So, early this morning, I woke up and
decided to hop onto Midjourney to generate some cool images for a video, but I got this
message in response: "Due to extreme demand we can't provide a free trial right now.
Please subscribe or try again tomorrow."
Well, that pushed me to dive into
finding the best alternative to Midjourney. And most importantly, it had
to be free. And finally, I found it!
So, introducing
[leonardo.ai](http://leonardo.ai/)! This AI is constantly updating and growing at
a crazy pace. It's already capable of giving Midjourney some serious competition. But the
most important thing is when you visit their Discord account, you're greeted with this
wonderful statement: "all rights to an image belong to the person who has generated it."
Just a reminder, to get the rights to an image generated by Midjourney,
we have to pay $10 a month.
If you don't have extra money to spend
on images, this is the perfect option for you. In this video, I'm going to explain
why I've fully switched over to Leonardo AI, how Leonardo AI is better than Midjourney, and
how, with the absolutely free Leonardo AI app, you can start making money today.
Firstly, let me show you how to get access to Leonardo AI. Go to their website and click
"Get Early Access." Then, you'll need to join their Discord channel. After that, head over
to the room called "Priority Early Access." Here, you'll need to follow the link to fill
out a short form, where you'll provide your Discord nickname and email to get an invitation to
Leonardo AI. The invitation should arrive within a day, but let me tell you a secret: you don't have
to wait for the invitation. Just go back to the "[leonardo.ai](http://leonardo.ai/)" website.
In the top right corner, click "Launch App," then "Yes. I'm whitelisted." Now, you'll need
to click "Login to Leonardo AI." Log in using the email you provided in the form, and that's
it! You've got early access to Leonardo AI.
When you get to their website, you might notice
that Leonardo AI is a web app, which means you don't even need a Discord account, which, in my
opinion, is much more convenient than Midjourney.
Like many text-to-image services, Leonardo AI
uses a basic token system. Leonardo gives you 150 tokens that reload every 24
hours. In simpler terms, you can generate 150 images a day, which is plenty.
So, here on the "Home" page, you can check out the works of other users and see for yourself
that Leonardo creates super high-quality images. One thing I like more about Leonardo than
Midjourney is that you can click on any image and fully see the prompt used to generate that
image. Plus, Leonardo AI has a built-in algorithm that lets you remove the background in just a few
clicks. Simply click on any image, click here, and hit "No Background." Then, you can download
the image as a PNG without the background.
To create your own image, you'll need to click "AI
Image Generation" in the left panel. Here, you'll see a field where you can write your prompt. Just
below that, you can choose a model. It's like the different versions of Midjourney, but there are
really a lot of them here. You can also click "Select Custom Model" and check out the "Community
Model," which are models created by the users themselves. Next, you can add a negative prompt,
meaning what shouldn't be in our image. Further down, there are tabs for "Image Generation" and
"Prompt Generation." You definitely won't find this in Midjourney. "This tool will allow you
to come up with more complex prompt ideas from a simple prompt. E.g., if you type in 'a car' and
click Ideate, it will come up with a number of more complex concepts which include a car."
Moving on to the main settings. On the left, you can choose the number of images you'll get
from one prompt. I think 4 is the best option, giving you plenty to choose from.
Not too long ago, the "Prompt Magic V2" option was introduced, and it's currently in Beta
testing. In short, this feature ensures better prompt adherence. If you enable it, you can also
adjust High Contrast and Prompt Magic Strength.
Further down, we can see the image resolution
settings. Here, you can fine-tune the size of your image, but to get the best results, Leonardo
recommends choosing 1024 by 1024 pixels.
Below that, we can find the "Guidance Scale."
In this tab, you can adjust how closely the image corresponds to the prompt. In other
words, the lower the number we choose, the less the final image will resemble what's
written in our prompt. I recommend choosing an optimal number of 7-8 for the best results.
I suggest turning on Tiling if you're planning to create textures or patterns.
Below, you can see Image-to-Image, where you upload an image you'd like to
base another one on, and Image Prompt.
So, personally, I find Leonardo AI much more
convenient and pleasant to use than Midjourney. Also, at the beginning of this video, I promised
to show you a way to make money using Leonardo AI. In a previous video, I already demonstrated
how to create stickers with Midjourney to sell them on Etsy. Make sure to watch it
if you haven't yet. Now, I'll show you another product that we can create with the
help of Leonardo AI and sell it on Etsy.
This is a very simple but interesting image
called a Pattern. The cool thing about it is that when we connect two images,
they turn into one, just like this.
So now, I'll show you how I created
this image with Leonardo AI, and how you can sell images like these on Etsy!
So, we're in Leonardo AI, and on the left, I select 4 variations. Then, I turn on "Prompt
Magic" and "High Contrast." I choose a resolution of 1024 by 1024. And most importantly,
don't forget to enable "Tiling." Now, let's write our prompt. I'll write something like:
"Repeating pattern, Picasso style illustration, vector hand-drawn, Red Blue, Orange and Yellow
Faces, oil painting," and click "Generate."
Now, it's generating images
for us, and what I noticed is that it takes a bit longer than Midjourney.
Once we get 4 image variations, we click on the one we like. Here, unlike Midjourney, we have
a lot of functions to manipulate our image. We can delete the image, download the image, "Unzoom
image" (honestly, I don't even know what that is), and further on, we can remove the background if
needed. Even further to the right, we're offered several image upscaling options: Creative upscale,
Upscale image alternate, HD Smooth Upscaler, and HP Crisp Upscale. They differ slightly from
one another. Now, I'll choose HP Crisp Upscale. We'll need to wait a bit, and after that, we
have a finished image that we can sell.
Once we've created the product, it's
time to sell it. You can sell patterns like these as a digital product, but now
let's look at a more interesting method.
Using Printify, we'll create a physical product
that the Printify team will make for us. What makes this method more attractive is that we
won't even have to pack or ship the product to our customer. Printify will take care of that.
Let's try and see how we can use this. On the Printify website, I choose this canvas
and then click on "Start Designing". Next, I simply upload our image onto the blank
canvas. Since our product is a pattern, click on "Create pattern". Then, I hit "Print on
sides" to have our image on the sides as well. Once you've done all that, choose "Preview".
Here, you can see how your pattern will look in the end. You can also place your image
on many other products, such as Tough Cases, T-shirts, Bags, and many more.
All that's left for you to do is to list your product on Etsy and start making
money. If you found this video helpful, let me know in the comments below and don't
forget to subscribe to the channel. See you!
