How to Write Better AI Image Prompts

Most disappointing AI images are not a model problem — they are a description problem. A prompt is a brief, and the clearer the brief, the closer the result. The good news is that strong prompts follow a structure you can reuse forever.

Use the six-part structure

Write your prompt in this order and you will rarely need more than two attempts:

• Subject — who or what the image is about, described concretely.
• Action or state — what the subject is doing, or how it is arranged.
• Environment — where it happens, including surfaces and props.
• Lighting — golden hour, studio softbox, neon, overcast, backlit.
• Composition — close up, wide shot, top down, negative space on the left.
• Medium and finish — photography, 3D render, watercolour, editorial illustration.

A ceramic coffee cup on a linen tablecloth, steam rising, morning window light, close up with copy space on the right, editorial product photography.

Be specific about the things you care about

If the colour of a jacket matters, name it. If the image needs room for a headline, ask for negative space. Anything you leave unsaid becomes the model's choice, and the model chooses the statistical average.

Words that hurt more than they help

• Stacked superlatives like 'best quality, masterpiece, 8k, ultra HD' — they dilute the real description.
• Contradictions such as 'minimalist and highly detailed maximalist'.
• Very long lists of unrelated objects; the model will drop most of them.
• Text requests — models render lettering unreliably, so add copy in a design tool.

Iterate on one variable at a time

When a result is close, change a single element — the lighting, the lens, the palette — instead of rewriting the whole prompt. This turns generation into a controlled process rather than a slot machine, and it saves credits.

In XM Digital Services LLC you can also press Enhance prompt to expand a short idea into this structure automatically, then edit the parts you want to control yourself.