Why Build an AI Art Computer?

Many people ask me about how to get into AI Art. This article will not be a guide to AI Art beginners but specifically explaining the pros and cons of building a PC for generating AI Art.

Today there are lots of great online services for creating AI Art and they are reasonably priced. That is why I highly recommend beginning with an online service.

When I decided to build my computer these online services were not as capable as they are now.

Building an AI Art Computer

A look at the PC hardware I use for doing AI Art. Avoid overspending.

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For Mac Users

If you are a PC Gamer you likely have a decent PC with an Nvidia card which you can use to create AI Art. In that case you are lucky. But many of us are in totally different situations. We might use a laptop for daily work or we aren't even using a PC. My first computer was a Commodore Amiga 1000, back in the 1980s. Later I got into PC gaming. I built my own PCs in the 1990s before switching over the Mac around year 2000. Basically I have been a Mac user for 25 years now.

So my options was to upgrade to a much more powerful Mac or getting an extra computer. Sad reality is that it was cheaper to buy an extra PC. A Mac capable of doing AI Art well is still quite expensive, and still isn't very good at being upgraded.

For my normal work, the fact that a Mac cannot be upgraded isn't much of a problem. For instance I was happy to use a Mac Pro for something like 13 years. But if you do AI Art or AAA type of gaming then you need to be able to do upgrades. While it may seem wasteful to get a whole separate computer it has advantages.

When my PC sits generating lots of AI images it doesn't tax my Mac so I can continue doing all sorts of other work.

Benefits of an AI Art Computer

While you can do lots of great stuff with online services today, there are still advantages to using a computer, and keep in mind using services and a computer are not exclusionary. I still use several online services in addition to my computer.

Computers are really good at certain things online services suck at:

1. Generating huge number of images — I fire off jobs to make over a 100 images with lots of variations. Then I come back later and sort through them.
2. Batch processing of images — Got 200 images you want to change the face of or make the hands or face more detailed? You can fire off a job that does this automatically.
3. Inpainting details — My images mainly stand out because of my post processing. And that includes doing a lot of inpainting by hand. Online services usually have bad inpainting tools.
4. Prompt management — When you have numerous characters, clothing styles and background you reuse it becomes a real hassle to manage those without special tools. I used to have a page to copy paste prompts I used frequently.

If you are new to AI Art, all the things I mention here might not mean anything to you, so let me clarify at bit. Inpainting refers to marking off an area of your image where you want finer details. In my Art school I will explain more of this. Bottom line is that you cannot get finer details easily without doing some kind of post processing, such as inpainting.

What is inpainting?

Inpainting is also needed to fix flaws and artifacts. A common problem is hands for instance. But it can be anything. If you make an image of a girl with milk pumps attached to her boobs you can bet something will go wrong. Then a combination of photo editing and inpainting is required to fix it.

Batch processing of images

Inpainting can be done automatically with plugins for Automatic1111 (locally run web UI for Stable Diffusion) software such as ADetailer.

Normally you would paint the area you want to enhance in some way, such as the face or hands. ADetailer uses algorithms for automatically identifying where a face or hands are in your image. It will then automatically inpaint for you with the setting you have provided.

This can be used while generating an image from scratch or done later on a large number of images. Automatic1111 allows you to specify an input directory for images and an output directory. It will then automatically load up each image in turn and run ADetailer on each image to perform inpainting on the areas you told it to automatically detect. That could be whole face, just eyes, hands or even whole body.

Image Variations

Creating AI Art is not very accurate. There is a lot of luck involved to get a really nice image. One approach is thus to generate a lot of images based in a variety of settings. Tools like Automatic1111 can be setup to generate 100 images at a time. You can specify may important parts of your text prompt as having placeholders.

So for instance I have a text file with hairstyles for women and another for hair colors. I setup the text prompt to pick random words from these files so that lots of girls having different hairstyles and haircolors can be made without me babysitting the computer.

Prompt Management

To quickly compose a prompt I use something called styles in Automatic1111. A style lets you store part of a prompt under a name. So for instance I can have a style named "fascist armor" and another one named "Nora Nyborg". To make Nora in armor, I simply select these two styles.

You can use styles for anything. You could have style for backgrounds, poses or even body details such as style of breasts.

Conclusion

You don't need an AI computer to start making AI Art. The primary benefit is when you start making a lot more images.