Guide
How to Write Better AI Image Prompts
Most prompt advice is just 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 instead of fighting it.
Written by Thomas Chacko, who builds and maintains Promptify
1. Start with the subject
Write the subject as a noun with two or three qualifiers, nothing more. If you can't picture it from your own sentence, the model won't 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's 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 actually 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" ever will.
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're 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 muddies 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. Then stop. A prompt where every clause earns its place beats a longer one where half the words are decoration.
9. Avoid contradictions
Read the finished prompt back and look for clauses that can't 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 don't pick a winner — they blend, and the blend looks 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'll know exactly which clause did it, and that knowledge carries over to the next project. Keep a short personal library of clauses that reliably work for you — that's worth more than any prompt pack you'll find online.
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 doing the real work — they give the object form instead of the flat, evenly lit look most product prompts end up with.
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.
Notice that the single orange light is the only colour in the whole description. One accent in an otherwise neutral palette is what makes a frame feel authored instead of default.
Related reading
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.