AI prompts to create images like photographs

This post suggests ways of finetuning your AI prompts for creating images that look like real photographs. Since the best AI prompts for this objective read like the thoughts of a photographer, this post will highlight some photography-based options by variable. Each variable will be an element of the image. For instance, it will tell the AI generator like Playground.com details like [type of shot], [main subject / theme], [subject's pose], [style cues], [lighting] and so on. Here are some prompts that you can embellish further.

• photo portrait of beautiful Chinese village woman laughing with her teenage daughter in the river in Yangtze River, clear facial features, cinematic, 35mm lens, f/1.8, accent lighting, global illumination, uplight, q2

• photo realistic image of lizard, side view pose, golden hour, telephoto lens, National Geographic, ar 16:9

Uses & benefits of creating photo-realistic images using AI prompts

• generate unique and free photographic images for addition to creative and other content (books, blogs, etc)
• feedstock for creative ventures like 
• coloring books (with the 'photo to sketch' feature in programs like Prome AI or Colorscape)
• short videos from images for product advertisements (with the 'photo to video' feature in programs like Prome AI) 

Here are some options for writing AI prompt.

Type of image

• photo portrait, photo realistic image 

Subject. Be as descriptive as possible

• plus sized Chinese woman
• middle aged Indian woman with a Banarsi saree and a nose chain

Background and theme 

• white background
• Lake Superior background
• Rather than just "a vegetable garden" , say a "vegetable garden with heavy laden papaya trees and heaping compost piles in wheel barrows"
• ___ landscape
• surrealist, forest, Japanese Garden, desert, English garden, formal garden, beach, public park
• Mood descriptions: 
• solemn seascape
• surrealist landscape evoking reverence
• cinematic    [cinematic images have a strong feeling of the mood as if they were a still shot taken during a motion picture.]
• digital graffiti mural that evokes rebellion.
  

Camera settings 

• polaroid photo    [gives the image a slightly more realistic and aged appearance]
• 35 mm lens / telephoto / close-up   [try 35mm or 50mm to see which you prefer for portraits of people. Telephoto is ideal for closeup macro images of animals]
• f/1.8    [which gives shallow depth of field meaning that the foreground will be in sharp focus but the background blurred. Adjust settings like to f/22, a narrow depth of field meaning that the background will be sharper than f1.8.] 
• clear facial features
• accent lighting    [light focuses on particular spot]
• global illumination    [Global Illumination (GI) is a system that models how light is bounced off of surfaces onto other surfaces (indirect light) rather than being limited to just the light that hits a surface directly from a light source (direct light)]
• q2    [for higher photographic quality rendition]

Other special camera settings: lighting

• golden hour, twilight, 

Unique faces. A complaint is usually that the faces are too similar when multiple images are derived from the same theme.

African American woman, face like [  name of 1 or more real famous persons of a different race   ] 

Human model's pose 

• looking over her shoulder
• sitting on floor leaning forward
• arms crossed
• sitting with knees crossed
• hands on waist
• one knee up
• sitting on floor sideways
• fixing her hair
• turning     [ideal for medium to long hair]
• leaning on wall and popping her hip     [relaxed, self confident]
• sitting with one leg bent
• supported stand     [may be resting on work desk behind her]
• sideways with hands in pockets
• one arm crossed and the other hand on chin 

Composition

• the face occupying the right two-thirds of the frame.

CONTENT RELATED TO AI PROMPTS TO CREATE IMAGES THAT LOOK LIKE PHOTOGRAPHS

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