooperation sites PixPix and PixTV. You can use H3 Image to produce 4K pictures when you open a web page, without applying for a key or writing code.

The first week price is only for one week. I happen to have a batch of pictures on hand to publish, so it’s most cost-effective to run them all together in the past few days; I just want to test the effect, and I won’t use a few pictures, so the price difference is not big.