FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything people usually ask about how Promptify reads images, what happens to uploads, and how to get better prompts out of it.
What is Promptify?
Promptify is a free web tool that reads a visual reference — a photograph, a live web page, or a poster or infographic — and writes back a structured, reusable AI prompt describing it. Instead of starting from a blank prompt box, you start from something you already like and edit the description until it matches what you want to make.
How does image-to-prompt generation work?
Your image is resized in the browser and sent once to a vision-capable model with instructions to describe it as a working brief rather than a caption. The model reads what is directly visible — subject, framing, palette, texture, sharpness — and infers what the visual evidence implies, such as light direction from shadow edges or approximate focal length from perspective. That reading is then formatted as a prompt you can paste into an image generator.
What images can I upload?
Any common image format your browser can open: JPEG, PNG, WebP, and HEIC on devices that support it. The posters and infographics tool additionally accepts PDF. There is no account required and no upload limit per session, though very large files are downscaled locally before they are sent.
What makes a good reference image?
One clear dominant idea, readable lighting, and reasonable resolution. A single subject with a visible light direction produces a much sharper description than a collage, a heavily filtered photo, a watermarked stock preview or a screenshot of a screenshot. If you only care about one part of the image, crop to it before uploading.
Can Promptify analyze website designs?
Yes. Paste a public URL into the website tool and it fetches the page, reads the markup and stylesheets including CSS custom properties, and renders the page so the section order reflects what is actually visible. You get the palette with hex values, the type scale, spacing and component conventions, and the page's sections in order. You can request layout only, theme only, or both.
Can Promptify analyze posters?
Yes. Upload a poster, flyer, editorial spread or data graphic as an image or PDF and the tool describes grid and margins, visual hierarchy, typography, colour relationships and graphic treatment. Flat, straight-on files read far better than photographs of a poster on a wall, where perspective and uneven light distort the evidence.
Can I edit generated prompts?
You should. The output is a first draft assembled from evidence, not a finished brief. Delete the clauses describing things you do not want, replace the subject with yours, and tighten anything that reads as hedged. Editing one clause at a time also teaches you which words actually change the result.
Can I use generated prompts with other AI tools?
Yes. Prompts are written in plain descriptive language rather than tool-specific syntax, so they transfer to Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, Flux, Leonardo and most other generators, as well as to AI site and design builders. Add your own parameter flags — aspect ratio, seed, style settings — where a particular tool expects them.
Why might two prompts generated from similar images differ?
Language is a lossy compression of a picture. Two images that look alike to you can differ in shadow behaviour, crop, texture or colour distribution, and the model weighs those differences when deciding what matters. Generation is also probabilistic, so two runs on the same file may emphasise different aspects. Treat variation as a prompt for your own judgement about which reading is the useful one.
How can I improve the generated result?
Crop tightly to the part you care about, use a clean high-quality file, and choose references that do one thing well. After generating, remove anything irrelevant, make the subject specific, keep a single visual style, and check the prompt for clauses that contradict each other — a wide shot with a blurred background, or soft light with hard shadows.
Does Promptify store uploaded images?
No. Files are resized in your browser, sent once to the analysis endpoint, and discarded as soon as the description is returned. They are not written to a database, not kept in storage, and not used to train models.
How does Promptify handle privacy?
There is no account and we do not ask for personal information. Standard server logs such as IP address and timestamp may be recorded for security and abuse prevention. If advertising is enabled, third-party cookies may be set subject to your consent choice in the cookie banner. The Privacy Policy sets out the detail.
Is Promptify free?
Promptify is currently free to use. There is no account, sign-up, or credit card required.
What should I do if prompt generation fails?
First try again — most failures are transient network or upstream timeouts. If it keeps failing, check the file: extremely large images, unusual formats and password-protected PDFs are common causes. For the website tool, pages that block automated requests or render entirely client-side may return little usable evidence; try a different page on the same site. If a specific file or URL reliably fails, send it to us via the contact page and we will look at it.
Still stuck?
Read the image-to-prompt guide for what the analysis can and cannot infer, or get in touch with the file or URL that gave you trouble.