Prompt Mixing Guide

By AurasVseillya

This guide will walk you through using multiple prompt boxes to compose complex prompts for images.

To create a new prompt box, press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER or CMD+SHIFT+ENTER while in the prompt text box.

To remove a prompt box, delete everything inside it, and press BACKSPACE again.

= The Multi Prompt Setup =

The 1st prompt will always have the "Theme" or "Main element" of your image including image composition tags, and tags that have shader or post-processing-like effects.

Tags for gender are fairly strong. You should begin by specifying the gender of your character (boy/girl). Using "Solo" helps enforcing a singular character. Age is generally fairly young, but you can age up characters by putting loli, petite in Unwanted Content. You can combine this tag with something like cat for "cat girl" or "cat-girl", which can lend some characteristic of the object/animal to the character.

Once you have figured out how you want to compose your image, start by describing the setting. In my example, I want a girl in it, using some mystical crystal magic.

Now we move on to the 2nd Prompt, describing the physical aspects of the character. This includes appearance, accessories, outfit, and character-related details.

In this example for the 2nd prompt, I won’t go in too much in detail but I put tags that describe the character I want. “Arm Rocks” or “Exposed Navel” all are physical tags I want for my character. Other tags like “Crystal Halo”, “Central Core” are accessories, then “Brilliant Colors”, "Aesthetic” and “Epic” are image enhancers that affect the overall image.

Settings Adjustments
Before you start generating, let’s set up some settings on the right panel.

Set the resolution to fit the image type you desire. For sampler, stick to Euler Ancestral, but feel free to change it once you like the base picture. It can give you very different results you may like.

Keep in mind large resolutions tend to break anatomy. It's better to make something small that works, and then upscale it.

Generally, the UC presets are quite good. Just be aware that Low Quality contains tags relative to images of poor quality, compression artifacts, etc; while Bad Anatomy contains tags related to poorly rendered limbs.

However, Bad Anatomy will generally lead to arms being hidden, hands being out of frame, etc. This hides the problem but also reduces detail.

Finetuning your Prompt
Keep generating until you get an image composition you like. Once you have, copy the seed and put it in the Seed field to preserve it. Adjust tags in your prompt, add or remove braces if necessary, until you get pleasing results.

You can adjust the order and punctuation between each tag. That can have minor effects that can help nudge the AI towards something you will enjoy more. Some tags have effects that do not necessarily correspond to something you would expect. Using "Rings" for example, can lead to ring shaped objects in the image, as opposed to finger rings.

Experimenting with non-booru tags can generate objects or effects in unexpected ways. Play around and try to find effects you enjoy, and take notes. Do not worry about writing tags that do not exist, strange combinations might sometimes lead to beautiful things!

There are multiple ways you can nudge and combine tags. Simply writing them without spaces: "redblack hair", adding dashes "pink-gradient hair", using a plus "blue+yellow eyes", or even doing something like "gradient:black-purple-magenta hair"

When finetuning your prompt focus on one element that you want to "fix" at a time. Trying to change too many things at once might change the aesthetic too far relative to your objective. Perform one change or adjust one Strenghten/Weaken at a time until you get several generations that look better in that aspect.

You can control+click or cmd+click an image in the history to copy all the settings, except the seed, if you want to go back to an image that works already. Just be careful not to do that on an enhanced image, as it will make you generate at a far higher cost due to the higher resolution and Steps!

Having multiple prompt windows will lead to your tags being mixed as opposed to being read in a linear fashion. This will lead to more nuance, but this also means that it will not work like a normal, single-prompt generation. Organizing your data into clear information categories (composition, filters, character, clothes, etc) means that it will be easier to work on your prompt.

Overview of the Method
Mixing leads to the vectors being calculated differently. The order of the tags does not matter, but it helps staying organized. Imagine a multi-layered cake. Instead of eating each layer individually, you cut a whole slice, and eat the whole thing, mixing all flavors together.

It's generally good to separate the prompts based on content, imagine it like an image layer, and a shader/post processing layer.

Using More Prompts
The practicality of using multiple prompt boxes, with each having its own content theme, means that each "layer" of the figurative cake is much stronger and independent. This can lead to a more balanced focus and a greater level of detail, as all the tags are less mixed up together.

Using a single prompt box is like throwing everything in a blender.

You can use as many promptboxes as you need, just be mindful that the token quantity meter does not update past the first box and you might go over-capacity.

Adjusting Weights
You can adjust weights as per the Prompt Mixing documentation, but be mindful that all tags default to 1, and doubling the strength is usually stronger than you anticipate.

The weight is a fixed point number and has a practical cap at 5.0. Make small adjustments, like 1.1 or 0.9, and finetune them.

Dilution and Strengthening
Using lots of prompts will start diluting the effect of tags. You might need to strenghten tags quite a bit for them to appear when using very long prompts. It's like adding more water but using the same amount of salt. At some point you won't feel the salt at all.

You can either use braces (less tokens, but a mess), or repeat tags (more tokens, but easier). You can also make a copy of an existing tag and add and adjective, or put a dash instead of a space, etc.