Generative AI has revolutionized the way we create art. It's like having a virtual collaborator, one that can bring your visions to life based on your prompts. The possibilities are endless, from crafting intricate landscapes to designing surreal characters, but it all starts with learning the art of prompting. This beginner's guide will lay the groundwork for mastering the art of prompting in Kaiber.
Laying the Foundations
If you've ever felt the frustration of not quite getting the results you envisioned when using an AI art tool, you're not alone. While the concept of prompting may seem daunting, it is just like any other skill—something that can be mastered with a bit of guidance and practice.
Learn from Your Inspiration
To start, tap into Kaiber's Gallery for inspiration and explore prompts from other users. Or perhaps you already have a project and style in mind—try analyzing the art you are inspired by and break it down into essential components like the subject, colors, lighting, shapes, textures, and more.
Let’s use Georges Seurat’s renowned “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” to examine how we can break down elements and create unique prompts.
The Five Steps of Prompting
At its core, prompting is about providing clear and concise instructions to the AI tool. Your words act as the bridge between your imagination and the digital canvas. Try following this general five-step structure:
1. Subject
What is the primary focus? These nouns will be your primary points of attention. Note the above artwork: Parisians, white sailboats, small monkey, pet dogs.
2. Action
Describe what the subject is doing using verbs and adverbs. “La Grande Jatte” subjects can be seen: relaxing, sitting, fishing.
3. Prepositional Details and Descriptors
Provide further details about the subject, including medium, additional details, and color that describe its appearance or features. Seurat made use of: oil painting, dark green.
4. Setting
Provide information about the backdrop or setting of the scene. We can see additional details like: lush green park, small lake, several trees.
5. Meta Modifiers and Styling
Add any finishing touches to the description that affect the feel or appearance of the image or scene, such as: partially sunlit, pointillism, in the style of Georges Seurat.
💡 To keep your writing brief, it's best to avoid copying big chunks of text from books or giving lengthy descriptions of emotions.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
Lastly, take advantage of the iterative nature of generative AI prompting. Elevate your prompts by strategically adding or removing up to two keywords with each iteration.
First Iteration
Prompt: relaxing and sitting Parisians, carrying parasols, white sailboats, small monkey, dogs, oil painting, mid-19th century clothing, in lush green park, pointillism, in style of Georges Seurat
Result: This first iteration includes a lot of the aspects of the original artwork, though let's focus more on the human subjects by removing dogs and small monkey from the prompt.
Second Iteration
Prompt: relaxing and sitting Parisians, carrying parasols, white sailboats, small monkey, dogs, oil painting, mid-19th century clothing, in lush green park, pointillism, in style of Georges Seurat
Result: This second iteration focuses more on the human subjects but also on the parasols, so let's de-emphasize the parasols. Let's also add the dogs back in-- like the original painting.
💡 You can emphasize and de-emphasize certain words or phrases using brackets and weighting, which you can read about here.
Final Iteration
Prompt: *relaxing and sitting parisians, (carrying parasols:0.25), white sailboats, oil painting, mid-19th century clothing, in lush green park, (pointillism), in style of Georges Seurat*
Result: The final version is close to what was envisioned, but feel free to continue refining your own work until it's exactly the way you want it. Remember to describe the scene in a way that the AI can understand while still letting your personal style shine through.
For each iteration, I would either remove or emphasize one to two elements at a time to fine-tune my outputs. My final iteration is still a surrealist interpretation of the original, but is the closest of the three prompts.
Armed with the knowledge of effective Kaiber prompting you can unleash the full potential of AI creativity. Experiment, iterate, and witness the magic of bringing your visions to life through the power of generative AI.
