Make your own word picture

Is there anything artificial intelligence can’t do? It seems like there’s a mesmerizing new technological breakthrough every month. The trending breakthrough is how AI can now take a sentence you type and turn it into a painting or an image. And you can try it right now.

If you want to create AI art from your writing, here are some of the best free AI text-to-image generators.

1. Nightcafe (Web): The Simplest Free Text-to-Image AI Converter

Nightcafe is the perfect example of these text-to-image apps to make your jaw drop by seeing the kind of mind-blowing creations AI can do. Type any simple English sentence, and Nightcafe will use AI to turn it into a painting.

When creating a new image, you can choose from various artistic styles, including cubist, oil painting, matte, surreal, steampunk, etc. You can also add modifiers of artists, techniques, and cultural genres. Then you have to choose between two AI styles: Artistic and Coherent.

You can read about the tech jargon behind each on the website, but there’s a basic difference for the lay user. The Artistic variant is better for abstract creations like showing buildings in the sky or other imaginative sentences. The Coherent version is better for realistic images with your own customizations.

Select the aspect ratio, the output resolution, and a few other settings, and you’re good to go. Nightcafe will give you original artwork based on your choices in a few minutes. All your creations are saved in your account.

When you create an account, you get five credits free, with five daily credits too. Credits determine the number of tweaks you can make in the settings of an artwork. You can also use an artwork as a base to refine it, which costs more credits. And yes, you can download your artwork for free in small resolution.

2. Starry AI (Web, Android, iOS): Text-to-Image AI Art With Granular Control

Starry AI turns text into AI artwork images like the other apps in this list. But unlike many others, it offers granular control over certain aspects that make the results a lot more personal.

You’ll start by entering a random phrase and choosing between two AI engines: Altair (produces dream-like images, more abstract) and Orion (produces «unreal reality,» often more cohesive). Then choose from 16 art styles, canvas size, and aspect ratio, and optionally add your own custom image to use as a base. Selecting a custom image is usually a good idea in these apps.

Starry AI lets you use extra credits to lengthen the AI’s runtime so that you get a better final image. Similarly, you can spend credits to tell the AI how closely to stick to your text. And finally, when the image is generated, you can spend credits to upscale the image to download high-resolution AI artwork.

Plus, you don’t always have to pay for these credits. Starry AI lets you earn free credits every day or week by watching ads or sharing your creations on different social media.

Download: Starry AI for Android | iOS (Free)

3. Craiyon (Web): Get a Taste of the Famous OpenAI DALL-E

AI research lab OpenAI created the original and most popular version of an AI text-to-image generator, the DALL-E. Netizens are wowed by DALL-E 2’s ability to turn natural language into images.

If you don’t want to sign up, you can use Craiyon (formerly DALL-E Mini), an open-source version of the original AI model available for public use.

The machine learns descriptions by reading captions of other images on the internet and applying them to whatever phrase you type. You don’t need to register for an account, and you get unlimited tries for your images.

Type your sentence (and be as specific as possible) and hit Draw. It’ll take some time, but Craiyon will soon give you nine different images made from your sentence. You can save any or all images to your hard drive.

Unlike other apps, there are no further enhancements or customizations in Craiyon, but it is the simplest text-to-image AI generator and offers unlimited tries for free.

4. Dream by Wombo (Android, iOS): Simple, Free, Unlimited AI Text-to-Image Art Generator

Every AI-based text-to-image art generator is either paid, runs on a credit system, or has other restrictions. Dream by Wombo bucks all those limitations to let you create unlimited artwork from your text in many styles.

It’s as simple as creating an account, writing a sentence, and selecting a style. Current styles include, among others, Ghibli, Dali, Love, Robots, Psychic, Synthwave, Baroque, and Dark Fantasy. Let Wombo generate the image, and you can immediately ask it to develop another or download the one you liked.

You can use either the web app or the mobile app, but as our detailed Dream by Wombo review shows, the mobile version offers a few more features. Specifically, you can add a base image for the AI to use as a reference, which always helps in refining what you want.

Download: Dream by Wombo for Android | iOS (Free)

5. Pixray (Web): AI Text-to-Image Generator With Custom Codes for Geeks

Pixray is a text-to-art generator that you can run in a browser, on your computer, or with an API, all for free. It has a simple interface, but with its customizable AI engines and extensive documentation for custom codes, geeks will have a great time with it.

The default interface is simple. First, add your sentence as you normally would in any app. Then choose from the different AI render engines in the «drawer». Pixel generates pixel art, vqgan generates GAN-images (often trippy or realistic), and clipdraw and line_sketch generate stroke-based images as if it was a drawing and strokes were drawn down.

This in itself will give you fantastic images, but the fun part is the last section, Settings.

In the extensive Pixray documentation, you’ll find that you can tweak the AI settings in several ways. For example, you can add artists or styles, define quality, iterations, or scale, and discover detailed ways to change your artwork through the drawer, display, filter, video, and image settings. It’s a bit of heavy reading, but no coding is involved.

