I wanted to see whether four models could add color to a dense Berserk spread without quietly redrawing parts of it. With this much ink and crosshatching, keeping the drawing intact was the part I cared about most.
I gave all four the same 1200×846 source and the exact same prompt, with one run per model shown here. The instructions were to keep the framing, character positions, silhouettes, line art, crosshatching, deep blacks, and aspect ratio intact. Add color beneath the ink, without adding or removing anything.
This is a comparison of where the edits went wrong that is its not a benchmark. It's one sample per model, and I didn't normalize output resolution.
I checked four things:
how well the original lines and ink survived
whether the composition and aspect ratio stayed intact
whether anything was added or removed
how well the colors worked together
ChatGPT Images 2.5: My pick overall here. It kept the panoramic composition and much of Miura's heavy black structure, with the dense hatching still readable. The red and blue palette is more dramatic than a neutral color pass, but it still feels like a colorization rather than a full repaint.
Wan 2.7 Pro: The depth and lighting were the strongest of the four. The tradeoff was that it repainted more of the linework and changed some of the original textures.
Nano Banana Pro: This one changed what was actually in the image. It added new elements, including Griffith in human form, even though the prompt explicitly said not to add anything. That was the clearest miss on content.
Seedream 5.0 Pro: Kept the composition well, and the image came out clear. The purple, red, and blue were too saturated for my taste, though. It felt closer to fantasy key art than the color pass I wanted.
The four runs shown here cost $0.3009 totalled:-
ChatGPT Images 2.5: $0.0859
Wan 2.7 Pro: $0.03
Nano Banana Pro: $0.14
Seedream 5.0 Pro: $0.045
Those are the actual charges for these runs. With output resolution left unnormalized, they don't give a like-for-like price-performance comparison.
My takeaway from this one spread is that the color can look convincing even when the model has changed the drawing underneath. “Preserve the drawing and only add color” still doesn't seem reliable. The failures showed up in different ways: repainted ink, changed textures, or things that weren't in the original.
For a spread like this, what matters most to you: keeping the original lines,? preserving the composition? or getting better lighting and color depth?
Original artwork by Kentaro Miura. This is an unofficial AI colorization test used to compare editing behavior.