How to Use an AI Image Generator: A Practical Guide

An AI image generator turns a written description into a picture. You type what you want to see, such as "a smiling woman in her sixties reading on a sunny balcony, soft morning light, realistic photo," choose a style and a shape, and the tool creates a new image to match. If the first result is not right, you adjust your words and try again.

To use one well, follow five steps. First, decide what the picture is for. Second, describe the subject, the setting, the light, and the mood in plain, specific words. Third, choose a style, such as realistic or anime, and a shape, such as square or tall. Fourth, create a few versions and compare them. Fifth, change one detail at a time until the picture works.

This guide walks through each step with worked examples, then covers the common problems people run into: odd hands, blurry faces, garbled words, and busy backgrounds. It also explains how to keep one character looking the same across many pictures, how to use images responsibly, and how to choose a tool that suits you.

What an AI image generator does, and what it does not do

AI image generation works from patterns learned from a very large number of pictures and their descriptions. When you write "a cozy kitchen at dawn," the tool has a general sense of what kitchens look like, what "cozy" tends to mean visually, and how early light falls through a window. It combines those ideas into a brand-new picture rather than finding an existing photo.

That has a few practical consequences.

• Every result is new. Ask for the same thing twice and you will usually get two different pictures. This is useful when you want options and frustrating when you want an exact copy.
• It follows your words, not your thoughts. If you picture a blue door but do not mention it, the door may be any color. Anything you care about needs to be written down.
• It is better at general looks than tiny details. Mood, light, and composition usually come out well. Small text, finger counts, and patterns on jewelry are harder.
• It does not know your specific people or places. It cannot draw your neighbor, your actual house, or your company's exact logo from a description alone.
• It does not check facts. If you ask for "a famous bridge in Lisbon," you may get a convincing bridge that does not match the real one.

Think of the tool as a fast, tireless illustrator who has never met you. It can produce a lot of options quickly, but it needs a clear brief, and someone still has to choose the best result and check it before it is shared.

Before you start: decide what the picture is for

The most common reason for disappointing results is a vague goal. "Something nice for my website" can lead anywhere. A clear purpose answers most of your later questions for you.

Ask yourself three things before you type a single word:

1. Where will this picture appear? A phone story, a printed flyer, a website banner, and a profile picture all need different shapes and different amounts of empty space.
2. What should the viewer feel or understand in one glance? Calm, excitement, trust, curiosity, or simply "this is what the product looks like."
3. What must be true in the picture? For example, "the person must look like a professional," "the mug must be white," or "there must be room at the top for a title."

Here is how that changes the starting point. A small bakery owner might begin with "bread picture." After those three questions, the goal becomes "a wide banner for the top of my website, showing a warm, inviting bakery counter with fresh loaves, with plain space on the left for our opening hours." That second version almost writes the description by itself.

If you are making pictures for a recurring project, such as a series of social posts, write the purpose down once and keep it next to you. It stops you from drifting into pictures that look good on their own but do not belong together.

How to write a description that works

Some tools call the written description a "prompt." Whatever the name, the idea is the same: you are giving instructions to an illustrator. Clear, concrete instructions get better pictures.

The five parts of a strong description

Most good descriptions cover five things. You do not need all of them every time, but checking each one helps you notice what is missing.

1. Subject. Who or what is the picture about? Be specific about age, build, clothing, color, and material. "A man" is weak; "a gray-haired man in his fifties wearing a navy cardigan" is strong.
2. Action or pose. What is the subject doing? "Laughing while pouring tea," "standing with arms folded," or "resting on a wooden table."
3. Setting. Where are they? Include a few telling details rather than a long list: "a small allotment garden with tomato plants" says more than "outside."
4. Light and time. Light shapes mood more than almost anything else. "Soft window light," "late afternoon golden light," "overcast daylight," or "warm lamp light at night."
5. Look and framing. How should it feel and how close should we be? "Realistic photo, close-up portrait," "anime illustration, full body," or "wide shot, calm and uncluttered."

