Prompt Engineering Tutorial: Text-to-Image (Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E 3 & More!)

can you tell which image was created using prompt engineering hint hint it's the better one if you found this video chances are you've already tried AI image generators but they never seem to give you what you want well don't worry because in the time it takes for you to watch this video you will be a prompt Pro but before we get started I want to introduce you to Sammy here he is isn't he cute but he could be a lot cuter I created these images by inputting the simple prompt a dog sitting by a lake

into mid Journey my my intention for the image is to create an atmospheric background for a camping supply website and building the possibilities are endless with AI image generators on one side I can write a prompt that sells the calm peaceful Tranquility of retired life in the wilderness but change a few ingredients of the prompt and now I have a creepy haunted lake that still gives me nightmares to this day nightmares aside in this video I'm going to use our boy Sammy here at my camping supply store to demonstrate for you why prompt engineering is

so important when it comes to text to image AI I'm not only going to show you the breakdown on what to include in your prompt to help AI work with you I'm going to show you how to use resources to help you such as Gemini and chat GPT what settings to look for in your AI generator so that you're set up for Success the first time and many more I'll be primarily using mid Journey today but I'll leave in differences you might see in other apps like Dolly 3 and stable diffusion [Music] welcome back to

learn with Shopify I'm your host Rachel fiser and I will be summarizing so many articles YouTube videos and Reddit posts that I watched and read so trust me watch this video it will save you so much time and turn you into a master prompt engineer this is part three of four-part series that we have created here on lar the Shopify about prompt engineering part one is hosted by Michelle and provides you with a general overview about what is prompt engineering and how to use it in all fields part two is about textto text prompt engineering

for copy hosted by Bridget and part four is about textto video prompt engineering hosted by Charisma if you want to watch our prompt engineering Master Class you can find the video links in the description sections below let's do this what is prompt engineering you ask well prompt engineering is the skill of creating inputs for AI tools that produce optimal results a good way that I like to look at it is the difference between making a box cake and baking a homemade cake both Avenues give you cake but one gives you more high quality product because

the recipes are a little different this video will be about creating prompts for text image AI generators we are going to be mostly using mid journey I do want to say there's two versions of mid Journey the first one you can access through Discord and the second one is on their website I'm going to show you both throughout the video so the prompt a dog sitting by a lake is our box cake example of a prompt it gives us a picture that definitely qualifies as a dog sitting by a lake but let's see what happens

when we increase the quality of ingredients we are using how do we do that we do that by increasing the specificity creativity and details of our prompt let me just say the amount of videos I watch that claim to tell me how to prompt engineer and just ended up providing me with a bunch of adjectives was one too many okay I will talk about it a bit but I will not make your ears bleed and I Will Not Waste 10 minutes of your life to summarize what they all basically say is that AI image generators

won't ask you what you want they will just show you what you asked for so you have to be descriptive and provide key details such as who what your subject is what they're doing adjectives about your subject even style lighting inspiration Etc now I've already mentioned a few key details in that list but let's break that down step by step and flesh out our box cake prompt example together the first step before writing a prompt is intention ask yourself what is this image for and what do I want the audience to feel the biggest problem

people have when prompt engineering is lack of specificity so knowing what you want going into it is already going to bring you that much closer to your goal in image so let's say I want this image of a dog sitting by a lake for my website that sells camping equipment which by the way if you don't have a website yet you can have one in minutes Shopify makes it super easy to build an amazing website and we even have a free trial on offer so check that out the link in the description below when people

look at Lil Sammy enjoying that Lake I want them to feel enticed to join him I want them to feel peaceful at ease Serene and long to be by that very same Lake keeping that in mind let's continue so what is the subject of your image for us it's easy a dog how would you describe the subject we can do better than just a dog because Sammy is more than that hint hint a thesaurus will be your best friend but the first steps are easy I'm just going to pick a breed such as a golden

