Style Bleed: Update on How to Use Vignettes on Style Images to Your Advantage

One dreamer was asking me in the daily thread about how I get solid backgrounds to come out with no style bleed (artifacts) in my dreams. I decided to make a #DDGtutorials post about it with picture examples! This updates my old post on this subject, because I have developed several new tricks since then. If you’d like to freely share any of your own trade secrets, please do so in the related Facebook post. Here’s what I said:

“It can take a lot of tinkering to get it to work on any given style/source pair…. Here are my suggestions for reducing style bleed (artifacts):

1. I cut out the style I want to use and paste it onto the same colored background as the source image.
2. Next, I remove any background noise that may be lingering below the perceptible levels of my eyes from the source image. I do this by cranking up clarity/exposure to try to identify any background abnormalities. Then I remove them using a cloning tool based off the solid sections that I want to be uniform throughout the background. You could also cut out the whole of the subject matter from the source image and paste it onto the exact same background as your style image.
3. I make sure the style image has pretty clean cut lines that differentiate the background from the foreground. While I avoid excessive blending or blurring of the style’s edges into the solid background, a little fade can work well with certain sources depending on lighting and shadows.
4. I make sure there is approximately the same range of different colors/shades in both the style and source. If there aare too few or too many, the AI will try to transfer color into inappropriate spots in the background of the dream.
   I position the style image in the same location on the solid background that the source subject matter is in. This doesn’t make a huge difference, but it does make a small one.
5. I make the style image comparatively smaller on it’s solid background than the source image is on its solid background. The more relative solid background space in the style will let the AI know that it’s an important part of the style transfer that you want preserved.
6. As a last resort, I try using a lower style weight. I don’t like this option because it can take a lot of the punch out of your dream, but often it does work when all else fails.
7. Give up! Sometimes I just can’t dream with a style/source pair without getting style bleed in the background of the output. Time to try again with a different style image.”