Stable Diffusion

When using Stable Diffusion with basic prompts, my images were far inferior to those of DALL-E but looking at the images of other users it is obvious that better images can be made. 

Clicking on the Wanna create better prompt? section, brings me to the Prompt Search Engine. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I ought to be searching for. I know very well how to use a search engine, but I do not know how to search for prompts. 

I have an irritable chat with the Bing Search Engine which tells me to use the prompt search engine to search for prompts. This just annoys me because I do not know what I am searching for. Eventually I ask the question properly and ask for an example of a search term and it tells me to search for “A beautiful sunset over the ocean” 

It is not a database for just prompts, though I had the right to assume it was, given the name, it is a database of images with the prompts which generated them attached to each one. 

Still annoyed, I search for “a beautiful sunset over the ocean” and get this: 

with the prompt underneath:

A beautiful photograph of a detailed ornate steampunk airship flying over a majestic mediterranian port city filled with tiny glowing lanterns with a view of the ocean at sunset, by David Noren, jordan grimmer, tyler edlin, featured on cgsociety

My irritation dissipates at once. This is the kind of thing I expected from the start; dreamy, fantasy images that I want to keep looking at.

I’m getting the idea that giving the AI the names of artists to mimic brings better results but I know there is more to it than just that, once I change some of the details and see the images.

I try: A beautiful photograph of a detailed witch on a broomstick flying over a majestic mountain range with a village below, with tiny glowing lanterns with a view of the ocean in the distance, at sunset, by David Noren, Jordan Grimmer, Tyler Edlin, featured on cgsociety  and get these:

I don’t know who the named artists are but I don’t think that they paint Witches. The landscapes are awesome but the witches are an abomination.

Rather than heading over to CGSociety to find an artist or two with an interest in Witches, I just change the term Witch to Golden Eagle and get these;

Those images are awesome, I am getting this the hang of this, slowly.  Some artists are obviously better for landscapes but it seems that if I want a detailed character, I’ll have to add an artist who paints that particular character well, to the list.

Next, I searched “Pixar Characters” and saw a lovely image of a Chinese woman with this prompt: 

an epic fantasy comic book style full body portrait painting of a beautiful Chinese woman, long fire hair, cute, character design by Mark Ryden and Pixar and Hayao Miyazaki, unreal 5, DAZ, hyperrealistic, octane render, cosplay, RPG portrait, dynamic lighting, intricate detail, summer vibrancy, cinematic 

I really liked it and only changed a few words. I have a soft spot for Koreans because I love the K-pop, so I put: 

an epic fantasy comic book style full body portrait painting of a beautiful South Korean singer, long fire hair, cute, character design by Mark Ryden and Pixar and Hayao Miyazaki, unreal 5,  hyper realistic, octane render, cosplay, RPG portrait, dynamic lighting, intricate detail, summer vibrancy, cinematic 

Two of which I liked more than the original: 

These are my favorite so far, I really like them and I’m wondering if I can improve them by adding a background like the one for the Witches so I merge the terms to this:

an epic fantasy comic book style full body portrait painting of a beautiful South Korean singer, long fire hair, cute, character design by Mark Ryden and Pixar and Hayao Miyazaki, unreal 5, standing on a majestic mountain range with a village below, with tiny glowing lanterns with a view of the ocean in the distance, at sunset, by David Noren, Jordan Grimmer, Tyler Edlin, featured on cgsociety 

And get something a bit weird but also pretty cool:

I think I need to be more careful with my grammar. I think the weird looking half man is very likely Hayao Miyazaki, from the prompt. The way it’s worded can be interpreted as me asking for him and Unreal to be standing on a majestic mountain range. I’ll have to be more careful in the future.

I like these images as much as I like those from DALL-E but the DALL-E image quality can be achieved with fewer prompt terms. Before I used the Prompt database, I really thought that Microsoft had the edge, and perhaps it does for the casual user but I’ll be spending more time playing with Diffusion than DALL-E for the moment. 

My next post will be about Microsoft Designer and perhaps Canva, both of which use AI. I will be using them to design the website oldmanversusai.blog. As it’s a new domain and completely empty apart from two posts, it will be 3 to 5 days before the next one goes up.

I have never used MS Designer or Canva before so it’ll be a learning curve for sure and I’ll have plenty to write about.

See you for the next one,

Cheers,

Old Man