The best AI image creation tools need to be installed on your PC. Which can be fraught with problems. Nobody wants to spend their time troubleshooting or struggling with out of date GUI’s (graphical user interfaces, the bits you click on and interact with). Some Ai image generators don’t even have a GUI, you must work from the command-line. So good luck with that.
This effectively bars most people from even trying to use them.
Which is why I wrote the previous article about free online AI text to image generators.
Mostly they are…ok, but limited in scope and options. The exception to that is Midjourney (which is harder to set up and only gives you 25 free generations). Good if you want to try out a powerful AI image generator but in the longer term, they are going to want your hard earned cash to run their servers.
Easy Diffusion
Easy Diffusion is a GUI for use with Stable Diffusion, one of the leading AI image generators out there. I’m going to show you how to install it all extremely easily. No sign ins, no fees, nada. Download, unzip the file and click install. That’s it. It works on most computer systems, even if you don’t have a graphics card.
Stable Diffusion with Easy UI, available for Windows and Linux.
Go to the above link and download the relevant version to you.
Once downloaded, the instructions recommend you move the files to the top of your drive. I didn’t bother and it worked fine, your miles may very. If you want to, just drag and drop the folder to where it needs to be before you unzip it.
To unzip the contents, right click and choose unzip.
Start installation by double clicking Start Stable Diffusion UI.
Leave it to run. If, like me, you didn’t move the files to the top of your storage, it will ask you if you are sure you want to install it, which yes you do.
It will take ages. I do mean ages. Mine took around an hour to install. With a command line window open with code running it will probably look a little scary to those with little to no experience. It’s fine, breathe and let it do it’s thing.
At some point a firewall window will appear asking for access, click ok. The program needs access to the wider world to work.
Eventually a browser window with the Easy Diffusion UI will open. Do not close the command line window! The browser is just a way for you to interact with the program, close the command line window and you’re closing the program.
Wait until the orange “Stable Diffusion is loading” to become a green “Stable Diffusion is ready” and you’re done. Good to go. To start Stable Diffusion, double click the same Start Stable Diffusion UI as you did to install and wait for the browser window to open.
The last step is have fun with your free, unlimited AI image generator.
To uninstall, all you have to do is delete the folder containing the program.
Resources and Help
As stated at the beginning, the program can run on computers without a GPU (graphics card), this is achieved in the settings tab. It will take longer to generate images this way, but it does work. From here you can also set the program to use more or less resources from your graphics card (if you have one), meaning it will generate images quicker.
Personally, it takes between 15 and 30 seconds to generate a set of 4 images for me using a RTX 2060 6GB graphics card.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options and styles you can apply to Stable Diffusion, here’s a few resources to help.
Discord for Stable Diffusion – Great place to ask questions, meet like minded people.
Tutorials for Stable Diffusion – Reddit
Stable Diffusion Community – Reddit
You must be logged in to post a comment.