I Tried to Use AI to Design a Holiday Card. It Kept Giving Me a Fake Family

The holidays are quickly approaching, and you may not have time to get together with all your friends and family before the New Year. So how do you let them know you’re still thinking of them? Send a card.

You know the type. Hallmark style holiday card featuring a cute family photo and a “Happy Holidays” message. A bit cheesy? Maybe, but we all secretly love it.

and AIyou can create a custom card in minutes, just like you can with wedding invitation or a Dinner menu. Can halfway Capturing the Christmas magic? If a text-to-image tool can create realistic product images, food photography, comic books, and magazine covers, it can certainly create Christmas card mockups.

The tool launches in 2022, with membership prices ranging from $10 to $120 per month. If you subscribe to an annual membership, you can enjoy a 20% discount. Midjourney no longer offers a free version.

happy midway

Before starting my midway trip, I prepared a few family photos that I love. Some photo cards are a compilation of photos from the year, while others are just individual photos.

It’s worth browsing Family Holiday Cards for design inspiration to get an idea of ​​style and keywords for prompts. For example, words like “vintage,” “traditional,” “theme,” or “simplistic” are suitable.

I chose one image simply because I had so many photos this year that it was hard to narrow down my first few photos.

After taking the photos, I opted for the Midway Membership. The basic plan was decent and cost me $10. As with all AI tools, it’s helpful for tips to be as specific as possible. Provide as much background information as possible up front. Specify if you plan to print and send it like a postcard.

To upload a photo when prompted, type /imagine, then drag the photo into the prompt box. Click the icon in “What would you imagine?” box to use this image.

Here are my tips:

“Use this image to create a Christmas card printable postcard with a happy holidays message.”

It totally missed the mark, creating a snowy scene in Big Sur, California.

For tip two, I asked for the photo to be placed halfway (unchanged) exist A festive Christmas card…and it gets worse. I love cats and everything, but I love my wife even more.

Next, I tried a different approach. I asked Midjourney to produce a Christmas card template. I found a simple template that I liked and asked Midjourney to add my photos to it. Again, super weird.

I’ve tried various workarounds, such as asking Midjourney to create a Christmas card so I can add photos to it, but it just keeps generating fake families.

Midway through it turns cheesy into cringe-worthy.

I was using the website version of Midjourney, so to try again, I tried the Discord route, but didn’t have much luck either. Even though I’ve given Discord full access to my photo library, I can’t enter photos into the prompt. So I opened up the Discord desktop and was able to link my photos. This doesn’t help at all.

I took a quick look on Reddit and it seems I’m not alone. Mid-processing is known to change the appearance of your uploaded images. One comment said to rerun until you get an image you like, then use Photoshop to swap the faces.

Someone responded that they had to rerun 50 times to get good results.

This is a spoiler for the Christmas spirit.

For the sake of this experiment (and because I’ve now decided to send a Christmas card), I went to Vista Printing See how quickly I can make a card. I received several emails from lovely friends.

Using VistaPrint, I did this in under a minute. Just missing my Christmas note.

Judgment

Midjourney makes some lovely images, but I can’t get it to create a design that directly incorporates my photos; instead, it changes the image or uses it as “inspiration.”

It keeps adding Christmas elements to my original photos, like replacing my wife with a reindeer or a cat.

The journey might be useful for creating a Christmas cartoon, a DIY Advent calendar, or a versatile printable card to punch holes and string on gifts. As I discovered when trying to create a Personalized cartoon for my nephewit is difficult for artificial intelligence to determine personal characteristics and consistency.

It still feels very cartoony, and it’s obviously AI.

I’d rather send a handwritten note to a few of my favorite people than rely on a robot to deliver Christmas greetings.