A useful order is: subject, action, setting, light, look. Put the most important thing first, because tools tend to pay closest attention to the start of a description.

Weak versus strong: three worked examples

Example 1: a portrait

• Weak: "beautiful woman portrait"
• Strong: "Close-up portrait of a woman in her forties with short curly dark hair and silver earrings, smiling gently, sitting by a window in a quiet café, soft natural light from the left, realistic photo, shallow background blur"

Why the strong version works: "beautiful" tells the tool almost nothing, so it falls back on a generic look. The strong version fixes age, hair, accessories, expression, place, light direction, and framing. Every phrase removes a guess.

Example 2: a product shot

• Weak: "candle product photo"
• Strong: "A white ceramic candle jar with a plain label, lit, on a light oak shelf beside a small green plant, clean beige wall behind, soft daylight, realistic product photo, centered with plenty of empty space around it"

Why it works: product pictures need to be simple and honest. Naming the material, the surface, the background, and the empty space gives you a picture you can actually use on a shop page. The plain label also avoids messy invented writing.

Example 3: a scene for a story

• Weak: "fantasy village"
• Strong: "A small mountain village at dusk, stone cottages with glowing windows, a narrow path winding uphill, light snow falling, a lone traveler with a lantern in the foreground, anime illustration, wide shot, peaceful mood"

Why it works: it gives a time of day, a weather detail, a point of interest (the traveler), and a mood. Without those, "fantasy village" could be sunny, crowded, or abandoned.

Words that help and words that do not

Some words carry a lot of meaning. Others are filler.

• Helpful: specific colors ("deep green," "cream"), materials ("linen," "brushed steel"), light words ("backlit," "overcast"), distance words ("close-up," "full body," "wide shot"), and mood words tied to something visible ("cozy, with a blanket and warm lamp").
• Less helpful: stacked praise like "amazing, stunning, best quality, masterpiece." These rarely add anything specific and can push results toward a glossy, generic look.
• Risky: negatives such as "no people" or "without hats." Some tools handle these, but many treat the word "hats" as a hint to include hats. It is usually safer to describe what you do want: "an empty park bench" instead of "a park bench with no people."

How long should a description be?

One to three sentences is a good range for most pictures. Very short descriptions leave too much to chance. Very long ones can confuse the tool, because details start to compete and some get ignored. If your description is getting long, ask which details truly matter and cut the rest.

Choosing a style and a shape

Two settings shape your picture before a single word is read: the style and the shape. Get these right first and your description has less work to do.

Style: realistic or illustrated

Most tools offer at least a realistic look and one or more illustrated looks. On CornDude's AI image generator, for example, you choose between Realistic and Anime.

• Realistic suits portraits, product shots, lifestyle scenes, and anything meant to look like a photograph. It is less forgiving: small mistakes in hands or faces are easier to spot.
• Anime suits characters, story scenes, fan-style art, and playful social posts. It is more forgiving of small oddities and makes it obvious the picture is illustrated, which can be a plus.

If your project is mostly about characters, a dedicated anime character generator can be easier, because it is set up for creating a character rather than a general scene. For work profiles, a purpose-built AI headshot generator focuses on clean, professional portraits.

Shape: match where the picture will live

The shape (sometimes called aspect ratio) is the width compared with the height. Picking it at the start matters, because cropping later can cut off heads, hands, or the very detail you wanted.

All seven of these shapes are available in CornDude's image tool. A good rule of thumb: tall shapes for people standing, wide shapes for places, square for anything that will appear as a small tile.

Let the shape guide the framing

Your description should agree with the shape. Asking for "full body, standing" in a wide 16:9 picture leaves a small figure in a big empty space. Asking for "wide mountain landscape" in a tall 9:16 picture squeezes the view. When the shape and the framing match, results improve noticeably without any other changes.

Improving results step by step

Very few people get the perfect picture on the first try. Professionals do not either. The skill is in improving results calmly and deliberately.

Make several versions first

Before changing anything, create a few versions from the same description. Because every result is new, you will see a range. Sometimes one of them is already right. If all of them share the same problem, the issue is in your description or settings, not bad luck.

