Everything Ideogram 4.5 can do

Ideogram 4.5 is Ideogram's image model for designs whose words have to be right. It comes in two versions. Standard makes pictures from words alone, at 1K or 2K, in shapes from 3:1 to 1:3, and edits a picture with up to four more beside it. Precise Edit only edits, and puts back every pixel the edit didn't change.

Every picture below was made by the step under it. Change a placeholder and press Gen to make your own.

Quote every word

Put every word that must appear in double quotes, then give each line a size, a style and a place, in the order it's read. Words outside quotes are read as description. This poster quotes three lines, the headline, the date and the strip along the bottom; the picture in the middle is described, not quoted.

A label needs a hierarchy, and the prompt has to say which line is biggest: here the maker's name is small, "Early Harvest" is the largest line, and the legal line is tiny along the bottom edge. Keep each line short; a long line in a narrow space is where a word wraps or a separator drops.

Write the layout like a spec

For a page with several blocks of copy, tie each block to a region: the top 60%, the left column, a strip along the bottom. Then nothing is left for the model to place. Prices, times and addresses come through as written.

A dense page holds together when the prompt runs in the order the page is read: this menu goes top to bottom, section by section, dish by dish. Left to itself the model may add a line to make a page look finished, so say when the quoted words are the only ones it should carry.

Four colors, no more

Give the palette as hex codes, each with a plain color name, and say the design is strictly limited to them. The code pins the exact color; the name tells the model what kind of color it is. The two covers share every word but the palette line, and the type takes the palette too.

New words, same design

To change the words in a finished design, set the step's tier to Precise Edit. It redraws only what you name and puts the rest back from the source, so the photograph and the layout stay as they were. Quote the line as it reads now and as it should read: here the class moves from Saturday mornings to Sunday afternoons, and the rest of the flyer is left as it was.

A translation names three things: every line of text, the language, and what stays, down to any name that keeps its own letters. Here the prompt keeps "PIER 9" in Latin capitals while the rest changes. Start each language from the original, never from another translation, and have someone who reads it check every line.

Edit in rounds

Precise Edit is made for chains. Each round reads the one before it and puts back every pixel it didn't change, so the parts nobody mentions never drift. Give each round one target and one change, end with what stays, and leave the light for last: it touches the whole frame, and every round after it would inherit it.

Each round here runs at Quality medium, which costs less than a third of high. Very low is the cheapest way to see whether an instruction lands where you meant; high picks the best of several tries, for the round you keep.

One thing from each picture

Standard's edit reads the picture it changes and up to four more. Say what to take from each: here the table comes from one picture, the bag's shape from another, and its material from a swatch that never showed a bag. Drop in any swatch as the material.

Standard redraws the whole frame on every edit, which is what lets it reshape a picture. Set Dimensions to a new shape and say what fills the new space: the square olive oil shot becomes a wide banner, label and all. Left on auto, as in the bag edit, Dimensions keep the input's shape.

To build on any step, press Mix to copy its recipe into your own page.