retriever cuz I'm partial to them cuz spiritually I am one how about a middle-aged scruffy golden retriever but let's not stop at his appearance what feeling does he give off perhaps he looks Serene at ease lazy and cuddly we are not going to include all these words for now just the ones that dep pict what we want in the most accurate way details are important but it's equally as important to be concise if you make your prompt overly complicated a lot of generators may get confused so with that in mind I'm going to keep it

simple and just start with middle-aged for now what is the action he is lying lazily by the lake watching the birds patiently waiting for his owner to join him it's important to make your subject active even if Sammy is being a lazy good boy it doesn't mean they have to be moving but it does mean they have to interact with their environment in some way by including action it tells the AI how your subject interacts with other elements in the image and typically results in a more cohesive product again the more concise detail the better

what does the lighting look like if you want your image to be lit well it better be lit I'm sorry I had to a lot of people forget about how important lighting is and how easily it can transform a mediocre flat image and elevate it into something outstanding it affects the mood atmosphere texture warmth and focus of the image which is why it must be included in your prompt if you want a high quality image so since it's a camping scene we definitely need a fire which will provide that cozy Ambiance we're looking for but

I also want a little more magic what's more magical than golden hour at night so let's say we have a middle-aged golden retriever laying by a calm lake watching the birds fly across the sunset at Golden hour just to the left of him sits a smoldering campfire casting a warm glow across his fur o I can smell the marshmallows already I can also add detail about whether he is back lit by the sun in soft focus to diffuse it or in harsh light if I want maybe longer shadows in the image the more you know

about lighting the more you can guide AI don't worry we got you covered check out the description below for a link to a PDF of a quick list of lighting terms to use what lens am I seeing this image through lenses this is something that people skip over all the time in their prompts all images are seen through a certain set of lenses which includes Our Eyes by changing the lens we can dramatically change the image so let's take our box cake prompt look at what happens when we change the lens to a wideangle lens

or a fisheye lens completely different images we also dropped a quick list in the description below of some lenses you can use but if you really want to get crazy you can put in your favorite make or model of a lens like if you were doing a face portrait try Panavision Primo 70 mil that lens is worth more than my car and you can get it for free with AI to be honest a lot of things are worth more than my car at this point for this prompt I'm going to use a wide angle lens

because I want to capture the landscape because of course the whole reason people love to go camping is because of those beautiful views I'll show you how I add that in towards the end all right moving on angle angle is another ingredient you don't want to miss where is the camera in relationship to the subject matter right do we want to be looking up at the subject at a low angle puts the character in a more dominant hero position or do we want to be eye level which is like a natural perspective again the Quick

List is in the description below we got you I'm going to using an eye level because I want the viewer to feel like it's their campsite that they are looking at what style do I want this image to be animated or in a comic style or do I want it to be cinematic or hyperrealistic do I want this to be a digital image or an oil painting when it comes to style feel free to use specific medium terms like I mentioned before but also remember that a lot of AI models are trained from images on

the internet so the best way to get it to understand what you want is to include references it would understand so feel free to include references to Van go or Da Vinci or Monae for example sabled Fusion not only loves descriptive words but has a feature where you can upload a photo as a reference with your prompt however make sure it's an image that is in the public domain or is one you own the same thing goes with D3 with the additional caveat that they will decline a request for a reference that refers to an

artist who is currently living ethically I would say avoiding terms and references to artists living and working is a good rule of thumb to go by when using AI image generators especially if you plan on using your image for commercial use you don't really want to get into copyright trouble but AI image generators are great for using a pinch but we also want to respect work created by real life artists finally don't forget to include your desired aspect ratio and resolution of your image aspect ratio affects the height and width and is important so that

you don't accidentally create a photo that is too small for where you need it and therefore becomes like a blurry mess when you blow it up somewhere else similarly resolution affects the quality and detail of the image the higher the resolution the more detail the lower the resolution the less detail you get the idea now in mid Journey the first variation of your picture is a smaller resolution once you find the one you like you can upscale it to a higher resolution pretty handy once again we have a breakdown of some aspect ratio prompts in

the description below also fun thing about M Journey too is after you've picked your photo you can also expand it so you can either have it expand the view so it can become bigger or you can shrink it down so if you want to like narrow in on the dog you can do that or if you want a wider view of the landscape you can do that too having answered all those questions to the best of our ability let's see what our prompt finally looks like a middle-aged golden retriever Lying by a calm lake watching

