Stable Diffusion Prompt Cheat Sheet

Prompt /

Stable Diffusion is a powerful AI system for generating images from text descriptions. With the right prompts, it can create stunning and creative visuals. However, writing good prompts can be challenging for beginners. This article provides a “cheat sheet” of prompt examples, techniques, and formatting tips to help you get the most out of Stable Diffusion.

Prompt Structure

A basic Stable Diffusion prompt has a few key components:

  • Description – A detailed description of the desired image content, style, composition etc. Be specific.
  • Modifiers – Additional keywords to tweak the output, like “cinematic lighting”, “intricate details” etc.
  • Negatives – Words and phrases to exclude from the image.

Here is a prompt template to follow:

[Detailed description of image content and style]
[Modifiers to refine style and quality]
Negative prompt: [List things to exclude]

When starting out, focus more on the description first before adding advanced modifiers and negatives.

Description

The description is the most important part of the prompt. Here are some tips:

  • Describe the subject matter, setting, style, composition etc in detail
  • Use adjectives and descriptive phrases
  • Specify number of subjects and relationship between subjects
  • Indicate emotional tone, lighting, atmosphere etc
  • Give context and background if needed

Example

A majestic white Bengal tiger resting peacefully under a shady tree in a vibrant green jungle, soft sunlight filtering through the leaves creating a soothing atmosphere, intricate stripes on the fur visible, portrait framing

Modifiers

Modifiers are additional keywords used to refine the output image’s style, quality and details. For example:

intricately detailed, extremely high resolution, photorealistic, National Geographic photography, depth of field

Here are some common categories of modifiers:

Style / Composition – cinematic framing, rule of thirds, aerial shot

Quality / Detail – 8k resolution, ray tracing, Unreal Engine 5 rendering

Lighting / Color – soft lighting, golden hour, high contrast

Medium / Style – impressionist painting, art station concept art

Experiment with modifiers to develop your own style.

Negative Prompt

The negative prompt specifies words and concepts to exclude from the image. For example:

Negative prompt: low quality, bad anatomy, extra limbs, mutation, mutilated, disfigured, poorly drawn hands

Some common negatives:

  • Technical faults: low quality, JPEG artifacts, compression errors
  • Anatomical issues: malformed limbs, mutated hands
  • Unsafe content: nudity, pornography, gore
  • Context mismatches: irrelevant objects/settings

Advanced Techniques

Here are some more advanced prompt engineering techniques:

Specify Multiple Samples

Use the : operator to specify different samples in one prompt.

Example:

A cute baby sea otter floating on its back in the ocean:1.2, under clear blue skies and warm sunlight:1.3, gentle waves lapping around it:1.4

Weight Keywords

Use [] brackets to weight certain keywords and phrases to focus the image on key aspects.

Example:

[Majestic] white Bengal tiger [resting peacefully] under a shady tree in a [vibrant green] jungle

Iterative Prompting

Start with a basic prompt, review the results, and iteratively add details to better match the desired outcome.

Conclusion

With the prompt engineering tips outlined here, you should be able to start crafting prompts that produce stunning images tailored to your creative vision. Remember to start simple, use lots of descriptive details, leverage modifiers for refinement, exclude unwanted elements with negatives, and don’t be afraid to iteratively improve your prompts. The key is practice – have fun with Stable Diffusion!

Useful Resources

Related Posts