512x512, 512x768, 768x512, or 1024x512/1536x512 for landscapes, but best at 512x512 for general usage
DPM++ 2M Karras
32 steps - 13-16 steps gives a reasonably converged image and is useful for looking for seeds, 16-24 steps largely converges the image and adds lots of finer detail, 24-32 steps continues to change/add finer detail. Usually by 128 steps the image stops changing completely.
Hi Res Fix R-ESRGAN 4x+, denoising 0.5, half as many steps as the main model
CFG 7.5 - 3-12 is most useful, 1-3 is interesting but lower contrast, above 12 starts to get very contrasty and starts to look pretty cooked by 15-20.

About

With many model makers mostly focusing on SDXL, or SD 3, or Flux (among other newer models), I feel that SD 1.5 still has a lot of life left in it, particularly for photorealistic output, and especially if one has lower end hardware. One issue is there seems to be a lot of in-breeding where merges of merges of merges are happening. I'd like to reduce that and come up with a solid base merge that has a lot of unique training added to it.

So, I scoured Civitai, along with hugging face and other model sources on the internet for realistic base models that had permissive licensing and had additional training layered on top, then through some very careful analysis, distillation, and merging arrived at this model. It's not perfect by any means, but I feel that it has a really nice mix of unique elements with a minimum of cross merging going on and should service as a nice starting point for either merging in specific needs or using with Controlnets, LORAs, etc.

NSFW Note

This model was not created with the intent of generating NSFW content, however, due to the nature of some of the base models mixed in, can generate pretty good NSFW content. If you don't want that, then put NSFW, Nude, etc in the negative prompt to avoid it.

Licensing Disclosure

Below is a per released version listing of models that have been mixed in that have licensing that requires creator credit be given, so those are listed below. There are many more base models included in the final output than what is listed below, however, the recipe used to get to the release was quite complex with a lot of distillation required to reduce cross merging of some of the models, so I'm not going to list all of them and how they were mixed in because I can easily fill a volume on just that, and at the end of the day, what's important is whether the final result model works as a good starting point for people, not on how it got there.

Version 1.0.0

RunDiffusion FX Photorealistic is mixed in at approximately 10% weight.

Version 2.0.0

RunDiffusion FX Photorealistic is mixed in at approximately 12% weight.
EpicRealism is mixed in at approximately 6% weight.
Juggernaut is mixed in at approximately 6% weight.
Almost Anything is mixed in at approximately 6% weight.
fusionCore Modern is mixed in at approximately 25% weight.