the birds fly by Across the sunset at Golden hour just the left of him sits smoldering campfire casting a warm glow across his fur a green camping tent sits in the foreground by the fire a hyperrealistic wide angle comma eye Lev perspective period D- AR 16x9 let's see what happens when we put this into mid Journey already there's a huge difference in detail as you can see we have a lot more going on in this image but our prompt isn't quite perfect yet also if you're wondering where all of your images are going mid Journey

puts all your outputs into your own web page with a reference code and prompts so if you're ever wondering what your prompt was for that really great image you liked way long ago it's all there chances are if you found this video you've wasted time with bad prompts and spend all your available credits on your image generator of choice well friend I have a great resource for you you and you can thank me later and that is the website Lex Lex will allow you to view unlimited images and prompts without using up any free credits

so for instance let's input our box cake prompt a dog laying by a lake already you can see tons of images showing this all ranging in Styles details lighting Etc hover over when you like and it will give you the prompt that was used to generate that image that way you can see what kind of details have been included and How It Was Written which is helpful if you're learning additionally the prompts themselves May feature terms referring to style texture and lighting that you can click on which will then bring you to another page of

images specific to that term which is great to learn about lighting and all that stuff you can also directly copy The Prompt used and apply it to any other AI generator it may not create the exact same image but especially if you find when you like on Lexica it could bring you that much closer to what you're looking for so put that in your back pocket but now that we understand the breakdown of what makes a good prompt let's see what happens when we ask gbt and Google Gemini to do the work for us because

after all who else should we asked to help us craft the perfect prompt for AI generators than AI so I straight up asked chat gbt to create a prompt for chat GPT that would tell it to work for me as a prompt engineer the initial result was a little indirect but it did end up working a bit however I tweaked it here and there and I used it for both Gemini and chat gbt so here's what you can type in you will act as my professional prompt engineer for the AI generator software mid Journey or

dolly or stable Fusion whatever you want I'm creating an image for my business website Instagram page and I need an image that will capture Beauty peace calm whatever kind of adjectives you want to put in there here is the initial prompt you're going to put in the box cake prompt we talked about I would like you to provide three variations all high resolution realistic set in a wide angle lens or whatever other preferences you have just don't forget to include aspect ratio okay I did this twice with each Avenue once with our box cake example

and once with our homemade cake example okay so side by side I think I like the Gemini responses a little better just because I mean look at the way it brings everything down for you yeah but let's start with the prompts we got when we asked Chachi PT and Gemini to enhance the box cake prompt we used okay so the dog laying by a lake for the Chachi PT one I'm going to delete this variation and just start the prompt at a dog lounging because again we want to keep it active at the beginning side

note for all the prompts though the only thing I'm going to edit is the aspect ration so I changed it to D- AR 16 by 9 at the end of The Prompt so it will read better that just reads better on Mid Journey which is what I'm using okay now let's see the chat gbt image okay now the Gemini one okay so side by side these look pretty awesome but let's see what happens when we take the prompt chat gbt and Gemini enhanced from our fancier one the one we made together let's see if that

makes anything better is more detail better let's see okay so great now let's compare the image at the beginning of the video created with our box kick example alone with the ones that the enhanced prompts from Chachi BT and Gemini okay so as you can see while the first image is kind of flat it doesn't really tell a story it doesn't have really any Nuance even though the prompts themselves see a little technical finessing already you can see the difference having a clear intention and detailed descriptions can have on the output of your image the

reality is even with a perfectly pristine prompt you may still be running into some issues don't worry it might not be the prompts fault you may be underutilizing some key features some common features that you should look for and play with are negative prompts weight and seed number so just like how regular prompts tell AI what you want negative prompts tell AI what you don't want in your image let's use our box cake example for instance we want the image to be warm Serene calm so I can put words that are opposite to that such

