[Senkusha]

Here's a foxgirl wallpaper I generated using AI and improved with GIMP.

[Senkusha]

Here's a cool Anime [Magical Girl] Brigade army patch!

[ZandraJoi]

Very pretty colors! How easy is it to use AI & GIMP? What is the difference between the 2?

[Senkusha]

For [the art] AI, I use MidJourney, an app/bot on the Discord.  You have to pay a small bit of money to use it.  You basically tell it what you want, and there's a few switches you can use to give you specific looks.  For example the following prompt, I have told MidJourney to use an Aspect Ratio of 3 to 2 (a landscape image) and the "niji" option to give the image a more anime feeling (also that I have the term anime in my prompt is most likely redundant)  If I wanted to create a Computer Desktop, I'd use --ar 16:9 (there are no right or wrong numbers to use).

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/imagine prompt anime, magical witch girl stealing a pot of gold from a leprechaun underneath a rainbow --ar 3:2 --niji 5

will give me four choices:


Out of these four choices, I really like the second one (the order goes 1 [top left], 2 [top right], 3 [bottom left], 4 [bottom right]).  I choose to Upscale image 2:



(The U1, U2, U3, U4 are buttons that you tap/click (for Upscale).  The V1, V2, V3, V4 are for Vary Images, and I have my settings set to ask for a confirmation prompt, so I can tweak the prompt to give MidJourney more accurate information about what I'm wanting it to do.)  As you can see in the following image, I have many options I can use:


I can Upscale the image again by a factor of 2 or 4, making it really crisp and detailed.  I can Vary the image in two different ways, I can also Zoom Out, which will expand and add details surrounding the  image, or I can pan to the Left, Right, Up or Down, and that will expand in the direction that I choose, adding more detail that way.  Finally, I can access my image on the MidJourney Website and save it there.

There's other more advanced things I can do, say I like the character that was created?  But I want to change the image completely, but I still want to use that character it created?  I can save this image, and then I can manipulate the image in Gimp to remove as much background as possible, then upload that new image of just the character to MidJourney, and tell it what I want it to do based on the uploaded images (yes, you can upload multiple images for a prompt).  There's WAY too many other things that I can go into detail that you can do with MidJourney that I'm not going to get into here.

Many people hate AI, but I'm having fun playing with it and learning about what it can do.  When used Ethically, it can be a great tool to expand upon with your own creativeness.

Update:  I just noticed after I submitted this message, that AI is not perfect.  My pot of gold?  Is actually a pot full of four leaf clovers!, so if I really, really wanted that pot of gold, I'd have to try a different prompt to focus on the pot of gold.

This is part of the fun with using AI, and I take it with a sense of humor, rather than getting frustrated at it.  It's like of like telling a child to do something.

Gimp, is totally free.  It's very much like Adobe Photoshop, and could be considered a rival with all the power it gives you in terms of photo manipulation.  Note that while you can draw with it, it is not an Illustration software.  There are other better products if you just want to draw/paint freehand.  Mostly what I use Gimp for is to crop, scale, and remove background elements.  I'll take multiple images and layer them on top of one another, moving and positioning the various layers to create an entirely new scene.  It's the very basics of Digital Manipulation.

[ZandraJoi]

Can you edit the image? Do some kind of photoshop & edit out the four leaf clovers & put in, maybe draw in, or copy in?, gold coins instead? Or even make something personalized like a text or date on it? That'd be cool!

[Senkusha]

I could do that, or I could sit and play with the prompt to come up with a better image.  Either would be valuable options IF I were to be paid for my efforts.

[ZandraJoi]

I'd be curious what is the easier route. To do your own images in there or to, as you say, play with the prompt.

[Senkusha]

Much like anything in life, "practice makes perfect".  The more you play with the prompt (called Prompt Engineering), the better results you [learn how to] get.