Unlock Your Creative Potential with Leonardo.Ai Realtime Canvas

 

Unlock Your Creative Potential with Leonardo.Ai Realtime Canvas

I. Introduction

AI-powered art generation is all the rage these days. There are lots of options available, and more options are becoming available every day, it seems.

Leonardo.Ai is a leading platform in this field and is the one I use the most. You can use it for free, but if you want to use it extensively, say to create art to sell on POD sites such as Zazzle, Redbubble, or Printify, I recommend you get a paid account. This will give you more credits.

The Realtime Canvas feature has great potential for unlocking creativity. I share some thoughts, sample images I created, and how I created them.

The image at the top is one I created using the Realtime Canvas feature.

II. What is Leonardo.Ai?

Leonardo.AI is a set of tools that you can use to create all sorts of images. You can even use it to create logos and comics.You are only limited by your imagination.

The team behind Leonardo.Ai is always innovating and introducing more features. Recent developments include Flow State. This feature is amazing and has very impressive speed and realism. I plan to post an article on it in the near future. Suffice to say that some of the images it creates are so photorealistic that its getting even harder to distinguish between what is a real photograph and what is an image created using Flow State.

In the meantime, check out my post on WordPress.com here.

III. Introducing the Realtime Canvas

Realtime Canvas is one of many tools the software offers. You basically have a split screen setup, with a paintbrush tool and the option to include a prompt to guide the software. You can choose various settings. See the image below.

Settings for Drawing or Inpainting:

This is where you choose to either draw or inpaint on the real-time canvas.

Output to Input tool:

This is where you can tell the software to use the output (the image in the right window) as the input. This will copy whatever is in the right window into the left window and use it as the new source image.

Here are the 'before' and 'after' screenshots of this in action:

1. The 'before' screenshot

2. The 'after' screenshot

You can then use the new source image and refine it using the tools to create a new image, which you can further tweak using the different settings.

Paintbrush tools:

vas.

Here you change the size and colour of the brush, erase parts of the image, undo, redo, or delete the whole canvas. You can also select the image to carry out further actions on it. This can be to send it forward or backward on the canvas (a basic 'layers' functionality), useful when you add other images onto the canvas. 

You can also use the 'Generate' button (above 'Select') to generate a new image. This will be added to the canvas in the top layer. You just type a prompt in the popup window.

This image will affect the output in the right-hand window and can be used creatively to achieve all sorts of effects.

The button above the 'Generate' one is the 'Add Image' button. This will add an image from your computer into the canvas window. As with the 'Generate' option, the image you add will affect the output image.

By using different images, moving them around, and switching between images in terms of which is on the top layer, you can achieve some creative result. Check out these screenshots:

Creativity strength, and style controls:

Here you can control (though it tends to have unpredictable results, so I am not sure 'control' is the most accurate word to use!) how closely the software sticks to the original image(s). 

If you set the creativity strength to the far left (0.3), the resulting output image will be very close to the original. If you take it to the far right (0.9), you can get some weird results with some styles. The end results vary considerably, so its really a case of experiment and see what happens!

Here are some examples of different settings:

1. Creativity Strength set to 0.3

2. Creativity Strength set to 0.75

As you can see, there is quite a difference when you set the slider higher (to the right).

There are also lots of styles you can use for your image. Here is a screenshot of the choices:

Each of these gives very different results, so there is plenty to play around with.

Use a prompt option:

You can type a prompt into a prompt box that will guide the software. It can be used with a blank canvas to create your initial image. Alternatively, you can use it to tweak your input results in the output window.

My personal experience is that it doesn't seem to work as far as negative prompts, but maybe that is a feature that will come in a later version.

The tool icon to the left reminds me of an icon representing a graphic equaliser. This, when clicked on, allows you to change the seed manually (or to randomise it) or use a fixed seed.

It also allows you to use a High Quality setting that runs the model at a higher resolution and uses more steps.

There is an option to control the level of guidance between 1 and 4 (with.1 increments). Adjust the guidance to adjust both prompt adherence and the amount of details in the image.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of options when using the Realtime Canvas in Leonardo.Ai.

Here are some of my own creations using this tool. Don't forget to sign up for a free account. If you wish to support me, you can use this affiliate link: https://app.leonardo.ai/?via=steven-dale

It will help pay for my broadband, or at least buy me a cup of coffee!

Anime-style character.

Sci-fi style character.

Painting style image.