Change one thing at a time

If you change the light, the outfit, the setting, and the style all at once, you cannot tell which change helped. Pick the single biggest problem, adjust the words that control it, and create again.

A simple routine looks like this:

1. Create three or four versions from your first description.
2. Pick the closest one and name its biggest problem in a few words, such as "too dark" or "background too busy."
3. Edit only the part of the description related to that problem.
4. Create again and compare with your previous favorite.
5. Repeat until the remaining problems are small enough to accept or fix by editing.

A worked refinement

Suppose you want a picture for a gardening newsletter.

• Round 1: "Older man gardening, realistic photo." Results show a generic garden, harsh midday light, and the man facing away.
• Round 2: You add direction and light: "A man in his seventies kneeling in a vegetable garden, looking at the camera and smiling, holding a basket of carrots, late afternoon golden light, realistic photo." Now he faces the viewer and the light is warm, but the background is crowded with tools.
• Round 3: You simplify the setting: "...in a tidy vegetable garden with a simple wooden fence behind him..." The background calms down.
• Round 4: You set the shape to 3:2 for the newsletter header and add "space on the right side." Done.

Each round fixed one thing. The final description is longer than the first, but every word is there for a reason.

Fixing common problems

Some problems come up again and again. Here is what usually causes them and what to try.

Hands and fingers

Hands have many small parts and many possible positions, so they are a known weak spot. You may see extra fingers, merged fingers, or hands that bend oddly.

What helps:

• Give the hands a simple, common task: "holding a coffee cup," "hands in coat pockets," "resting hands on a table."
• Make the person larger in the frame. A close-up or half-body shot gives the hands more space to be drawn properly.
• Avoid complicated gestures such as interlocked fingers or counting on fingers.
• Create a few more versions; hands often come out right in one of them.
• If a picture is perfect apart from the hands, a simple crop that keeps the hands out of frame can save it.

Faces and eyes

Faces usually come out well when they are large in the picture. Problems appear when the face is small, such as in a wide group shot or a full-body picture from a distance.

What helps:

• Use a closer framing like "close-up portrait" or "half-body portrait" when the face matters.
• Describe the expression clearly: "a relaxed, friendly smile" rather than "happy."
• Mention the direction of the gaze: "looking directly at the camera" or "looking out of the window."
• For group pictures, keep the group small. Two or three people are far easier than eight.

Words and lettering

Many tools struggle to spell. A shop sign in your picture may come out as near-letters, and a long slogan is very likely to be wrong.

What helps:

• Leave the text out of the picture entirely and ask for "plain empty space at the top" instead.
• Add your words afterward with any basic design or photo app. This gives you clean, correct lettering in the font you choose.
• If you need a word in the scene, keep it to one short, common word and put it in quotation marks. Check the spelling carefully before using the picture.

Clutter and busy backgrounds

When a description does not say much about the background, the tool often fills it with lots of objects. This distracts from your subject and makes the picture feel cheap.

What helps:

• Name a simple background: "a plain light gray wall," "a soft out-of-focus park," "a clean white table."
• Add calming words tied to visible things: "minimal, uncluttered, plenty of empty space."
• Remove extra objects from your description. Every item you mention is something the tool will try to include.

Odd proportions and strange objects

Sometimes a chair has three legs, a necklace melts into a collar, or a person's arm looks too long.

What helps:

• Use common, everyday objects and poses. Unusual combinations increase the chance of mistakes.
• Shorten the description so fewer things compete for attention.
• Check the edges of the picture, where odd details often hide.

Making portraits, illustrations, product shots and scenes

Different kinds of pictures reward different habits. Here are quick starting templates you can adapt. Replace the words in brackets with your own.

Portraits

"[Close-up / half-body] portrait of a [age] [person] with [hair] wearing [clothing], [expression], in [simple setting], [light], realistic photo."

Example: "Half-body portrait of a woman in her thirties with a long dark braid wearing a mustard sweater, warm confident smile, in a bright home office, soft window light, realistic photo."

