Your Prompt Was Declined by PromptBase? Here’s How to Fix It. Part 3

If you want to start from the beginning, check

Part 1. Too Specific Prompts.

Part 2. No use case.

Below, we are looking at the third reason why your prompts might get declined by PromptBase. Which is

Problem 3. Your Prompt is Easily Guessable

Here’s what we can see in point 3.11 of the guidelines:

If we believe that a user would be able to quickly re-produce images or text in the same way just by looking at the title or example outputs of your prompt, then we will decline it.

Usually, this happens with prompts that are too short.

What is a prompt that is too short? I believe a perfect prompt for image generative AI should be definitely longer than 10 words. Ideally, you’d want around 20 words or longer.

For example, let’s look at these images that I created for a prompt that was declined.

One of my declined prompts that was too guessable

They are obtained by only 6 words:

[a description of a scene] haunted by aliens, Persian illuminated illustration.

And while this prompt is completely valid and does generate consistent results, it is easily guessable, and someone familiar with this style might easily replicate it in generative AI without needing to purchase your prompt.

Remember that if someone is trying to “hack” your prompt (recreate the prompt without paying), guessing is not the only way for them to go. The more fruitful method is to reverse-engineer it with AI: the “describe” command in Midjourney will usually do the trick.

This is why we (and PromptBase) don’t want to submit primitive, short, easily guessable prompts.

Solution

The solution to guessable and short prompts is simple: make them less guessable and longer :)

Now, to implement this technically, we must keep in mind the following:

Step 1. Add more words

We can add more descriptive words to our prompt. For example, we can turn the above prompt

[a description of a scene] haunted by aliens, Persian illuminated illustration

into

[a description of a scene] being haunted by creepy anthropomorphic aliens, Persian traditional illuminated painted illustration

which will turn the 6-word prompt into an 11-word one.

But, it is not guaranteed we will get the same consistent results as with the 6-word prompt. Sometimes, the 6-word prompt works wonders just as it is, and adding more words to it makes the result less controlled / inconsistent / totally different.

Therefore, I’d recommend to add a few more words, but run it through the AI to make sure the results are consistent, and tweak in case they’re not.

And this brings me to

Step 2. Add parameters

Adding different parameters to your prompt is another way to make your prompt more complex and less guessable.

Which parameters?

Here, you’ll find a full list: Midjourney Parameters. I’m sure, the same documentation exists for other types of GenAI.

The example parameters we can fit to any situation are:

1. aspect ratio. Make your prompt more complex by using the ‘ — — ar’ parameter as a variable so that users could play with the aspect ratio of your prompt.
2. no. The ‘ — — no’ parameter will take care of not showing what you don’t want to see in your image. A great way to make your prompt more complex without sacrificing the consistency and quality.
3. stylize. Adding this parameter (you have to first test which amount of stylization is best) will make the prompt even more consistent and, of course, less guessable.

As a result, we will get something like:

[a description of a scene] being haunted by creepy anthropomorphic aliens, Persian traditional illuminated painted illustration — — ar 1:1 — — no angels — — stylize 5

which looks more complex and is much more likely to be accepted by PromptBase, but preserves the same image quality.

Thanks for checking this article out! If you haven’t read the previous parts, take a look at:

Part 1. Too specific prompts.

Part 2. No use case prompts.

Or, watch the video where I explain the whole 3:

Happy Prompting! ✨