Prompt Guidance, Tags to Avoid and useful tags to include

This is a quick guidance going over some of the tags that deserved to be looked over again and not left to the auto-tagger. I make this because I often make the mistake of forgetting about some of these tags when generating new lora, and I personally think the difference is obvious when they are more appropriately looked over. This is not saying that auto-taggers shouldn't be used but rather saying what are some things worth a double check. So hopefully some of the information provided will help to make some of your lora training more effective.

The General Overview
When it comes to tagging especially for things such as style training appropriate labels of the image can be important. This includes proper separation for the many categories of tagging rather leaving it to generalized tags to blanket the whole subject. This guide will simply mention some of the more generalized tags recommended to be removed and then afterwards some recommended replacements as well as a link to the appropriate danbooru tag list, if none of the recommended are suitable. Most of these have been recognized by my own attempts on making different lora's and what I found helps them work best.
Each section is broken down into an explanation and a few examples though at the bottom of the article you'll find all the links and references again as well as a list you can copy into the taggers exclude tags section.
Unique Features and Better Replacements
Now for more unique features that aren't in your day-to-day imagery not only should they be tagged but you should check if there is any other tags that fit than the standard. This commonly an issue for more fantasy style art.
Horns
Horns aren't a very specific tag on there own and if training a character, or you want them to look a certain way you may want to consider a more specific tag that is suitable. Also If the horn's have decorations it is better to list the appropriate horn accessory tag rather than just the normal accessory.
skin-covered horns

If the horns are the same color as the rest of the characters body skin-covered horns would be a suitable tag. These types of horns would be like shuten douji (fate), and nakiri ayame.
(animal) horns
If the horns have a known animal distinction listing those would help it become more recognizable. Don't actually list "(animal) horns" list whatever animal your trying to specify instead. This can be things such as cow horns, goat horns, sheep horns and more. Also if trying to train antlers those have a few their own tags as well.
single horn / multiple horns
If more or less than the normal two horns on top of other horn tags its best to also include a specifier as well.
Horns Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/antlers
Animal Ears
If using animal ears it is better to try to refer to what animal it's supposed to be from. If no unusual ears are shown in your image (just the standard human variety) no ear tag will be needed at all.
Cat Ears
This could also be rabbit ears, horse ears, so on and so forth just anything besides the standard animal ears tag.
Fake Animal Ears
This refers to animal ears as a prop and can mix with the other ear tags, if you can see an obvious headband this should an additional tag included. It also has a lesser scene opposite of fake human ears.
Extra Ears
If the character has more than two ears like for instance Pekora from hololive who has both human ears and rabbit ears the extra ear tag should be included.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aears_tags
Wings

The general tag wings can be used for any artwork featuring wings. However, it is recommended to consider more specific tags if applicable.

Feathered Wings

For wings that are composed of feathers, the feathered wings tag is appropriate. This tag is similar to angel wings but makes more sense when the wings are alternate colors.
Low wings / Head wings

If the wings aren't in the usual location, of about backpack height than a location tag such as low wings and head wings will be a good additional. Also if that isn't correct there is also a lesser used ankle wings.
Bat Wings / Demon Wings

In cases where the wings resemble those of a bat use the bat wings tag. If there is any alterations such as spikes, alternate colors, scales than demon wings should be used instead.

https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Awings
Tail

The general tag tail is another tag that doesn't detail enough when training on its own. Also if the tail isn't specific enough sometimes it can be blurred into the hair in the finished data set.

(animal) Tail

If the tail resembles that of a specific animal, such as a cat, fox, or wolf, it is advisable to include the corresponding animal tag.

Tail Ribbon

For tails with decorations similar to horns Tails have there own list for various accessories that can be listed rather then the normal accessory alone.

