Using Stable Diffusion to create simple illustrations for print

I made a short video explaining how to use Stable Diffusion to create illustrations for print books.

I used Krita to edit the photos but pretty much any image editor would do, you just need to be able to make selections and erase.

Here are the steps -

Step One

Go to https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabilityai/stable-diffusion

or https://stablediffusionweb.com/#demo

and enter a prompt for the image you want.

For this tutorial, I put "monsters black and white hand drawn illustrations".

Use the guidance scale at the bottom (if available) to tweak the settings.

I normally try to keep it between one and nine but experiment and see what you come up with.

After anything between 30 seconds and a minute, you should get your generated pictures.

If you don't get anything you like, keep trying!

Add more keywords and move the guidance scale until you get something you are happy with.

When you are done just right click or hold the image to download it.

It gave me a image filled with hand drawn monsters so now lets edit it.

Step Two

I opened the image with Krita and then used the "Freehand select tool" to draw roughly around the monster I wanted.

You could also use one of the "Shape select tools" like the rectangle and drag the shape around the item you would like to edit.

I then chose "Copy" from the Edit menu, then "Paste into New Image".

This creates a new image at the size of the shape I have just copied.

Depending on what other bits of image or background are around the monster you want, you can use the "Magic Wand" to select a contiguous colour to erase large sections by clicking on a part of the image that is a different colour to your monster. You can then hold the shift key and click to add to the selection. If you then click "Cut" from the Edit menu, it will remove everything you have selected.

Otherwise choosing the Brush (in Krita) and changing its attribute to Erase, simply click and drag over the parts of the image you don't want. I would use small strokes and release the mouse / pen regularly otherwise if you make a mistake and Undo, it will put everything back!

Use the zoom and change the size of the tooltip to erase fine areas.

You should now have a relatively clean picture of a monster surrounded by a grid denoting transparency.

Save the file through the "Export" menu as a PNG file. This will preserve the transparency.

Congratulations, you now have an image to use in a book!

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