Keep backgrounds simple and lighting soft. Light from one side, such as a window, flatters faces more than light from directly above.

Illustrations and characters

"[Character] with [distinctive features], [pose], in [setting], [time of day], anime illustration, [framing]."

Example: "A young adult explorer with short silver hair and a green scarf, standing on a cliff edge looking at the sea, sunset, anime illustration, full body."

Distinctive features, such as a scarf color or a hairstyle, help viewers recognize the character and help you keep it consistent later.

Product shots

"A [product] made of [material] in [color], on [surface], [simple background], [light], realistic product photo, [framing]."

Example: "A matte black water bottle on a smooth gray stone surface, plain white background, soft studio light, realistic product photo, centered with empty space around it."

One honest caution: an AI picture of a product shows an imagined version, not your actual item. It is fine for mood pictures and early ideas, but customers should see real photos of what they will receive.

Scenes and places

"[Wide / medium] shot of [place] at [time of day], [weather], [two or three key details], [point of interest], [style], [mood]."

Example: "Wide shot of a seaside harbor at sunrise, light mist, colorful fishing boats and a stone pier, a single cyclist on the road, realistic photo, calm mood."

A single point of interest, such as the cyclist, gives the eye somewhere to land and makes a scene feel less like stock imagery.

Keeping a character consistent

If you want the same character to appear in many pictures, for a comic, a storybook, or a social account, consistency becomes the main challenge. Because every result is new, small details such as eye color, hairstyle, or face shape tend to drift.

Build a character sheet

Write a fixed description of the character and reuse it word for word. Include:

• Approximate adult age and build
• Face shape, eye color, and skin tone
• Hair color, length, and style
• One or two signature items, such as round glasses or a red jacket
• The style you always use, such as realistic or anime

For example: "A woman in her late twenties, oval face, hazel eyes, light olive skin, shoulder-length wavy auburn hair, small gold hoop earrings, wearing a denim jacket." Paste that exact text at the start of every description, then add the scene after it: "...sitting at a train station café, reading a map, morning light."

Keep everything else steady

• Use the same style every time. Switching between realistic and anime changes the character.
• Use the same shape for a series so framing stays similar.
• Change only the scene, the action, or the outfit, and only one of those at a time.
• Save your best picture of the character as a reference and compare each new picture against it.

Use a tool made for it

Some tools are built specifically to keep one face and look steady across many pictures. CornDude's consistent AI character tool is designed for that job, which saves a lot of rewriting and comparison. If you are planning an ongoing character with its own personality and posting schedule, the guide on how to create an AI influencer covers the planning side in detail.

Once you have a character you like, you can also bring them to life in short clips with an AI video generator, which can turn a written description or a still picture into a short video.

Editing a picture you already have

Creating from scratch is only half of what many tools can do. You can also change an existing picture. On CornDude, the image tool can help you change an outfit, change a background, or swap a face.

Changing outfits

Describe the new clothing clearly: "a fitted navy blazer over a white shirt" works better than "smart clothes." Keep the rest of the description close to the original so the person and setting stay the same.

Changing backgrounds

This is useful for product pictures and portraits. A busy living room can become "a plain light gray studio background" or "a sunny city street, softly blurred." Choose a background with light that roughly matches the light on the subject, or the result can look pasted in.

Swapping faces, only with permission

Face swapping places one person's face onto another picture. It is only appropriate when you have clear permission from the person whose face is used, and only for uses they agreed to. Using your own face for fun, or a willing friend's face for a shared joke they approved, is very different from using anyone else's photo. Never use a stranger's, a celebrity's, a coworker's, or a former partner's face.

Using AI images responsibly

AI pictures can look very real. That brings a few responsibilities that are easy to follow once you know them.

Real people and their likeness

Do not create pictures that show a real, identifiable person without their permission. This includes celebrities, public figures, colleagues, and private individuals. Pictures that put real people in situations they were never in can embarrass them, damage reputations, and in many countries break the law. Original fictional adult characters avoid all of this and are the best default.