Multiple Tails

If the artwork depicts a character with multiple tails, such as in the case of kitsune or mythological creatures, it is recommended to include the multiple tails tag.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Atail
Tongue
This can be both a fantasy tag and just a normal tag to avoid. Since every person with an open mouth is also assumed to have a tongue in it. If listed for normal situations go for the action, if for fantasy list what's unusual.
Long Tongue
Long tongue as in frogs or yokai if the tongue is doing something you also can list it's action as well.
Forked Tongue
For a snake like tongue, or any reptile like characters, most situations will let this stack with tongue out.
:p / Tongue out
The tongue is sticking out not doing anything in particular, can also be recognized in emoji format and its variations (:p, ;p, :q, ;q).
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tongue
Water
Dihydrogen monoxide a staple for all living matter. Water can exist in images as several things. It can be a background element such as a body of water or rain for weather, It can be an object such as a water bottle, it can also be an action like swimming and splashing, and it can even be an effect of clothing like a wet t-shirt. So with all these things water can be there are an assortment of tags that can be used to get the effect you desire most.
Wet Shirt
A damp t-shirt this can be caused by sweat, rain, or just getting doused in water you can also use a tag like 'see-through shirt' if you want to see more than just darker tones in the clothing.
River
A skinnier flowing body of water, adds a little bit more character then a traditional ocean in my opinion.
Wading
Definitely a tag to note down for scenic purposes this makes the character walk in about knee high water combine it with ocean, lake, or river to add more background elements.
Since there is no singular list for water tags below is a series of links that branch into similar tags for those looking for those trying to find that perfect match.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/water
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/swimming
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/splashing
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/sweat
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/wet_clothes
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/water_bottle
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/lake
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/rain
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/cloud
Monster girls
A mixed creature resembling a human female with minor or major alterations to the norm. These are defined on danbooru as more than the typical animal ears like cat ears and dog ears. This also does not refer to clothing like costumes and props. They are many types of monster girls so try to identify them using their main features.
Lamia
A human female primarily from the top of their head to their waist from there shifting to a long snake tail. Come in a variety of colors and can have some snake features aside from just the tail. Possible other features include slit pupils, forked tongue, fangs, scales, pointy ears (not very snakelike but can be seen on practically any monster girl). p.s. If it includes snake hair as well its probably a gorgon not a lamia.
Alraune
Is normally a green skinned female that has a bottom half of a plant like a flower or fly trap. They can have horns, pointy ears, and plant hair as well. If their bottom half is legs, they walk on like a normal human it is probably a dryad instead.
Mermaid
Similar to the Lamia but instead of a snake tail their bottom half is a fish tail. Normally seen completely or partially submerged in oceanic environments. Other features they may have are scales, gills, pointy ears, webbed hands, and head fins.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/monster_girl
Clothing Tags
Some clothing types list types of clothes that belong to too broad a category. So here's a few things that can be done instead.
-Legwear
Not specific at all and often isn't detailed enough to make a working version to use in the negatives if you ever wanted to turn it off. Try finding the best matches such as socks, pantyhose, tights whatever the case may be.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Alegwear
-Gloves
Same situation as legwear except for the arms. Try things like elbow gloves, or fingerless gloves rather than the general glove tag. Also, may not be a bad idea to include a tag like sleeveless if any training data has no arm wear at all, to make it easier to generate later.
Gloves Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
-Open Clothes / Torn Clothes
Each article of clothing has its own torn/open tag it would be better to use the specified tag for the garment of clothing that way during generation you can prompt for singular pieces rather than affect the whole set.
Open Clothes Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
Torn Clothes Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
-Swimsuit
Now a swimsuit can be a lot of things and sometimes will show up for things that aren't even swimsuits if done automatically (like underwear can often be tagged swimsuit because it looks like a bikini, and leotards can be marked one-piece swimsuit), so it's better and more efficient to just tag all swimsuits as what they are also it prevents the need to double tags to get effective results later on.
Swimsuit Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
-Clothes lift/pull
Almost every type of clothing has its own lift/pull tags. Also included would be the "lifted by self" (pulled by self) tag if the character themselves is lifting/pulling an article of their own clothing. The way to tell the difference between the lift/pull is if the item is going up or down if the item is pulled down (like pulling shirt collar) then its the pull tag if its lifted upwards (easiest one to think of is a skirt lift) than its a lift. Similar to labelling as the open/torn categories since skirts, dresses, and shirts all have their own tags.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/clothes_lift
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/clothes_pull
-Clothing cutout
Each type of cutout would have different spot to specify. This includes thing such as the back cutout, cleavage cutout, thigh cutout, and etc. Below is a link to the clothing cutout tag it will list all related tags.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/clothing_cutout
-Hat
Now when we normally think hat we normally have a clear image of a hat (normally a baseball cap), but this branches out to multiple things when in stable diffusion. Maybe you are thinking of a normal hat a visor cap, beanie, sun hat but a lot of things qualify as headwear. You could also be thinking of hair accessories or even just crowns and tiaras. All of these have there own classification of tags, below is a list of all headwear tags.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aheadwear
-Underwear
Underwear tags can refer to any type of undergarment but its better to specify what type your going for like panties, bra, boxer, lingerie, etc. Meanwhile if your trying to make a character only in their underwear use the 'underwear only' tag rather then just underwear, since all the underwear tag does is make underwear visible.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/underwear
-Animal Print
When talking about clothing designs and patterns one of the more common ideas is animal print. Danbooru has a good list of the different type of animals so if your going for the common cow, the predatory tiger, or mesmerizing zebra the appropriate tag isn't far away. The general 'animal print' doesn't specify much and probably won't end with the style of clothing your going for so check out the different animal tags.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/animal_print

