Guide
How to Write Better AI Image Prompts
Most prompt advice is a word list. This is an ordering method instead: build the picture in the same sequence a photographer or art director would, so each decision constrains the next one rather than fighting it.
1. Start with the subject
Write the subject as a noun with two or three qualifiers, and nothing else. If you cannot picture it from your own sentence, the model cannot either. "A chair" is a category. "A bentwood café chair with a cracked cane seat" is a thing.
Include what the subject is doing and how it is oriented. Action and orientation resolve more ambiguity per word than almost anything else, because they force a viewpoint.
2. Describe the composition
Decide the shot before the scenery. Say how close the camera is, at what height, and where the subject sits in the frame. Then say what shares the frame — foreground objects, a horizon, a doorway used as a frame, deliberate empty space for text.
If the image has a job — a banner with room for a headline, a square crop for a feed — state it here. "Wide 16:9, subject on the right third, clear negative space across the left half" is a design instruction the model can honour.
3. Add the environment
Place the subject somewhere specific: a location, a time of day, a season, a weather condition, and a couple of details that only that place would have. Two concrete details beat five generic ones — "chipped enamel signage and a puddle holding the reflection" says more than "urban, atmospheric, moody".
4. Describe the lighting
Name the source, its direction and its quality, in that order: "single window to camera left, soft, slightly cool", "low sun directly behind the subject, hard rim light, long shadows toward camera". If you want shadow detail or blown highlights, say so — exposure is part of the look.
5. Specify the visual style
One style, stated plainly. Documentary photograph, studio still life, gouache illustration, blueprint drawing, stop-motion set. If you are working in a hybrid, say which one dominates: "photographic base with subtle screen-print texture over it".
6. Add camera information where useful
For photographic work, focal length and aperture do real work. Short lenses close to the subject exaggerate; long lenses compress and separate. Add shutter behaviour when motion matters: frozen at 1/1000, or a quarter-second pan with streaked background. Skip all of this for illustration — it just confuses the style.
7. Control colour
Give a palette with a hierarchy: a dominant, a secondary, and one accent, plus how saturated the whole thing should be. "Desaturated slate and bone with one warm ochre accent, roughly 5% of the frame" is controllable. "Colourful" is not.
8. Add the details that matter
Finish with the two or three specifics that make the image yours: a texture, a piece of wear, an object with meaning, a gesture. Stop there. A prompt where every clause earns its place is more reliable than a longer one where half the words are decoration.
9. Avoid contradictions
Read the finished prompt back and look for clauses that cannot both be true: a wide establishing shot with a shallow blurred background, overcast light with hard-edged shadows, minimalist composition with a crowded market behind. Models do not pick a winner; they blend, and blends look wrong in ways that are hard to diagnose.
10. Refine iteratively
Change one thing at a time and keep the versions. When something improves, you will know which clause did it, and that knowledge transfers to the next project. Keep a short personal library of clauses that reliably work for you — that library is worth more than any prompt pack.
Worked examples
Product shot for a small brand
Prompt
Create an image based on the following guidelines: a matte ceramic pour-over dripper in unglazed clay, three-quarter view, sitting slightly right of centre on a raw travertine slab. Tight medium shot, camera just above the rim so the interior cone is partly visible. Single large softbox to camera left, one black flag on the right so the shadow side stays deep; background a seamless warm grey falling into shadow. Palette: clay, travertine cream, charcoal shadow, no other colour. 90mm macro at f/8, full surface texture readable, no reflections of the light source, no props.
The flag and the "no reflections" clause are the parts doing the work — they give the object form instead of the flat, evenly lit look most product prompts produce.
Editorial portrait
Prompt
Create an image based on the following guidelines: a woman in her late forties, short silver hair, black wool coat, standing at the mouth of a concrete underpass and looking just past the camera. Medium shot, low angle from chest height, subject on the left third, the tunnel receding into darkness on the right. Overcast midday light spilling in from behind camera, soft on her face, falling off hard into the tunnel. Palette: wet concrete grey, black, one strand of sodium orange from a light deep inside the tunnel. 50mm at f/2.8, natural skin texture, documentary feel, no retouching gloss.
Note that the single orange light is the only colour in the description. One accent in an otherwise neutral palette is what makes a frame feel authored rather than default.
Related reading
If you are still getting your bearings, read what an AI image prompt is. For layout and typography work, see AI prompts for design inspiration, or jump to more examples.