Permission for photos you start from

If you edit a photo, you should have the right to use it. Your own photos are fine. Photos of other people need their agreement. Pictures you found online usually belong to someone else, so do not assume you can use them as a starting point.

Honest labeling

When a realistic picture could be mistaken for a real photo, label it. A short note such as "made with AI" or "AI illustration" is enough in most cases. Many platforms now ask for this; YouTube, for example, explains its rules in its help article on disclosing altered or synthetic content. Labeling protects your audience's trust, and trust is hard to win back once lost.

Do not mislead

Do not present AI pictures as evidence of something that happened, such as a news event, a product result, a property's condition, or a before-and-after. Use them for illustration, mood, and ideas, and use real photos when people are relying on accuracy to make a decision.

Respect people's styles and brands

Avoid recreating someone's logo, trademark, or a living artist's distinctive signature work and passing it off as your own. Inspiration is normal; copying is not.

A quick responsibility checklist

Before you share a picture, check:

• Every person shown is a fictional adult, or a real adult who gave permission.
• I have the right to use any photo I started from.
• The picture does not mislead anyone about a real event, product, or person.
• Realistic pictures are labeled as made with AI where it matters.
• There is no copied logo, brand, or other person's signature artwork.

How to choose an AI image generator

There are many tools, and the best one depends on what you make most often. Rather than chasing the longest feature list, judge a tool on what you will actually use.

About cost

Most tools let you look around before paying, and many charge based on how many pictures you create. On CornDude, creating an account is free, and making pictures uses credits; you can compare the plans to see which fits how often you create. Whatever tool you choose, start small, learn what works, and only scale up once you know you will use it.

A simple plan for your first session

If you are new to this, here is a short plan that gets you from a blank page to a usable picture in one sitting.

1. Pick one real purpose. For example, a new profile picture for a fictional character, or a banner for a hobby blog.
2. Choose the shape first. Square for a profile picture, wide for a banner.
3. Choose the style. Realistic for photo-like pictures, anime for illustrated ones.
4. Write a description using the five parts: subject, action, setting, light, look.
5. Create three or four versions. Do not change anything yet.
6. Pick the closest one and name its biggest problem.
7. Change only the words linked to that problem and create again.
8. Check the details: hands, eyes, edges, any lettering.
9. Run the responsibility checklist before sharing.
10. Save the description that worked in your notebook for next time.

Most people find that by the second or third session, they write stronger descriptions from the start and need far fewer rounds to get a picture they like.

Frequently asked questions

How do I write a good description for an AI image generator?

Cover five things in one or two plain sentences: the subject, what they are doing, the setting, the light, and the look you want. Use specific details such as "a red wool scarf" instead of "nice clothes." Put the most important element first, and when you try again, change one thing at a time so you can see what helped.

Why do AI pictures sometimes have strange hands or faces?

Hands and small faces contain many fine details, which makes them easy to get wrong. Make the person larger in the frame with a close-up or half-body shot, give the hands a simple everyday task such as holding a cup, and create a few versions before choosing. If everything else is right, a careful crop can also help.

Can an AI image generator write words on a picture?

Short, common words sometimes come out correctly, but longer text is often misspelled. The reliable approach is to ask for empty space in the picture, then add your words afterward in a simple design or photo app. That way you control the spelling, the font, and the placement.

How do I keep the same character across many pictures?

Write a fixed character description covering age, face, hair, and one or two signature items, and paste it word for word into every description. Keep the same style and shape, and change only the scene or action. A tool built specifically for keeping one character consistent makes this much easier.

Can I use a real person's face in AI pictures?

Only with that person's clear permission, and only in the ways they agreed to. Never use a stranger's, a celebrity's, a coworker's, or a former partner's face. Original fictional adult characters are the safest and simplest starting point for most projects.

Do I have to tell people a picture was made with AI?

Many platforms ask you to label realistic AI pictures, and it is good practice even where it is not required. A short note such as "made with AI" keeps your audience's trust and avoids confusion about what is real, especially for pictures of people, places, or products.