Review

Automatic1111 is the original, classic interface to Stable Diffusion. While many people are moving on to interfaces that support the more advanced models such as Flux, Automatic1111 remains dedicated to Stable Diffusion models, with most people using the wealth of models in Stable Diffusion 1.5 and SDXL formats.

The interface may look busy and cluttered, but many people have grown to love it because it gives you access to a wide array of Stable Diffusion functions at the click of a few buttons. Like other Stable Diffusion interfaces, it appears in a tab of a web browser. (If you don't want to see the tabs and web address along the top, Windows users can press F11 to make the interface fill the screen.)

The tabbed interface makes sense for a lot of workflows. The txt2img (text to image) tab is where you turn typed prompts into original images. It allows you to use positive prompts describing what you want to see, as well as negative prompts that can mention anything you don't want to see or want removed from the image. Appearing as a small drop-down section, you can also use ControlNet in this tab. ControlNet is a tremendously powerful system that allows you to feed in sketches or other reference images and have them interpreted in a variety of ways to guide or influence the images you generate.

The img2img (image to image) tab is where you take images to be modified or refined. The img2img module can upscale an image while inventing new details according to your prompts. It can also change the look or contents of an image match any prompt you type. This tab includes inpainting, which lets you mask out parts of your image to be modified or replaced.

Another key feature of the Automatic1111 interface is the 'PNG Info' tab, which lets you load in images you’ve previously generated and see what prompts and settings were used to create them. This essential turns your output folders into a history of all of your previous work.

Perhaps most powerful tab in the interface is the Extensions tab, which lets you browse all the available extensions (plug-ins) that you can use in Automatic1111. These extensions are an amazing set of tools, and Automatic1111 has built-up an extensive collection of them.

To install Automatic1111, follow the instructions on the Automatic1111 GitHub page. If you want more help, you could also start by following along with this YouTube video about installing Automatic1111.

 A wealth of helpful resources exist to help you get the most out of Automatic1111:

• Bitesized Genius has many videos on YouTube, with topics including how to use ControlNet, IPAdapter, and Regional Prompting.
• Pixaroma  has a wide variety of tutorial videos on YouTube, including inpainting and creating text effects. 
• If you use Reddit, be sure to join /r/StableDiffusion. There’s a lot posted about new extensions, models, techniques, tutorials, and other Stable Diffusion news. 
• CivitAI.com is the most popular site to browse user-trained Stable Diffusion models and LoRAs. It also has recommended settings to use with many models, and many example images with full prompts and settings used to create them.