Prompt Writing Guide¶

Tips for writing effective image generation prompts, tailored to each provider.

OpenAI (natural language)¶

OpenAI models work best with natural language descriptions. Be specific about what you want.

General tips¶

Describe the scene in complete sentences
Include style, lighting, and composition details
Specify camera angle or perspective when relevant
Mention the medium (photograph, oil painting, digital art, etc.)

Examples¶

Product photography:

A professional product photo of white sneakers on a clean white background,
studio lighting, sharp focus, commercial photography style, high resolution

Logo design:

A minimalist logo for "Acme Corp" with clean sans-serif typography,
blue and white color scheme, modern design, vector art style

Illustration:

A whimsical children's book illustration of a fox reading a book under
a large oak tree, watercolor style, warm autumn colors, soft lighting

Negative prompts¶

When using OpenAI, negative prompts are appended as an "Avoid:" clause. Keep them concise:

Avoid: blurry, low quality, distorted text, watermark

SD WebUI / Stable Diffusion (CLIP tag format)¶

Stable Diffusion models respond best to comma-separated tags ordered by importance.

Tag structure¶

subject, medium, style, lighting, camera, quality tags

Examples¶

Portrait:

1girl, long hair, blue eyes, school uniform, standing, cherry blossoms,
soft lighting, detailed face, masterpiece, best quality

Landscape:

mountain landscape, sunset, dramatic clouds, lake reflection,
cinematic lighting, wide angle, 8k, highly detailed

Product shot:

white sneakers, product photography, studio lighting, white background,
sharp focus, commercial photography, high resolution

Anime:

1boy, silver hair, red eyes, dark coat, standing on rooftop, city skyline,
night, wind, detailed, anime style, masterpiece

Weighted tokens (emphasis)¶

Use parentheses to increase or decrease emphasis on specific tokens:

# Increase emphasis (1.1x per level of parentheses)
(detailed face)       # 1.1x emphasis
((detailed face))     # 1.21x emphasis
(detailed face:1.5)   # 1.5x emphasis (explicit weight)

# Decrease emphasis
[blurry background]   # 0.9x emphasis
(blurry background:0.5)  # 0.5x emphasis (explicit weight)

Weights are relative to the baseline of 1.0. Values above 1.0 strengthen a concept; values below 1.0 weaken it. Extreme weights (above 1.8 or below 0.3) often produce artifacts.

Quality tags¶

Add these to improve output quality:

Tags	Effect
`masterpiece, best quality`	General quality boost
`highly detailed, sharp focus`	Detail enhancement
`8k, ultra high res`	Resolution boost (use sparingly)
`professional, award winning`	Style refinement

Negative prompts¶

Always include a negative prompt with SD WebUI to avoid common artifacts.

General-purpose:

lowres, bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, missing fingers,
extra digit, fewer digits, cropped, worst quality, low quality,
normal quality, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, blurry

Add for photorealism:

cartoon, anime, illustration, painting, drawing, art, sketch

Add for anime/illustration:

photo, realistic, 3d render

BREAK syntax¶

Use BREAK to separate concepts into different CLIP token chunks. This is useful when your prompt is long or has distinct elements:

1girl, detailed face, blue eyes BREAK
forest background, sunlight through trees BREAK
masterpiece, best quality, sharp focus

CLIP token limits¶

SD 1.5: 77 tokens per CLIP chunk
SDXL: 77 tokens per chunk, but uses two CLIP encoders (ViT-L + ViT-bigG)

Front-load the most important tags -- tokens beyond the first 77-token chunk have diminishing influence.

Provider-agnostic tips¶

Aspect ratios¶

All providers support these aspect ratios:

Ratio	Best for
`1:1`	Avatars, icons, social media posts
`16:9`	Landscapes, banners, desktop wallpapers
`9:16`	Phone wallpapers, stories, portraits
`3:2`	Photography standard, prints
`2:3`	Book covers, posters

Common use cases¶

Use case	Recommended provider	Prompt approach
Logo with text	OpenAI	Natural language, specify text content exactly
Photo-realistic portrait	SD WebUI	Tag format, include quality and lighting tags
Anime character	SD WebUI	Tag format, include character details
Quick placeholder	Placeholder	Any prompt (generates solid color)
Product photo	SD WebUI or OpenAI	Describe studio setup and product details
Landscape art	SD WebUI or OpenAI	Include composition, lighting, and style