-print*
If your using a print that isn't animal based for things such as a 'print dress', 'print shirt' and so on try using the prints list to find your specific print.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aprints
Other Tags
Cover
This refers to any front page artwork since they all have various way of being displayed. The features tend to be identifiable like comic covers tend to have action shots and markings in the upper and lower left corner, Manga tend to have a recognizable style of text on the top or bottom with a single easy to see number, doujin tend to have an r18 in lower left, magazine have shape and word bubbles throughout the image but with one major focus, and their also others that can be found in the list attached. (I'm also super surprised I didn't put this any earlier since covers are cool, and I've made loras to do just that). NOW If its a Virgin cover as in a cover artwork with no symbols, words, logos, or numbers (often found on special comic books) the image should be treated as a normal image rather than a cover (since all identifiable features of a cover are removed).
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/cover
Traditional Media*
This one refers to any form of artwork based on how it's done, making it a completely useless tag on its own. If you can identify what type of art it is and label it appropriately, It will help the AI understand the difference between it and other art. This will help replicate or remove it better from generations. If you don't know what this means this is the type of drawing it is such as 'acrylic paint', 'chalk', 'pastel' and so on. A full list of normal mediums linked below. The ones I always need help finding are the ones that aren't listed under normal art forms.
-Oekaki
A drawing made from simple digital tools. This IS NOT a pixel art. You can identify rough edges or can see the pixels on the border occasionally but it is not necessarily built pixel by pixel.
-Pixel Art
An Artwork that is built exclusively pixel by pixel. A lot of game assets would be included in this tag.
-Sketch
Sketch can be normally thought of by using a pencil several times to make a line. It is not necessarily restricted to black and white, but for the sake of danbooru and tagging if you have sketch lines and color its probably better to use the 'unfinished' tag or both.
-Unfinished
An artwork that was dropped or simply never done to completion. You may have layers of colors and various lines in need of being erased. Though this could also not be fully detailed such as a face with light and blush, but a flat colored body.
-Lineart
No color or shading was done whatsoever strictly sticking to a monochrome. The basic rule of thumb is if the artwork looks like its made up of only borders.
-Flat Color
A colored image that has no shading or lights. Making each part of the image only one solid color per segment.
-Monochrome
An image done in a singular color. Normally this is thought of as white and black but can be other colors as long as its a singular color.
-Greyscale
A complete black and white image making the entire image from white black and shades of grey.
-Minimalism
A normally borderless art style that uses as few identifying traits as possible to allow viewers to identify the character.
-Spot Color
An image that only has small bits colored, leaving the rest of the image black and white. The other possibility is most of the image falling under a singular color palette with a singular object or focus rejecting this rule to pop out.

