What Are Negative Prompts?
Negative prompts tell the AI what not to include in the generated image. While your main prompt describes what you want, negative prompts describe what you want to avoid. Think of them as guardrails that prevent common AI artifacts and unwanted elements.
Why Negative Prompts Matter
Without negative prompts, AI models often produce:
Adding negative prompts can improve output quality by 40-60% according to community testing.
Universal Negative Prompts
These work well across most AI models:
Quality Control
blurry, low quality, low resolution, pixelated, jpeg artifacts, noise, grainy, out of focus, poorly rendered, amateur
Anatomy Fixes
extra fingers, mutated hands, deformed limbs, bad anatomy, extra limbs, fused fingers, too many fingers, malformed face
Style Control
cartoon, anime, illustration, drawing, painting, sketch, unrealistic, oversaturated, flat colors
Unwanted Elements
watermark, text, logo, signature, border, frame, cropped, cut off
Model-Specific Negative Prompts
For Stable Diffusion / Flux
These models benefit most from negative prompts:
(worst quality:2), (low quality:2), normal quality, lowres, bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, missing fingers, extra digit, fewer digits, cropped, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, username, blurry
For Midjourney
Midjourney uses the --no parameter:
--no text, watermark, blur, distortion, extra limbs
For DALL-E
DALL-E doesn not have a separate negative prompt field, so include exclusions in the main prompt:
"A professional photo of a cat, without any text, watermarks, or blurriness"
Negative Prompts by Use Case
Portrait Photography
deformed iris, deformed pupils, bad eyes, cross-eyed, asymmetric face, bad teeth, distorted face, poorly drawn face, extra ear, mutation
Landscape Photography
oversaturated, HDR artifacts, lens flare, chromatic aberration, people, man-made structures, power lines, text overlay
Product Photography
messy background, cluttered, distracting elements, shadows, reflections of photographer, brand logos, competing products
Auto-Generate Negative Prompts
PixCraftAI's Prompt Generator automatically creates appropriate negative prompts alongside your main prompt. The AI analyzes your subject and generates targeted exclusions for the best possible output.