AI: NightCafé
How to make art with NightCafé
Lift your articles with inspiring images
I’ve talked previously about NightCafé, an artificial intelligence image creator. The advantages for content creators are images that are free from copyright, are unique (as opposed to images available from stock sites such as Unsplash where the most popular images seem to crop up on every second article), and may be customized to match the topic.
The topic today is mountains. Dr. Preeti Singh lifts us up to high places and asks us to fill our hearts with natural majesty. We cannot help but be inspired; we recognize the beauty of the lofty peaks that look down upon our everyday lives.
Do it with AI
Using NightCafé is simple. First, get a free account. You begin with a few credits. Five more are given every day and you may earn more by sharing your creations or commenting on those of others.
There are robust communities on Discord and Facebook exchanging ideas and images.
It’s fun just typing in a text prompt — Elon Musk as a rocketship launching himself into the cosmos — but a great learning experience is to browse through existing creations and see how the effects are achieved.
Select “Explore” and choose “Open Settings” to find a feed of images where, if you click on them and then the “Settings” link, you will see how the picture was created. Here’s one I liked, chosen more or less at random:
Sun moon and gold flower and honey sea:: hyperdetailed :: VRay :: expansive :: 8K resolution :: subtractive lighting :: surrealism :: poster art :: vivid and vibrant :: Unreal Engine :: colorful
Simply click through to the image settings page, select “Duplicate” and you may make your own copy, tweaking various factors, choosing a different random seed, increasing the resolution or processing time and so on.
There are an astounding array of options available. Most of the time, short processing and thumbnail resolution is fine for a Medium article like this.
That’s how I got the lead image for this article. I swapped the word “Hornbill” for “Snow-capped mountain” in an image crafted to resemble a stained glass window.
NightCafé users tend to have a fair amount of whimsy and imagination so there is never any shortage of ideas.
Hitching a ride on the shoulders of giants
I took the “stained glass mountain concept” in a different direction:
What if the mountain were made of actual stained glass?
The result is interesting and could probably be evolved into something detailed and fractal and sparkling. Best climbed by helicopter, I think.
Fiction is far from short of lofty peaks. Here’s one from the universe of John Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, as imagined by AI.
I love this one. I created four images, all pretty good, but here we are given some life to the landscape. Worth clicking through to look at the other three. Just scroll down a little here.
OK. This one was very complex. It took thirteen minutes and 18 credits with a massive list of text prompts. Long runtime, extra accuracy boost, upscaled resolution. But glorious!
This was evolved from a stunning fantasy landscape by the brilliant Quiet Volcano. I just switched a few words in the lead prompt.
All of the above images were entirely created by artificial intelligence. I just pointed the robot in a given direction and smacked it on the rump.
Thanks for climbing along with me on my trip into the mountains. And thank you once again, Dr. Preeti Singh, for the prompt. I look forward to reading some more about mountains from the talented members of Reciprocal!
Duncan Klein
Penny Grubb gets right into the spirit of Reciprocal with mentions of seven different writers — including me — and some advice I shall certainly follow next time I am in the United Kingdom.
Yana Bostongirl talks about browsing Medium through different tabs and some of the problems that can ensue. Articles about Medium always do well, especially if written by someone who knows what they are talking about. Thanks, Yana!