Just the general breasts tag doesn't really mean anything instead try listing the appropriate size.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/breasts
Hair
Hair should be labeled in both color and style to the best it can be seen as. The following categories are both the style and color tag groups.
Tag Group:Hair Color Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
Tag Group:Hair Styles Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
-Bangs
To go even further into your hairstyles the bangs are tagged separately from the rest of the hair and as such allow you to mix and match different styles together.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/bangs
Jewelry
Another tag that can mean almost anything: is it earrings, a diadem, bracers just list the appropriate tags rather than throwing the whole category at it.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aattire
Weapon
I completely get it there is a lot of different weapons and it can sometimes be difficult to find the correct one. Attached is the weapon tag list but some weapons why on the site may not be listed in the tag category you can use the main danbooru site though and check if it shows up in the normal search bar. Also I'll link the danbooru auto tag completion which can be of assistance to quickly see if a tag is listed correctly.
Weapon Wiki | Danbooru (donmai.us )
https://github.com/DominikDoom/a1111-sd-webui-tagcomplete
Eyes
If a tag isn't listed for appropriate eye color and expression those can be found in the link below. This lets characters be more expressive during generation later on.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aeyes_tags
Expressions
Only situation that wouldn't require an expression is if the character is faceless since even being expressionless is an expression just as much as a smile, or anger. look at the list, there is a lot of options since ai can take written and emoji prompts.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Aface_tags
Food
Food is anything and everything that is edible. As such this can have a huge variety so rather than play the random lottery on if It can generate what you are thinking of the danbooru food tags have a long list of variety and subcategories. Appropriate tags for the food types will help generate clearer and more identifiable dishes.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/tag_group%3Afood_tags
Makeup
Any temporary cosmetic that is normally worn on your characters face. This can include eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick and etc. To go even further most of these can be broken into colors such as 'red lips', 'blue lips', and so on. Similar problems can be seen here as the jewelry tag try using the makeup category and branching paths to find the most accurate makeup for your character. Be sure to not mix it up with things such as mole, moles are not makeup and are tagged separately.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/makeup
Tags to Include
These tags normally really help in later generation, and I will be the first to say I'm really bad at remembering them and often need to retrain a model to get more desired results.

Arm Positions
Auto Tagger sometimes will list a couple and their is no tag list that specifically list these, so here are the tags that I could find around hand and arm position. The closest group would be posture a link to that is below, but it is not quite the same. Also added the hand group but that still doesn't cover everything.

crossed arms
arms up
arms at sides
spread arms
outstretched arms
arms behind back
arms behind head
arms around neck
arms between legs
hands on own hips
hand on own hip
clenched hand
clenched hands
v arms
w arms
locked arms
praying
own hands together
own hands clasped
interlocked fingers
steepled fingers
palms together
Heart Hands
4-finger heart hands
hand on own head
Hand on own face
Hand on own cheek
Hand on own chin
scratching head
Hand on own forehead
hand between legs
hand in pocket
hands in pockets
rubbing eyes
hug
holding hands
handshake
holding hands is lewd
v
double v
snapping fingers
fox shadow puppet
\m/ 🤟
\n/ 🤘
\||/
twiddling fingers
beckoning
come at me bro
pinching
cheek pinching
belly grab
arms under breasts
arm under breasts

Prompt Guidance, Tags to Avoid and useful tags to include

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