Negative prompts tell an AI model what you do not want in the output. For ex if the negative prompt included the word "Watermark" then then image created will not have any watermarks. Ok cool! so can we simply a compile a big list of everything we don't want and use it every time? Well, you should not use negative prompts blindly, because sometimes your positive may want something that is mentioned in the negative prompt.
Here is an example:
Prompt: Hyperrealistic full-body-photo a (girl, holding-rose-bunch, main-focus), behind (colorful-garden, Out-of-Focus)
Negative Prompt: Out of FocusThe creation will simply fail.
Instead you should remove "Out of Focus" from the negative prompt. For ex:
Prompt: Hyperrealistic full-body-photo a (girl, holding-rose-bunch, main-focus), behind (colorful-garden, Out-of-Focus)
Negative prompts do not have to be a long list of everything, especially things repeated to get the AI's attention. Let us start by analyzing few samples that are commonly used.
Body Out of frame, Deformed, Deformed face, Deformed fingers, Deformed hands, Out of frame, Poorly drawn face, Poorly drawn feet, Poorly drawn hands.This prompt is saying that we don't images with one or more persons looking deformed, poorly drawn or parts of the body or entire body out missing. But do we need to explicitly mention every body part? Not at all! the following conveys the same meaning to the AI model and more.
Deformed, Out of frame, Poorly drawnHow is this the same? Because this prompt tells the AI model we don't want anything deformed, out of frame or poorly drawn, not just body or face or body parts.
Here is a good list of negative prompts with explanation of what each means:
Bad anatomy - No people (or other objects) with bad anatomy.
Blurred, Out of Focus - No people (or other objects) with blurred or out of focus. You have to be careful with this one. Sometimes you may want to focus on one or more subjects, blurring the rest of the scene.
Childish - The picture should not look a childish drawing.
Cut off, Out of frame - No people or objects cut off or completely missing from the scene.
Deformed, Disfigured, Irregularly Shaped, Malformed, Merged - Nothing in the picture looks deformed, disfigured, irregular shaped, malformed or merged.
Draft, Grainy, Kitsch, Low-res, Old, Poorly drawn - The picture should not look like poor quality draft or grainy or Kitsch or low-resolution or old or poorly drawn.
Extra limbs, Floating limbs - No extra limbs attached or floating.
Signature, Text, Watermark - no signatures or text or watermark in the picture.
unprompted-nsfw - If you don't want NSFW content generated accidentally. (Credit: stapfschuh)
Other useful negative prompts:
Wall Hanging, Photo Frame, Mirror - This is useful to remove these especially working on set of of scenes, because the change randomly.
People - if you don't want extra characters in the scene.
Cloth, Inner - If you are creating NSFW images.
Of course this is not all. I use many more in my creations. But the point of this article is not to list every possible keyword you can add to the list. Instead, just like the positive prompts, your negative prompts should also be crafted carefully based on the scene you are working on. Sometimes, a single prompt is enough to do something very clever. stapfschuh is an expert on this subject, do check out his article.
Hope this helps. Do you have tips, suggestions or comments? Please drop a comment below.