While the Realtime Canvas is a great tool to transform rough digital paintings into AI art, it's even easier to generate and edit your images with our state of the art image generation models and new Editor experience, which we recommend trying. You can also upload your own sketches and bring them to life. Learn more.
Please note that while the following guide reflects some of our old brand, the information and functionality are still relevant.
Overview
Realtime Canvas is an Image-to-Image tool Image-to-Image transformdesigned to convert drawings into stunning artworks nearly instantaneously, revolutionizing how users interact with AI for image generation. It offers an immersive, intuitive creative process that feels natural like painting on a digital canvas.
About Realtime Canvas
As you sketch, Realtime Canvas turns each brushstroke into detail in near real-time.
While you interact with the canvas through clicks, drags, and moves, Realtime Canvas intelligently waits for your actions to complete before instantly transforming your sketches into detailed artwork.
Generate: Quickly add image elements without having to draw them manually with the Realtime Gen tool, now within Realtime Canvas.
Refinement & Personalization: Enhance the overall quality of your artwork with our very own Upscaler, which not only refines the generated image output but also automatically saves the enhanced output to your Library for easy access and further customization. Two refinement options are available right in Realtime Canvas - Normal and Creative.
Style Presets: Switch between different style presets for creative variations of the same sketch.
Inpaint Mode: Make finetuned edits to your output without drastically affecting the overall images.
Advanced Options: Randomize the seed for new outcomes, or use a fixed seed so you can modify the existing output without it changing drastically. Adjust the Guidance to adjust both prompt adherence and the amount of details in the image.
Benefits
Enhanced Creative Expression: Realtime Canvas puts you in the driver's seat of creativity, providing tools to instantly transform your imagination into visual reality.
Better Color Control: With Realtime Canvas, it's much easier to dictate what colors a certain area of your image should be in. The lower the Creativity Strength, the more adherent to the sketch Realtime Canvas will be.
Real-Time Ideation: Ideating through sketching has never been faster. Even with just splashes of color, Realtime Canvas is capable of turning those into detailed artwork. Include a prompt for more relevancy to what you'd like to see or let Realtime Canvas freely interpret your sketch by not entering a prompt.
Image Editing: With Realtime Canvas, you can refine the outputs further by using the Output to Input and then making changes to it by sketching on top of it, allowing you to create an feedback loop of constant editing. Got your own artwork? Realtime Canvas allows you to upload an image to do just that too.
How to use Realtime Canvas
From the home page, click More in the side bar to expand the menu. Then, click Realtime Canvas.
Draw it: Select the brush tool, pick any color and start drawing; or upload an existing image to start with. Enter a prompt if you are looking for something specific. Watch as Realtime Canvas magically updates the output as you go!
Tweak it: Adjust the Guidance in the advanced settings menu, Style preset and Creativity Strength if needed, and as a paid user, enable the High Quality option if preferred. These settings affect the output in different ways.
Save it: Press on the Upscale Image button to save the result to your Personal Feed and generate an refined, larger version of the result. (You may also choose to download the result on it's own instead with the download button on the top right corner.) You may also opt to use the Instant Refine button and download the result.
Using Inpaint Mode
Getting Started: To use inpaint mode, you may either start with an existing output on Realtime Canvas or pick an existing image from your device.
Initiate: Select the Inpaint option above the drawing region to enter the Inpaint mode.
Paint: Draw the changes you would like to make, and include an prompt if needed. If it is just an change of color, an prompt may not be required.
Define: Adjust the Inpaint Stength to your liking. The higher the Inpaint Stength, the more the result may deviate from your drawn inputs. Lower values will generate an result closer to the input but may be at the expense of quality. In the advanced settings menu, use the 🔄 button (enable Fixed Seed first) to get variations of the inpainting result and adjust the Guidance for prompt adherence and detail level.
Stylize: Pick an style preset of your choice if you would like to apply an specific style the inpaint regions of the output.
Refine: Use either Instant Refine to get an higher quality result or save the result and refine it clicking on Upscale Image.
To be continued: Switch back to Draw mode if you would like to continue drawing over the inpaint result. Note that this will automatically set your inpaint output as the input image for Draw mode.
If you would like to continue inpainting use the Output to Input option instead. This is useful when you would like to add completely different elements or use another prompt for inpainting with.
Generate in Realtime
Initiate: On the left toolbar, select the Generate tool. You may resize the generation box to your liking or do so after.
Prompt: Enter your prompt and press Done. If the result is not satisfactory, press on Regenerate instead till you get an result you like.
⚠️ Notice: The prompt used in the Realtime Gen tool does not affect the final output result. The generated image will also typically vary in the final output unless the Creativity Strength is drastically reduced.
Remove Background
Click on the Select tool and click on the image layer you want, then click on the Remove Background option.
You may move the image around and resize it afterwards. Do note that you can also re-order the image layers by pressing the ↑ or ↓ buttons.
Tools and settings
Realtime Canvas Editor: Easily choose your brush size and color. Undo a brushstroke or edit with the eraser; upload images and with the select tool, reposition elements in the editor with simple clicks and drags.
Realtime Gen (New): Add image elements without having to draw them manually with the Realtime Gen tool by using text prompts.
Remove Background (New): Easily integrate an image, generated or non-generated into your canvas by quickly removing the background with a single click.
Output to Input: Seamlessly use your generated artwork as a new canvas, making further edits and enhancements effortlessly.
Guidance Strength Control: Adjust how closely your artwork aligns with the text prompt – higher values for greater adherence.
High Quality (Premium Feature): Increases the output resolution to 640×640px and also boosts the quality at an small expense of performance.
Use Fixed Seed Option: Maintain consistency in your creations or explore variations by adjusting the seed used for image generation.
Creativity Strength Slider: Find the perfect balance between strict adherence to your input and the AI’s creative interpretation.
Style Presets: Quickly apply a specific style to your creation without complex prompts for effortless and distinct artistry.
Instant Refine: Refines the output within the canvas and increases it's resolution to 1024×1024px. Has no token cost.
Upscale Image: Saves your output image to your Personal Feed while also running Alchemy Upscaler on it based on your chosen settings.
Smooth Mode: Great for improving hands and faces and overall image coherence and works best with airbrushed and vector style images. This mode has a tendency to eradicate details so may not be suitable for certain styles that are heavy on detail.
💡 Leonardo's Tip #1: If you are sketching using brushstrokes, it would be best to fill in the shapes you draw for better overall output
💡 Leonardo's Tip #2: You can refine your line drawing by prompting using terms like line drawing, line art and manga.
If you would like to colorize it, you can do so by using the output as an input and coloring on top of it with an semi-opaque brush. (Reduce Creativity Strength to below 0.6 for best results)
Frequently Asked Questions
How many tokens does it cost to use Realtime Canvas?
How many tokens does it cost to use Realtime Canvas?
There are no token costs involved asides from the Upscale Image feature which costs 8 tokens.
Realtime Canvas isn't adhering to my sketch / input image well enough
Realtime Canvas isn't adhering to my sketch / input image well enough
In such cases, reducing the Creativity Strength to about 0.6 or lower may help, though the output may not look as good since Realtime Canvas will be more reliant on the quality of your input for the outcome.
What is the resolution of the output images?
What is the resolution of the output images?
Output images are 512×512px in resolution and 640×640px when the High Quality option is enabled. Instant Refine outputs are 1024×1024px in resolution, while upscaled outputs are 1496×1496px.