.png)
Your clients want (need) visual references to understand your design. Many florists find inspiration images on Pinterest and well uh…. mostly just Pinterest. Others create digital mockups. Both have their pros and cons, so which is the better approach? Which one is the way of the future?
The answer may be “neither” and “both” at the same time. Wait, what?
What if you could conjure up the perfect inspiration photo or mockup simply by typing a description of what you desire to see?
You can!
How?
Artificial intelligence.
Huh?
Artificial Intelligence will impact every industry, floristry included. Wikipedia defines artificial intelligence as machines perceiving, synthesizing and inferring information.
OpenAI created DALL-E, which creates original images from a text description. Here’s a 2 minute video that explains how DALL-E works
If you’re like me, you need an example to bring this to life. I created the following images with simple text prompts. To reiterate, these are not real photos, they are computer generated.
Finding the right inspiration images can be tough. You pull from your own library. You endlessly scroll Pinterest. The images you do land usually need a note of context - “the colors from this photo”, “the shape and size from this photo”, etc.
DALL-E has the potential to save time and better approximate your design vision. AI is always learning and will only get better over time at matching your desired outcomes.
Digital mockups excel at communicating scale and color and can match the context. For example, you can use a photo of a venue’s ceremony arch, and apply your digital mockup to it. Digital mockups are time consuming and the end product is not photo realistic (not necessarily an issue).
DALL-E could save you time, and will eventually allow you to change existing images (ex. venues floral arch). It will also give you creative flexibility to present your mockup as a sketch, oil painting, etc.
Yes and no. It’s not ready to replace your current inspo / mockup process, but it is ready to complement it.
Upon testing, we found that DALL-E can produce photorealistic images of specific stems. Reference the picture of the Cloony Ranunculus above. It’s hard to believe that’s not a real photo.
Also, other styles like “oil painting” or “sketch” can produce professional level results. It's like having a graphic designer on staff!
Creating images of flower arrangements is hit or miss. Sometimes you get funky results. Also, getting a very specific look can be difficult. For example “loose boho arrangement with pampas” may not return the image you were hoping for. Of course this will improve over time.
DALL-E can't do human faces. It's easy to produce nightmare fuel with the right prompt asking for a human face. The human face is complex and it will take some time for DALL-E perfect it.
DALL-E has a cool feature that lets you take an existing image and paint over the area where you want a new image to generate. This feature has the potential to let you make venue specific digital mockups instantly. Unfortunately it’s early days for this feature and the results aren’t yet usable yet.
As stated above, AI is always learning. The more florists that start using it, the better it will get.
Now! DALL-E is completely free to sign up. You get 50 free searches when you signup and then 12 free searches per month after that. You can buy search credits anytime if you need more.
By using it in conjunction with FlowerBuddy! Drag and drop your DALL-E photos directly into a professional FlowerBuddy web proposal.
If you haven’t heard of FlowerBuddy, we are a Floral Event Software designed to be easy to learn, easy to use, and affordable.
Try it completely free (no credit card required) by signing up at app.flowerbuddy.co.
.png)