6. DeepAI (Web): Quick and Simple AI Text-to-Image Generator

DeepAI offers an easy-to-use text-to-image generator that produces decent results with the right prompts. There are many image styles on offer, and almost half of those are free. The free ones include basic text-to-image, cute creatures, fantasy worlds, cyberpunk, old, renaissance painting, and abstract, among a few others.

All of these styles produce images according to that theme, pretty much like the other tools on this list. However, among these styles, there is a logo generator as well that you can use to produce interesting logo ideas. It’s particularly useful for artists who are looking for inspiration to build on or to overcome a block.

So Is AI Killing Artists?

The different AI text-to-image generators in this article are all impressive in their own way. But just like AI writing tools, while the end product seems «real» enough, it still misses some things. Artists can add creativity, emotion, and a self-defined style that makes an artwork personal and original. However, AI is quickly on its way to doing the same.

I’m such a fan of Pinterest and find myself pinning my favorites quotes from time to time.  I got to thinking how easy it really is to create your own free printable word art with free online editing software.  Not everyone has access to Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, or the skills to use them proficiently like many talented graphic artists.

I know the basics of Photoshop, and work with it from time to time to make inspiration boards, but most of the time, I turn to the free and very user friendly software programs provided by Picasa that I’ve mentioned in the past.  Nope, I’m not getting paid to say, it, I just have been using these two for years and love what they can do!  I use them often for my own photo editing and watermarking but they are equally great for creating your own artwork with fun fonts.

If you want to make your own free printable word art for your home in any color, style and font you love, it’s really easy if you follow a few simple steps.

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Download and Install Your Favorite Fonts.  The first step is to find fonts you like and install them on your computer.  There are hundreds of free fonts available online if you simply search for them at sites like Dafont, Urban Fonts, Fonts2U, Fonts.com etc.

I’m a PC gal, so I I’m not the one to ask how to install fonts on a Mac (anyone have a link?), but with a PC here are some simple instructions.  Once you’ve installed your fonts you can get to work creating your own word art, whether it’s your favorite quote or a bus roll of streets or places, your family rules, or a seasonal inspired creation.

Download Picasa.  Many of you use Picasa already and sing its praises, but for those who don’t know, Picasa is free, and it will import and recognize all of the fonts on your computer.

Next, Grab a High Resolution .jpg    You want a high resolution image to work with so when you print your art, the fonts are clear and crisp.  If you have a snipping tool, you can simply snag a plain white image (say from Microsoft Word), import it into Picasa, and either export the file and resize it (which is more complicated) or simply use the “Edit in Picnik” tool to resize it.  I find sizing your vertical image to 2000 pixels by 2500 pixels works well for 8” x 10” printable art.  To make it easy, you can download this plain white high resolution image and start with that.  (Right click on the blank image and save to your computer).

Start Creating.    Once you have your high resolution plain white image, you open it in Picasa and begin your creation with the basic font tool.

You can also download and install dingbats which are decorative characters or ornaments attached to keyboard letters.  Above I used the ‘BlackJack’ font and the ‘2 Peas Love Me’ dingbats to form the heart.

Let’s say you want to create a printable to remind you of your favorite things about the fall season.  You can keep your background color white or you can change it to your color of choice.  To change the background, choose “Auto Color” under Basic Fixes and then choose “Tint” under Effects.  You can select any color background from that tool.

Next, get to work laying out your fonts, as seen below, with the Edit Text function.  The nice thing about Picasa is you can increase or decrease the size of your font with one click and drag, and also tilt your words in any direction, whether it’s diagonal or vertical (like the ‘Scrabble’ tiles above).

Use whatever fonts or words appeal to you.  Here’s just an example of a quick ‘Autumn Favorites’ printable I created in Picasa by using different fonts on my computer and changing up the colors for added variety.

We all have our favorite quotes we turn to for inspiration.  Here are two of my favorites I recreated using the same tools in Picasa.   1.  Roosevelt Quote: Kutsler Script, Nymphette dingbat. 2.  Ziglar Quote: Matchbook and Honey Script fonts, Graduated Tint option in Picasa.

Another great thing I love about Picasa is the instant access you have to Picnik, the sister online photo editing software.  For the Lewis Carroll quote below, I added a frame by importing the image into Picnik and then using the border tool.

*UPDATE:  Picnik was closed in April of 2012 but you can use PicMonkey to do the same things show below.

Voila!

Afternoon Delight and Berhard Fashion fonts, Auto Color + Tint function in Picasa, frame border in Picnik.

Picnik also has a few cool tools and stickers in their gallery to play with.   (use PicMonkey instead, Picnik is closed).

I used the basic triangle in different colors to create this colorful pennant art – a sweet idea for a child’s room.

Once you familiarize yourself with the tools, you can create any 8” x 10” word art you can imagine, in any color you like, from bus rolls to inspirational quotations to favorite scriptures, and print it at home on your printer.  If you want something larger than 8” x 10” to frame, simply have your local print shop print the larger size for you.

Again, Picasa and Picnik didn’t pay me a thing, they have no clue who I am.  I just happen like their free software, I’ve used them for years, and felt like sharing the creative possibilities with you today!

Have you ever created your own word art with Picasa or Picnik?  Got any other tips you’d like to share?

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