Glossary
Prompt
Short answer
The text instruction that tells an AI what you want it to generate.
The prompt is the only input to image generation: you describe what you want to see and the model produces an image from that description.
A good prompt usually has four components: subject (what is there), setting (where), style (how it looks) and technical detail (light, lens, composition). Written as short comma-separated phrases, those four give the best results in most tools.
Long, poetic sentences work worse than expected; models read key concepts rather than sentence structure.
Example
"a portrait of a woman" is a weak prompt. "portrait of a woman in her fifties, soft window light from the left, neutral grey background, shot on 85mm, natural skin texture" makes the same request work.
See also
You will meet this in
- Midjourney — The Aesthetic Quality LeaderThe subscription generator that delivers the most consistent artistic and aesthetic results.
- DALL·E 3 — Generating Images by Talking Inside ChatGPTThe most prompt-faithful generator, steerable through a conversation in ChatGPT.
- Stable Diffusion — Unlimited Generation on Your Own MachineOpen source; installed locally it is free, uncensored and completely controllable.