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Negative Prompts Guide 2026

Negative Prompts Guide

Master the art of negative prompting to eliminate unwanted elements and dramatically improve your AI image generation results with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Leonardo, and Flux.

🎯 Essential for Quality Images
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What Are Negative Prompts?

Negative prompts tell AI image generators what you don't want in your image. While your main prompt describes what to create, negative prompts specify elements to exclude, avoid, or minimize.

Think of it like sculpture: your positive prompt adds the clay, while negative prompts chisel away unwanted parts to reveal your vision.

✅ Without Negative Prompts

May include: distorted hands, extra fingers, blurry backgrounds, watermarks, low quality artifacts

🎯 With Negative Prompts

Cleaner output: proper anatomy, sharp details, no unwanted text, professional quality

💡 Not All Tools Support Negative Prompts

Supported: Stable Diffusion, Leonardo AI, Flux, ComfyUI, Automatic1111
Limited/No Support: Midjourney (use --no parameter), DALL-E 3, Adobe Firefly

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Universal Negative Prompt Template

This comprehensive negative prompt works across most AI image generators and addresses the most common quality issues:

🔴 Universal Negative Prompt (Copy This!)
ugly, deformed, noisy, blurry, distorted, grainy, low quality, worst quality, bad anatomy, bad proportions, extra limbs, extra fingers, mutated hands, poorly drawn hands, poorly drawn face, mutation, disfigured, malformed, watermark, text, signature, logo, username, artist name, cropped, out of frame, jpeg artifacts, duplicate, morbid, mutilated, poorly drawn, extra arms, extra legs, fused fingers, too many fingers, long neck, cross-eyed, body out of frame
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Category-Specific Negative Prompts

Portrait & People Photography

Perfect for headshots, fashion, beauty shots, and character portraits

bad anatomy, bad proportions, bad hands, missing fingers, extra fingers, fused fingers, too many fingers, long neck, cross-eyed, mutated face, deformed iris, deformed pupils, poorly drawn face, cloned face, extra limbs, malformed limbs, missing arms, extra arms, missing legs, extra legs, poorly drawn hands, bad facial proportions, gross proportions, wrong anatomy, disconnected limbs, floating limbs, asymmetric eyes, unnatural skin, plastic skin, doll-like
Landscape & Nature

For scenery, environments, nature photography, and outdoor scenes

blurry, low resolution, oversaturated, undersaturated, overexposed, underexposed, noisy, grainy, pixelated, artifacts, compression artifacts, banding, color banding, chromatic aberration, distorted horizon, tilted horizon, unnatural colors, fake looking, plastic trees, bad composition, cluttered, messy, chaotic, watermark, text, logo, frame, border
Digital Art & Illustration

For concept art, illustrations, anime, and stylized artwork

lowres, bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, missing fingers, extra digit, fewer digits, cropped, worst quality, low quality, normal quality, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, username, blurry, artist name, bad art, beginner art, amateur, childish, messy lines, inconsistent style, flat shading, no depth, muddy colors, oversaturated, undersaturated
Product & Commercial Photography

For e-commerce, product shots, and commercial imagery

blurry, out of focus, soft focus, noise, grain, low resolution, pixelated, jpeg artifacts, watermark, text overlay, logo, branding, cluttered background, distracting elements, harsh shadows, overexposed, underexposed, color cast, white balance issues, reflections, glare, dust, scratches, fingerprints, imperfections
Cinematic & Film Style

For movie stills, cinematic scenes, and dramatic compositions

amateur, home video, low budget, cheap looking, stock photo, generic, cliché, overprocessed, HDR, oversaturated, cartoon, anime, illustration, drawing, painting, 3D render, CGI, video game, unrealistic, fake, artificial, plastic, smooth skin, airbrushed
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Tool-Specific Negative Prompts

Stable Diffusion (SDXL / SD 1.5)

Full negative prompt support with embedding compatibility

(worst quality:1.4), (low quality:1.4), (normal quality:1.4), lowres, bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, missing fingers, extra digit, fewer digits, cropped, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, username, blurry, artist name, (deformed:1.3), (mutated:1.2), (malformed:1.2), (mutilated:1.2), (tranny:1.4), mutated hands, (poorly drawn hands:1.4), blurry, (bad anatomy:1.2), (bad proportions:1.3), extra limbs, (disfigured:1.3), (more than 2 nipples:1.3), (missing arms:1.2), (extra legs:1.2), (fused fingers:1.4), (too many fingers:1.4), (unclear eyes:1.2), bad hands, missing fingers, extra digit, bad body, NG_DeepNegative_V1_75T
Leonardo AI

Works with Leonardo's negative prompt field

ugly, tiling, poorly drawn hands, poorly drawn feet, poorly drawn face, out of frame, extra limbs, disfigured, deformed, body out of frame, blurry, bad anatomy, blurred, watermark, grainy, signature, cut off, draft, duplicate, coppy, multi, two faces, disfigured, kitsch, oversaturated, grain, low-res, mutation, mutated, extra limb, missing limb, floating limbs, disconnected limbs, malformed hands, blur, out of focus, long neck, long body, ugly, disgusting, poorly drawn, childish, mutilated, mangled, old, surreal
Flux (via ComfyUI)

Optimized for Flux Pro, Dev, and Schnell models

blurry, low quality, distorted, deformed, ugly, bad anatomy, bad proportions, extra limbs, cloned face, disfigured, gross proportions, malformed limbs, missing arms, missing legs, extra arms, extra legs, fused fingers, too many fingers, long neck, username, watermark, signature
Midjourney (--no parameter)

Midjourney uses --no instead of separate negative prompt

--no text, watermark, signature, blurry, ugly, deformed, extra limbs, bad anatomy, poorly drawn, low quality, grainy, oversaturated
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Quick Reference: Common Issues & Fixes

🖐️ Bad Hands/Fingers

bad hands, poorly drawn hands, mutated hands, extra fingers, missing fingers, fused fingers, too many fingers

👁️ Eye Problems

cross-eyed, deformed iris, deformed pupils, asymmetric eyes, unclear eyes, different colored eyes

📝 Unwanted Text

text, watermark, signature, logo, username, artist name, caption, title, words, letters

🎨 Quality Issues

low quality, worst quality, blurry, grainy, noisy, pixelated, jpeg artifacts, compression artifacts

👤 Body Deformities

bad anatomy, bad proportions, extra limbs, missing limbs, disfigured, deformed, mutated, malformed

🖼️ Composition Issues

cropped, out of frame, cut off, bad framing, cluttered, messy background, border, frame

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Pro Tips for Negative Prompts

💡 Tip 1: Use Weights for Emphasis

In Stable Diffusion, add weights like (bad hands:1.4) to emphasize important negative elements. Higher numbers = stronger effect.

💡 Tip 2: Don't Overdo It

Too many negative prompts can confuse the AI. Focus on your actual problems rather than including everything. Start minimal and add as needed.

💡 Tip 3: Use Negative Embeddings

For Stable Diffusion, embeddings like EasyNegative, bad-hands-5, and ng_deepnegative pack hundreds of negative concepts into single tokens.

💡 Tip 4: Match Your Style

If generating anime, include "realistic, photo" in negatives. If generating photos, include "cartoon, anime, illustration" in negatives.

🎨 Ready to Improve Your AI Art?

Browse our curated prompts with optimized negative prompts included for each AI tool!

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