as cold ominous depressing into the negative prompt and AI will emphasize the positive qualities we mentioned in our initial prompt so it plays off of opposites essentially Sable diffusion has a separate Feld for negative prompts but for Mid Journey use dash dash no followed by what you don't want and it will pretty much work the same you can also highlight an area of the image you don't want or change something like add a hot air balloon like we did here because who doesn't like a hot air balloon weight Pro PRP strength or prompt adherence they're

all the same they're just under different names determines how heavily the AI relies on the prompt to create the image the lower the weight the more creative II will get the higher the more specific it will be to the idea however if you put that setting too high you may lose some of the variety AI can provide you with or it'll take it like too literally if it's too low it might leave out details such as our boy Sammy which we don't want we love Sammy so it's important to check where your prompt strength is

set so that you're getting the desired output from your prompt this is something you have to play around with a little bit in midly but I recommend about a little less than 3/4 of the way up for your first prompt this gives AI enough room to play while also remaining true to what you're asking for if you find the images that you're getting just need like small little tweaks then check out the seed number a seed number is a series of numbers that AI attaches to the image it makes from all the values determined by

your settings and the prompt this allows for an infinite amount of variations from one single prompt so if you use the same seed number with the same prompt and the same values it will turn out the same image every time that's how it's supposed to work if you want to see more variation or even just slight changes having a look at the seed number is a great place to start copying and pasting it next to the prompt you use and then changing one number at a time is a great way to see all that little

variations you want now the sign of a real professional prompt engineer is someone who uses natural language enhancements in their prompts this specifically includes dashes and brackets they add more Nuance to your prompt by adding emphasis indicating range Styles and altogether make your prompt easier for the generator to read so dashes are great to include in mid Journey Dolly and stbl fusion software prompts because they separate elements making it easier for the AI to interpret an instance you would use this would be something like a quiet Lakeside dash dash a lush forest in the background

so there I'm separating the image of the lake and the description of the forest so it doesn't get lumped together another way to use this would be right before your preferred aspect ratio just like we did earlier so Dash D AR 16 by9 or whatever one you want to use you can also use it at the end of your prompt for like dash dash wide angle all that stuff brackets can help communicate where you want the focus to be in an image or add emphasis to the use of certain color theme noun Etc so say

I want the lake to be extra Whimsical or Serene let's put brackets around either one of those terms this effect applies to Mid Journey dolly three stable diffusion but remember to use them sparingly if you use too many you might confuse the AI it's like I don't know which one's more important here are some specific examples you can play around with when using mid Journey so say you found a prompt that gives you what you're looking for but you want more options type in-- repeat space and insert number let's use seven for example and it

will use the prompt to create seven different images input-- chaos space number the number being between 1 and 1,000 and you've chaos mode this will diversify the variations it creates and give you some more avanguard ideas the lower the number the less variation the higher the number you get the idea it's the same old game you can interchange the word chaos with words like weird or stylized or creepy or raw and they will pretty much do the same thing with consideration of the word you use but if you really want to get wild don't be

afraid to combine the goats I know I know it's crazy but why not type in Das Das chaos next to dash dash weird and dive deep down into the rabbit hole and see just how endless the possibilities are with all that being said let's now add some final enhancements the first prompt we made together all the way back at the beginning of the video feels so long ago a middle-aged golden retriever Lying by a calm lake watching the birds fly across the sunset at bracket golden hour close bracket just to the left of him comma

sits a smoldering campfire casting a warm glow across his fur period a green camping tent sits in foreground by the fire period Das eye Lev Das hyperrealistic Das wide angle lens Das Das AR 16 by9 and finally at long last here is the final image so let's take the first one and compare them side by side now this image isn't perfect it's great but it's not perfect however I just saved myself a ton of time by inputting a high quality prompt the first time from here the distance between this image and the one I'm after

is much smaller than when I started with our box Kake example as generative AI continues to evolve so will our ability to communicate with it and hey since you made it to the end of this video you're already that much better at it if you want to see more like this video let us know in the comments and make sure to like And subscribe we love having you here so why don't you stay thanks for being here today I've been your host Rachel Fischer and I'll see you next time [Music]