Plan F: AI Image Design Workflow (Posters / Brand)

Requirements & style refs → text-to-image drafts → image-to-image refinement → text & layout → upscale & export

Time
20-40 min / image
Cost
Low-Medium
Difficulty
Beginner

Best for

Best for posters, covers, e-commerce hero images, brand visuals and social assets — a usable image in 20-40 minutes.

Steps

Requirements and style references

5 min

ChatGPT / Claude + reference images

Pin down purpose, aspect ratio, where the text goes, main palette and style keywords; collect 2-3 reference images. The more specific the prompt, the higher the success rate.

💡Reference images plus concrete style words (e.g. 'film grain', 'flat illustration') beat adjective soup.

Text-to-image drafts

5-10 min

Midjourney / Jimeng / Flux

Write prompts in this order — subject → scene → style → composition → detail constraints — and generate 4-8 candidates per round. Midjourney for artistry, Jimeng for Chinese scenes, Flux for accurate text.

💡For consistent subjects, fix the description or upload a reference; multiple rolls of the same prompt usually yield a keeper.

Image-to-image refinement

5-10 min

Img2Img / inpainting

Use image-to-image to recompose, swap backgrounds and fix details; inpainting repairs broken hands, faces and edges. Far faster than regenerating — the key to quality.

💡Repair broken hands/text in a targeted region instead of restarting the whole image.

Text and layout

5 min

Ideogram / Canva

Set headlines, slogans and prices with Ideogram (accurate glyphs) or lay out in Canva. AI-embedded text often garbles; let a proper tool handle typography.

💡Proofread every word; leave safe margins so platforms don't crop it.

Upscale and export

5 min

Topaz / Real-ESRGAN

AI images are usually 1024-2048px; for print or high-res use, upscale with a super-resolution model and export the required spec (RGB/CMYK, 300dpi, PNG/PSD).

💡Denoise before upscaling to avoid amplified noise; check platform size specs for e-commerce.

Tools involved

Pitfalls to avoid

Garbled embedded text

AI text inside images is unreliable; use Ideogram/Flux for glyph-heavy work or overlay text in Canva.

Broken hands and anatomy

Fingers, teeth and perspective break most often; fix with targeted inpainting or reference-based img2img.

Commercial licensing

Paid Midjourney tiers have clear commercial terms; confirm training-data provenance for free models, and be careful with stock-style copies.

Directly mimicking someone's art

Reference a style, don't feed someone's original image; extract style words instead of copying works wholesale.

Related Workflows