[tracerbulletx]

ControlNet became popular with in the last couple of weeks and LoRA fine-tuning slightly before that and both things have completely changed the landscape too. Even a month out of date and you are a dinosaur at the moment.

[dwringer]

These things are advancing way faster than they're being taken advantage of fully. Even SD 1.4 with months-old technology can produce far higher quality images than most of what's seen from midjourney or the latest tools. Things like ControlNet are amazing, to be sure, but there's nothing "dinosauric" about the technology without it. We haven't begun to see the limits of what's possible yet with existing tools, though you're right about the rapid pace of innovation.