Plain English
Free tier. Readable by a person, pasteable anywhere, and the one to use when you are briefing a human rather than a model.
A lone standing stone on a moorland ridge at dusk. Set in a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall. Lit by low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon. Shot as landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout. Colour reads warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal.
Midjourney
Stacked phrases, heaviest first, with the flags Midjourney actually reads — including the measured aspect ratio and a --no list built from the negatives.
a lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly, a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall, low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon, landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout, warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal --ar 3:2 --style raw --no people, roads, modern buildings --v 7
Stable Diffusion
SDXL and friends read weights, so the subject and the style are pushed to 1.3 and everything else rides at parity. The negative prompt is separated out, as the UI expects.
(a lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly:1.3), (documentary landscape photography, contemporary, photograph, British landscape photography, 35mm film grain, film:1.3), a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall, low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon, landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout, warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal, highly detailed, sharp focus
Negative prompt: people, roads, modern buildings
Flux
Flux does better with one long natural sentence than with a tag pile, and ignores weight syntax entirely — so it never gets any.
A lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly, in a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall, lit by low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon, captured as landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout, with warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal.
DALL·E / GPT Image
Full sentences, labelled sections, and phrasing that does not trip a content filter on its way in.
A lone standing stone on a moorland ridge at dusk. The setting is a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall. Light: low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon. Rendered as landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout, warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal.
Ideogram
Ideogram is the one that renders lettering properly, so when there are words in the picture they lead the prompt instead of trailing it. No words in this photograph, so it opens on the subject.
a lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly, a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall, documentary landscape photography, contemporary, photograph, British landscape photography, 35mm film grain, film, warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal
Gemini / Nano Banana
Generate-and-edit models take instructions, not tags. The constraints are always appended last and never trimmed, because those are the lines these models obey most literally.
Create an image of a lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly. Place it in a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall. Light the scene with low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon. Frame it as landscape, 35mm, f/8 sharp, wide, low, rule of thirds, deep focus throughout. Do not include people, roads, modern buildings. Aspect ratio 3:2.
Video — Sora, Veo, Runway
A still has no motion, so the move is inferred from what the frame implies: a wide landscape gets a slow drift, a shallow portrait gets a rack focus, an overhead gets a crane.
a lone standing stone, lichen-crusted, leaning slightly, a moorland ridge, heather and wet granite, a distant rain squall. Camera: slow drift forward, horizon held level, 35mm. Light: low winter sun, light from camera left, raking, late afternoon. Grade: warm, natural, low key, natural saturation, high contrast, amber, deep violet, charcoal. Look: documentary landscape photography, contemporary, photograph, British landscape photography, 35mm film grain, film. Aspect ratio 3:2. Duration 5s, no cuts.
JSON
The structured reading itself, for your own pipeline: batch a folder, diff two shoots, feed a template, or build your own dialect.
{
"summary": "a lone standing stone on a moorland ridge at dusk",
"subject": { "main": "a lone standing stone", "details": ["lichen-crusted", "leaning slightly"] },
"lighting": { "key": "low winter sun", "direction": "camera left", "quality": "raking" },
"colour": { "palette": ["amber", "deep violet", "charcoal"], "grade": "warm, natural, low key" },
"composition": { "framing": "wide", "angle": "low", "aspect_ratio": "3:2" },
"negative": ["people", "roads", "modern buildings"],
"confidence": 0.86
}