Part of the answer is still production. Tools do not remove every technical requirement, and a plausible-looking result can contain problems that only become obvious when it is used. But defending design entirely on the difficulty of making things is increasingly uncomfortable. The more durable value lies in deciding what to make, why it belongs and whether it works.

A useful way to price that contribution is to look at the decisions the client would otherwise have to make alone. Which idea deserves development? What needs to be consistent? Where can the work change? A pile of options transfers those questions back to the buyer. A designer earns their place by helping resolve them.

Consider a hypothetical skincare business introducing its first body product. It asks for campaign imagery. Before opening an image tool, someone needs to work out how the product relates to the existing range, which customer problem it addresses, and what can reasonably be claimed about it. A beautiful answer to the wrong brief is still the wrong answer.

Then there are choices that an image alone cannot settle. Does the packaging make the amount and use clear? Can the photography show texture without implying an effect the product has not demonstrated? Will the campaign work on a small mobile screen? What happens when the retailer places it beside competitors rather than inside the carefully controlled brand website?

Those decisions are less immediately impressive than a wall of visual options. They are also what helps the work survive contact with the business. Someone needs to recognise when the fourth direction is only a more attractive version of the first mistake.

For that skincare business, generating twenty attractive bathroom scenes could be the easy part. Choosing one still requires a view of the customer and the product. A spotless marble room might suggest distance where the brief calls for familiarity. Beautiful light might conceal the texture people need to see. None of those problems is solved by producing the same scene faster.

The production method also changes what can be controlled. A physical shoot allows people to handle the object, adjust its placement and respond to what happens in the room. Generated imagery offers a different set of possibilities and limitations. The useful comparison is how well each route serves the particular commission, including the work needed to reach a usable result.

That means counting the work after the first image appears. Packaging has to remain accurate. A family of products needs to look like a family. Crops must leave room for the information that will sit around them. If every new output requires a fresh round of correction, the apparent saving at the beginning may simply have moved effort further along.

There is an opportunity here for designers to explain their work more clearly. Clients should be able to see what they are buying beyond a set of files. That might include defining the problem, establishing a visual system that other people can use, or making the product easier to understand. The explanation needs to connect to the actual commission; “strategic thinking” is too vague on its own.

It also creates a responsibility to stop hiding weak decisions behind craft. An expensive process can produce generic work. A fast one can occasionally produce exactly what is needed. The value of a designer’s involvement has to be demonstrated in the quality and suitability of the choices, rather than assumed from the number of hours spent.

For the client, a useful question is what will become easier once the project is finished. Will the team know how to present a new product? Will customers understand the difference between the options? Will the next designer be able to extend the system without reconstructing its logic? Those are outcomes with a life beyond the first presentation.

The image may be the most visible thing a designer hands over. Increasingly, the more valuable contribution is the set of decisions that stops the business producing a thousand images it does not need.