Nano Banana vs QWEN Image Edit 2509 bf16/fp8/lightning

Here’s a comparison of Nano Banana and various versions of QWEN Image Edit 2509.

You may be asking why Nano Banana is missing in some of these comparisons. Well, the answer is BLOCKED CONTENT, BLOCKED CONTENT, and BLOCKED CONTENT. I still feel this is a valid comparison as it really highlights how strict Nano Banana is. Nano Banana denied 7 out of 12 image generations.

Quick summary: The difference between fp8 with and without lightning LoRA is pretty big, and if you can afford waiting a bit longer for each generation, I suggest turning the LoRA off. The difference between fp8 and bf16 is much smaller, but bf16 is noticeably better. I’d throw Nano Banana out the window simply for denying almost every single generation request.

Various notes:

• I used the QWEN Image Edit workflow from here: https://blog.comfy.org/p/wan22-animate-and-qwen-image-edit-2509
• For bf16 I did 50 steps at 4.0 CFG. fp8 was 20 steps at 2.5 CFG. fp8+lightning was 4 steps at 1CFG. I made sure the seed was the same when I re-did images with a different model.
• I used a fp8 CLIP model for all generations. I have no idea if a higher precision CLIP model would make a meaningful difference with the prompts I was using.
• On my RTX 4090, generation times were 19s for fp8+lightning, 77s for fp8, and 369s for bf16.
• QWEN Image Edit doesn’t seem to quite understand the “sock puppet” prompt as it went with creating muppets instead, and I think I’m thankful for that considering the nightmare fuel Nano Banana made.
• All models failed to do a few of the prompts, like having Grace wear Leon’s outfit. I speculate that prompt would have fared better if the two input images had a similar aspect ratio and were cropped similarly. But I think you have to expect multiple attempts for a clothing transfer to work.
• Sometimes, the difference between the fp8 and bf16 results are minor, but even then, I notice bf16 have colors that are a closer match to the input image. bf16 also does a better job with smaller details.
• I have no idea why QWEN Image Edit decided to give Tieve a hat in the final comparison. As I noted earlier, clothing transfers can often fail.
• All of this stuff feels like black magic. If someone told me 5 years ago I would have access to a Photoshop assistant that works for free I’d slap them with a floppy trout.