4-6 Complete Prompting Guide
This guide will help you to understand every details about prompts.
Prompting is first and most important phase of AI image generation. Good prompting skills will help users to acquire great generations on every model.
Building With Categories And Order
Good prompt requires correct order and categorization. It could look same but prompt placements actually matters. General Stable Diffusion order and categories looks like this:
View/Shot
Subject (with details)
Medium
Resolution/Detail Terms
Style References (includes artist references)
Additional details (background, environment etc.)
Main Color Themes
Lighting/Shadow
Quality Terms
trending on deviantart, (best image:1.5)etc.
Howover, order and categorization can show difference for each model. You can see them on model guides. But this can help you on every model.
You don't have to use every category in your prompt.
Categorize every term in your prompt. For example, "subject, facial details, body details, dress details" etc.
Wrong: 1girl, ginger, blue eyes, smiling, red dress, wavy hair, thin
Correct: 1girl, smiling, blue eyes, ginger, wavy hair, thin, red dress This will reduce wrong generations most of time.
Negative Prompts
Negative prompts will help you avoid unwanted stuff in your generations. Main subjects for negative prompts:
Negative Quality Prompts: worst quality, worst image, low quality, lowres etc.
Embeddings: verybadimagenegative_v1.3, ng_deepnegative_v1_75t, badhandv4 etc.
Unwanted stuff: NSFW, flower, rain, hat etc.
Prompt Weighting
Weights are an Stable Diffusion feature to control generated image. (term:factor) , term is what you want to increase or decrease in image, factor is scale to control it.
term: Term can be everything you want to edit in your prompt.
factor: Factor actually can scale between 0.01-100 but this type weights create deformity in your images. Universal recommended scale for weighting is 0.5-1.5. Keep your weights between this scale. Howover, some models can handle up to 2 weight.
What Does Weight, Scale Mean?
Weights are how much attention you put on AI for that spesific term at each step. They are absolute, this means increasing value of one term will not reduce weights of other terms.
Note: 1girl, brunette, garden is not same with (1girl:1.5), (brunette:1.5), (garden:1.5), they have different work weight and outputs will be different than each other.
Scale is based on percentage system, which is mean 1 = %100, 1.5 = %150. This is why you can't go with values higher than 1.5. AI can't handle this type work weight for one term, because of their training.
Different Types of Weighting
(term:factor)
factor can scale between 0.5-1.5 and this type can be used for both reducing and increasing weights. [] is not working with this system. Use only (), if you are going to specify value.
1girl, (red hair:1.2), (rose pupils:0.7)
(term)
Each
()increases value of term by x1.1
(term) = (term:1.1) ((term)) = (term:1.21) (((term))) = (term:1.331) ...
[term]
Each
[]reduces value of term by x1.1
[term] = (term:0.9) [[term]] = (term:0.82) [[[term]]] = (term:0.75) ...
Note: The maximum recommended number of brackets is 3, values higher than 3 can cause deformity in images.
Step-by-Step Prompting
I will show an example of writing prompt step by step here, will use DreamShaper v8 Model because it can handle various prompt orders (including general one) and it's beginner friendly model. All images were created with same settings.
Sampler: DPM++ 2M KARRAS
CFG: 9
Sampling Steps: 30
Choosing Subject And Main Theme
Let's say, we want to create a illustration of a girl in space. Starting with illustration, 1girl, space and now we have our first output.
Negative And Embeddings
Since we have a subject, now we can write negative prompts and embeddings to maintain quality on each step. I will go with a few basic negative and DreamShaper Embedding.
Positive Prompt
illustration, 1girl, space
Negative Prompt
BadDream, (UnrealisticDream:1.3), low res, NSFW, grayscale, monochrome, astronaut suit, nude, child, kid
Adding Medium And View
After reaching acceptable quality, time to add medium and view terms to get consistent results. I will go with digital art and watercolor ink also add mixed media to get mixture of these mediums. As a view, upper-body illustration is good choice for us.
Positive Prompt
upper-body illustration, 1girl, (digital art), watercolor ink, space, mixed media
Improving quality
Since we have good base, we can improve quality with a few word.
Positive Prompt
upper-body illustration, 1girl, (digital art), watercolor ink, (ultra quality:1.3), masterpiece, (highly detailed), HDR, 8K, space, mixed media
Adding Style With References
I added two artist reference and abstract art with sci-fi as a theme, because i love portraits of Charlie Bowater and Maciej Kuciara has good sci-fi character desings.
Positive Prompt
Positive Prompt upper-body illustration, 1girl, (digital art), watercolor ink, (ultra quality:1.3), masterpiece, (highly detailed), HDR, 8K, abstract art, (by Charlie Bowater:0.9), (style of Maciej Kuciara), sci-fi, space, mixed media
Additional Details And Colors
We can add details we want and choose color themes before final stage. I added details to my subject and background also chose red and black as a main colors. I used helmet on negative because i want to see her face.
Positive Prompt
upper-body illustration, 1girl, black hair, bobcut, futuristic space suit, (digital art), watercolor ink, (ultra quality:1.3), masterpiece, (highly detailed), HDR, 8K, abstract art, (by Charlie Bowater:0.9), (style of Maciej Kuciara), sci-fi, fractal stars, space, amazing space background, red theme, black theme, mixed media
Negative Prompt
BadDream, (UnrealisticDream:1.3), low res, NSFW, grayscale, monochrome, astronaut suit, nude, child, kid, helmet
Lighting And Final Touches
Now we can finish our prompt with focus, light, shadow and last quality touches. I also added a few negative for better faces.
Positive Prompt
upper-body illustration, portrait, 1girl, black hair, bobcut, futuristic space suit, (digital art), watercolor ink, (ultra quality:1.3), masterpiece, (highly detailed), HDR, 8K, abstract art, (by Charlie Bowater:0.9), (style of Maciej Kuciara), sci-fi, fractal stars, space, amazing space background, red theme, black theme, (depth of field), sharp focus, diffused lighting, backlighting, soft shadows, mixed media, trending on deviantart, award winning art
Negative Prompt
BadDream, (UnrealisticDream:1.3), (deformed eyes:1.3), ugly, low res, NSFW, grayscale, monochrome, astronaut suit, nude, child, kid, helmet
Now you learned how to create an effective prompt can generate great results most of time. Follow this guidelines, create your art and don't forget to share with SeaArt Community.
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