How to prompt AI

Images, part 1

Prompting image generators

• DALL-E
• Stable Diffusion (Leonardo)
• Midjourney
• Adobe Firefly
• Ideogram

1. Start with a good prompt
2. Respond in ways that work well with the prompt
3. Be critical

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Process for using Generative AI

• Evaluate and choose good tool
• Start with a good prompt
• Respond in ways that work well with the prompt
• Be critical

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Process for using Generative AI

• Evaluate and choose good tool
1. Find comparisons/ratings
2. Look at the terms of service for privacy, etc

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Process for using Generative AI

Image generators strengths and weaknesses

Ratings by Matt Wolfe, October 2023

Ideogram.ai

• 👍 Best at generating text in an image
• 👍 Free
• ⚠️ Your generation will be public
• ⚠️ May collect your data for model training

• Evaluate and choose good tool
• Start with a good prompt
• Respond in ways that work well with the prompt
• ⬆️ weight images like what you want
• Try variations on your prompt

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Process for using Generative AI

Compared to text generation

• Commas rather than sentences
• More options for model and style
• You can weight the influence of a previous image
• Requires upsampling for a decent resolution
• Takes longer

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• Still requires incremental changes

Medium

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📷

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✏️

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✒️

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Image prompt template

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Anatomy of a text prompt

Medium

Subject

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📷

🐰

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✏️

🐶

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✒️

🐵

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Image prompt template

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Anatomy of a text prompt

Medium

Subject

Details

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📷

🐰

👄

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✏️

🐶

👁️

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✒️

🐵

👃

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Image prompt template

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Anatomy of a text prompt

Naive prompt with Leonardo.ai

A screenshot of leonardo interface with the prompt

Screenshot of the output

Critique of Leonardo.ai output

Screenshot of the output

👍 Accurate occupations

👍 No malformed bodies

👍 Photorealistic detail

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👎 Not engaged in an activity

👎 Unrealistically attractive

(the “midpoint hottie” problem”)

Medium

Subject

Details

Style

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📷

🐰

👄

👨‍🎨

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✏️

🐶

👁️

👩‍🎨

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✒️

🐵

👃

🧑‍🎨

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Image prompt template

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Anatomy of a text prompt

Medium

Subject

Details

Style

Composition

📷

🐰

👄

👨‍🎨

📈

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✏️

🐶

👁️

👩‍🎨

📉

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✒️

🐵

👃

🧑‍🎨

🖼️

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Image prompt template

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Anatomy of a text prompt

A [medium] of a [subject] with [details] in the style of [style] with [composition].

Medium

Subject

Details

Style

Composition

🖌️

🐶

👁️

🧑‍🎨

🖼️

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Image prompt template

A digital illustration of a mystical forest with glowing mushrooms and ethereal creatures in the style of fantasy art with a central composition that draws the eye to a shimmering river running through the scene.

Medium

Subject

Details

Style

Composition

🖌️

🐶

👁️

🧑‍🎨

🖼️

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Image prompt template

You should check out how other people got their creations and use their prompts for examples of how to compose your prompt

Examples from Leonardo.ai

Image prompt examples

Examples from Leonardo.ai

Some are very simple prompts that get a good result

Image prompt examples

These are much more common, because extensive prompts get better results often

Examples from Leonardo.ai

Others have extensive descriptions of how they want the result to look

Image prompt examples

Examples from Leonardo.ai

Using the same prompt doesn’t mean you’ll get the same image.

But the more extensive prompts are much more consistent

Probabilistic outputs

• Evaluate and choose good tool
• Start with a good prompt
• Respond in ways that work well with the prompt
• Be critical
• Change prompt to work better
• Evaluate output for correctness, bias; seek other sources (e.g. Google, textbooks, etc)

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Process for using Generative AI