actually integrating AI art into a real workflow, not just vibes

been doing this for a while now across a few different projects and the biggest thing I've noticed, is that the friction point isn't the AI tools themselves, it's figuring out where they actually fit vs. where they just add steps. the use case that clicked for me was using image gen early in the ideation, phase, like before anything is locked, just to get a rough visual direction sorted fast. client sees 8 concept directions in the first meeting instead of 2. that part works really well. where it gets messy is handoff. if you generate something in Midjourney or Firefly and then need to get it, into a deliverable, there's almost always a refinement pass that takes longer than people expect. things like hands, text, consistent brand elements, anything that needs to be pixel-perfect basically doesn't survive the export without rework. that said, the API integrations into Adobe and Figma have gotten genuinely useful for keeping, iteration loops tighter, so some of that back-and-forth is less painful than it used to be. the workflow I've landed on is: AI for concepting and reference generation, then traditional tools for actual production. treating it like a really fast mood board machine rather than a final output machine has made the whole thing less frustrating. if you're doing anything brand-specific, LoRA fine-tuning is worth looking into, being able to bake a client's visual style into the model changes the consistency problem pretty significantly. the other thing worth thinking about is how you document it internally. some teams are fine with AI being part of the process, others want clear notes on what was generated vs. what was hand-crafted, especially if there's any IP sensitivity in the brief. curious if anyone here has landed on a clean way to handle that side of it, because that's the bit I still find a bit patchy.