This has been a busy week for Liz and me. We had to say goodbye to our rented gite in France with its lovely relaxing gardens, patio and heated pool and make our way back to what will probably be cold and wet England. What then could I write about this weekend? Well, as I spend a lot of time making images with AI I thought I could give you a quick account of my experiences, good and bad, with AI imaging.
The idea of AI imaging is pretty simple; on a site like Freepik or Nightcafe, you type into a text box and describe your image and AI or artificial intelligence will do the rest. Here’s a recent example of an image I made for use on social media.
The description was pretty simple and, in my experience, the simpler you can make your description, the better. Once you get complicated, anything can happen. Here it is:
A solitary lighthouse keeper, weathered and wise, stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking a turbulent sea. The lighthouse beam cuts through a thick, mystical fog and the beam projects the following words into the sky: ‘READ A NEW BLOG POST!’ The scene is rendered in a hyper realistic fantasy style. The overall mood is one of stoic endurance and ancient mystery.
The image came out pretty much the way I wanted it. I added the web address later in Microsoft Designer. I also made it into a video which didn’t really work as the lighthouse lamp only turned halfway but the actual light it sent out turned a full circle so it all looked a bit odd. Oh well!
Another idea I had was of a girl hitting a tennis ball and the ball is frozen close to the camera with the words ‘READ A NEW BLOG POST’ seen clearly written on the ball. I must have tried the prompt for this about 30 times and have never really got what I wanted. Here are a few versions.
In the end I thought what about just using the ball without the tennis player? That turned out to be much easier.
Another idea I had was a girl in an art gallery looking at paintings. One would say the usual, A NEW BLOG POST AVAILABLE NOW or something like READ A NEW BLOG POST. The poster would be sharply focussed, the girl blurred but believe it or not every time I tried that prompt, the poster came out blurred and the girl sharp.
Anyway, let’s take a look at some which came out pretty well.
Many of these images I use in my promo videos which can be found in places like Facebook and X. Here’s a recent example.
Freepik is a site where I have always got some good results and recently I spotted an AI voice section on their site. I sorted out quite a few good voices which can be edited and made faster or slower and other refinements but sadly, just as I was getting started, I ran out of credits which was really annoying especially as being a major tightwad I wasn’t inclined to pay for more. Oh well, here’s one voice I used that I thought might resonate with my American readers.
Here’s another video which used an AI image of a bottle floating in the water which came out pretty good as a video. The sound effects were added from a sound effects CD I bought from eBay years ago.
This next one features a pulp fiction paperback with the title, new blog post out now. I tried this prompt a number of times but somehow the text always came out mixed up. This one isn’t perfect; it was supposed to show my name on the spine but shows it on the side where the pages are.
Here’s a final one which will probably reflect the UK weather back in Manchester.
Of course, they don’t call Manchester The Rainy City for nothing!
OK, let’s get started. The first thing to remember about blogs is that a big wall of text tends to put off readers so it’s a good idea to break up the text with a few pictures. What kind of pictures though? Well in the blog posts themselves I’ll use either my own photos or use an online stock photo site like 
trickier. First the user has to upload pictures of the person you want to make an AI model of, in this case me, then you add a prompt to describe the picture you want. On Nightcafe and many other AI sites too, you can upload a picture and develop it. On Freepik you can hit the reimagine button and a different version of your picture will appear.
Both of the images above were supposed to say ‘New blog post out now!’ Oh well.
OK, what AI image can I create now for my next social media post? What about an art gallery, perhaps seen from above? Light streams in dramatically from windows off to the side. It’s a wide angle shot, looking down. Art lovers are admiring a new poster advertising my blog. It should turn out something like this . .
Letters from an Unknown Author! 