✨Prompt Engineering for ImagesLesson 1 of 5
How Image AI Thinks
8 min
basicsBefore you write a single prompt, understand this: Image AI doesn't "think" like you. It doesn't know what a "good photo" is. It knows patterns. Billions of image-text pairs trained it to associate words with visual features. When you write "sunset", it's not imagining a sunset—it's activating patterns from millions of sunset images it learned.
Key Concepts
- 1AI maps words to visual patterns, not concepts
- 2Order matters: words at the start have more weight
- 3AI doesn't understand context the way humans do
- 4Every word is a vote for certain visual features
- 5Specificity beats vagueness every time
Examples
Prompt
cat
Result
Random cat, random angle, random style—AI picks from millions of possibilities
Prompt
orange tabby cat sitting on windowsill, golden hour sunlight, shallow depth of field
Result
Specific cat, specific scene, specific lighting—AI knows exactly which patterns to activate
Pro Tips
Think of prompts as weighted instructions, not descriptions
The more specific your words, the narrower the output space
AI treats every prompt as equally valid—it won't judge your ideas
Summary
Image AI is a pattern-matching engine. Your job is to activate the right patterns with precise language.
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