How do I write a good prompt?
Describe subject, setting, lighting, composition and style. Specifics beat adjectives, and the Enhance button will expand a short prompt for you.
The single biggest improvement most people can make is to stop writing what they want and start describing what the finished image looks like. "A nice photo of a woman" gives the model nothing to work with. "A woman in a charcoal wool coat standing on a rain-slicked street at dusk, shot on 85mm, shallow depth of field, neon signs blurred behind her" gives it five decisions it no longer has to guess at.
What to include
| Element | Example |
|---|---|
| Subject | A silver tabby cat, mid-stride |
| Setting | On a mossy stone wall in an overgrown garden |
| Lighting | Dappled afternoon sunlight through leaves |
| Camera or composition | Low angle, 50mm, shallow depth of field |
| Style or mood | Editorial photography, muted earth tones, calm |
Practical tips
- Front-load what matters. Models weight the beginning of a prompt more heavily.
- Describe what you want present, not what you want absent. "Empty street" works better than "no people".
- One idea per prompt. Two competing concepts usually produce a muddled blend of both.
- Change one thing at a time when iterating, or you won’t learn which change helped.
- For video, describe motion explicitly — what moves, how the camera moves, and how fast.
Let AI do the expanding
The Enhance button on generator pages rewrites a short prompt into a fully detailed one. Write a rough sentence, hit Enhance, then edit what it gives you. This is a different feature from the AI Assistant, which suggests brand new prompt ideas rather than expanding an existing one.
Prompts are capped around 2,000 characters on most models, with higher limits on some video models. A counter warns you as you approach the cap.
For a library of ready-made prompt presets you can customize:
Browse the Prompt BuilderLast reviewed against the live product in August 2026.