I tried the Galaxy S25’s Drawing Assist, and I think it beats Google’s Pixel Studio

Samsung is no stranger to AI-powered image generation. It’s launched more art-based tools in the last year or so than Apple and Google combined. And yet, its first two efforts felt pretty disappointing. Samsung’s Portrait Studio felt too limited, only pulling one face at a time from your images and casting it against a dull, blank background. Sketch to Image, on the other hand, felt a little more open-ended but was capped by your ability to draw what you wanted to see.

Now, though, Samsung has a new tool in its box of Galaxy AI art supplies: Drawing Assist. While the name makes it sound like the next evolution in Sketch to Image, there’s a lot more to Drawing Assist than that. I’ve been exploring it for a few days, and it just might be my new favorite AI-powered image generator. Here’s why.

At first, I wasn’t excited to dig into Drawing Assist. As I suggested above, the name makes it sound like little more than the next step in Sketch to Image, and I’m not exactly a gifted Galaxy artist — the S Pen and I don’t really get along. However, I quickly realized that Drawing Assist is more like a three-in-one tool that combines everything Samsung has already done in terms of AI-generated art into one helpful place.

What I mean by that is technically, Drawing Assist is the next evolution of Sketch to Image. It’s also the next step for Samsung’s Portrait Studio, and, most importantly, it introduces a straightforward image generator, like you get from Google’s Pixel Studio or Apple’s Image Playground. It does a little bit of everything, yet each of its parts is more useful than the previous generation.

Of course, I think I have to start at the beginning — how I stumbled onto Drawing Assist in the first place. If you’d believe it, the first time I fired up Samsung’s Galaxy AI art tools was by accident while licking the S Pen. When you pull the S Pen from its corner-mounted slot, it automatically opens a menu of Air Command tools, including Screen Write, AI Select, and, of course, Drawing Assist. I tapped on it, figuring it would require my finest art skills, and set to doodling — poorly, I might add. I sketched out an alien in a UFO, pressed generate, and hoped for the best. As it turns out, Samsung’s best is significantly better this year.

Then, I noticed that there was more to the Drawing Assist interface than I first thought. Although it defaulted to using my S Pen, I quickly switched to more familiar territory: The optional text box to describe what I wanted to see rather than draw it myself. I set about trying to establish Drawing Assist’s content boundaries (they do exist) and see if I could skirt them with careful wording (I could).

Last but certainly not least, I realized you could add images from your camera roll into Drawing Assist to reimagine them with AI. At first, I figured this would be a somewhat limited application, giving me an update to the Portrait Studio that so underwhelmed me in 2024. Thankfully, that’s only half true. You can generate Portrait Studio-like images of people you know, but you can also upload pictures of pets, objects, and buildings to get Samsung’s take on them. Surprisingly, the best results I’ve seen so far have been with pets, as Drawing Assist seems most willing to preserve parts of the original background.

I’m not going to lie — I’ve been pushing Samsung’s Drawing Assist as hard as I can. Or, at least, I’ve been using the textbox and photo upload options with just about every good image from my camera roll. Unfortunately, my elementary-grade art skills have pushed Samsung’s updated Sketch to Image to the back of the queue. I’ve still used it, but I can’t say it’s been my favorite of the three tools. Anyway, here are some of the images I’ve created so far:

As you might imagine, two of these creations are the result of me trying to push Samsung’s content restrictions to their limits. I asked for an oil painting of a sponge fry cook and his pink starfish friend and got at least a sponge and a starfish. Then, I switched to see if I could force Yoda into a taxi with the prompt, “A green alien from Dagobah in the back of a taxi.” It’s not a perfect likeness, but I would say it’s pretty close for not being able to use his name or the phrase Star Wars.

Otherwise, the dog on a sailboat was my first crack at seeing what Samsung’s text box would spit out, and the many-legged alien is the best I could conjure up with the S Pen and Galaxy AI’s likeness feature turned way down. Essentially, the higher the likeness setting is on your sketch, the closer Samsung will stick to your original drawing — in my case, making it look worse. Because I dropped it as low as it would go, the Galaxy S25 Ultra took my doodle as inspiration before smoothing the edges and enhancing the spots.

Moving on to Samsung’s new take on Portrait Studio, I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Last year, I bemoaned that Portrait Studio only kept a few facial details and then remixed the background and clothing in shades of blue and orange, but that’s no longer the case. It looks like Samsung kept both my friend’s original clothing and chain necklace to the left while only slightly modifying my other friend’s cycling shirt to the right. Samsung’s lighting and background options are also much better in the updated 3D Cartoon setting than in the original version.

And finally, Samsung’s Galaxy AI acknowledges pets at last. Not only did it recognize Ladybird (the dog), but it kept key pieces of her birthday outfit across both images I asked it to generate. I figured that Drawing Assist would keep her distinctive black spots, but it went further to keep her red collar and pink party hat in both the Pop Art and 3D Cartoon settings. Interestingly, the Galaxy S25 Ultra even kept the brick of Baltimore’s promenade — something it never did for human subjects.

Overall, I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with Samsung’s Drawing Assist. I didn’t think I would be, but it’s much better than the individual tools that Samsung launched throughout 2024. Perhaps best of all, it offers more flexibility than Google and Apple can match. Maybe you can push Google’s content filters a bit further or take a little more control over the scenarios you can put friends and family in as part of the Image Playground, but I think Samsung strikes the right balance between the two.

That said, it’s still not a perfect implementation. I’m still somewhat confused by Samsung’s refusal to preserve the background in Portrait Studio creations, especially when it seems willing to do so when pets are involved. Even more confusing is that if you upload an image and Samsung doesn’t spot a human face — even if there are people in it — Drawing Assist will generate an evening cityscape instead. I’ve had this happen with two separate images, with Samsung nailing the lighting and time of evening in both cases, yet acting like my friends weren’t in the picture.

Despite those quirks, Samsung’s Drawing Assist is nothing less than a massive leap forward. It’s better than the original Portrait Studio and Sketch to Image and feels like a complete tool. I’ll still probably split most of my time between uploading images and using the textbox rather than drawing up my own strange creations. Still, I no longer feel like I need to ignore Samsung’s image-generating tools.

And, if you want to try Drawing Assist for yourself, you can grab a Samsung Galaxy S25 of your choosing down below.