Chapter 4. Beyond text-to-image prompting
While most AI-generated images start with a prompt, your creative journey doesn’t have to end there. In this chapter, we move beyond text-to-image workflows and explore powerful techniques for transforming, remixing, and extending your visuals using both images and sketches.
We begin with removing background and resizing images, a practical foundation for turning raw AI outputs into usable assets. You’ll learn how to isolate characters like Furferno, adjust aspect ratios for different platforms, and integrate these elements into new backgrounds—all using conversational tools or free web apps.
Next, we explore remixing images, which opens up endless creative possibilities. Whether you're adjusting a character’s color palette, changing art styles, or overlaying elements into different scenes, this section helps you develop versatile visuals tailored to different formats, moods, or use cases.
From there, we introduce the image-to-prompt-to-image technique—a creative loop that turns images into structured prompts, and then uses those prompts to generate new visual variations. This reverse-engineering process helps you analyze what makes an image compelling and reuse those ideas to build a consistent visual series.
We then dive into blending images, where two visuals are merged to create new characters or scenes. Whether you’re fusing mountain landscapes with cosmic profiles or combining stylistic traits from different portraits, this technique highlights how style, texture, and structure can harmonize into something entirely new.
Finally, we explore sketch to image, a method for converting your rough hand-drawn ideas into polished AI-generated artwork. You’ll see how simple pencil sketches can be transformed into full digital illustrations, preserving layout and tone while enriching detail, color, and emotion.
- Removing background and resizing images
- Remixing images: creating new scenes and characters
- The image-to-prompt-to-image technique
- Blending images: creating new visuals through image fusion
- Sketch to image: bringing hand-drawn ideas to life with AI
How to learn AI image generation with this guide
This guide was developed alongside robust AI image prompting tools to give you practical experience as you read. To deepen your learning, explore AI Compare Hub, which offers extensive resources and interactive tools:
AI Compare Hub is an essential companion website where you can discover and compare leading AI image generation platforms. It allows you to see how different models and services interpret the same creative brief, helping you explore image comparisons that reveal stylistic differences and strengths across tools, including:
- Cross-Platform Comparison: Compare outputs across tools like Midjourney, Flux AI, and Stable Diffusion to see how each interprets your vision.
- Cross-Model Comparison: Examine results from different versions of the same platform (for example, Midjourney v5.2 vs. v6) to assess improvements and variations.
- The Same Model Deep Dive: Experiment with prompt variations and parameters within a single model to understand its nuances.
You can enhance your learning journey using the AI Compare Hub Prompting Tools.
