Stable Diffusion GIMP Plugin: How to Install

The Stable Diffusion image generator can be installed directly in GIMP as a plugin, creating detailed and realistic graphics from a text prompt, available open source.

AI-generated imagery has evolved considerably over the last couple of years, with a compact Stable Diffusion model size designed to produce default images of at least 512x512 pixels–but you can always override these presets through your NightCafe account.

Today, we’ll look at how to install Stable Diffusion for GIMP and have a sneak peek at how Stable Diffusion compares to DALL-E Mini and other competitors.

Installing a Stable Diffusion Plugin for GIMP

Stable Diffusion is a great choice if you're keen to create AI graphics with advanced lifelike detailing and 3D realism. To install a plugin on the GIMP image editor, simply follow these steps:

1. Select your preferred plugin, usually through GitHub, Bitbucket, or another repository.
2. Download the ZIP file containing the relevant plugin code.
3. Copy the GIMP Stable Diffusion file within your ZIP folder, open “GIMP” and navigate to “Edit,” “Preferences,” and “Expand Folder.”
4. Click on the plugin, and open the file within “File Manager,” pasting the copied file.
5. Restart “GIMP,” and your Stable Diffusion plugin will appear on the AI dropdown menu at the top of the screen.

On GitHub, the plugin is called gimp-stable-diffusion.py, and you can ignore the other files in the ZIP download. Although the plugin has been tested on GIMP 2.10, it should theoretically work in any second-generation releases, although it is incompatible with GIMP 2.99, which is created in Python 3.

Stable Diffusion has become the go-to for designers, game developers and graphics professionals, and you’ll find multiple plugins to integrate the AI text-to-image generator in other software, including Photoshop.

Apps and Plugins Built on Stable Diffusion

DALL-E Mini launched four months before Stable Diffusion, and both provide exceptional results, creating complex, detailed and often unusual graphics from simple text prompts.

The downside of Stable Diffusion is that it has a smaller capacity of 890 million parameters, considerably less than DALL-E, but the advantages are in more lifelike, immersive images. Stable Diffusion overperforms alternatives like Craiyon many times over, understanding shapes, context, and prompts in a more realistic way.

Below, we’ve listed some of the emerging apps, tools, and plugins that have been brought to market since August 2022, broadening the number of Stable Diffusion applications:

• Stable Diffusion for Photoshop: We mentioned this plugin earlier, which is a user-friendly plugin that allows designers to edit and combine Stable Diffusion assets, although it doesn’t yet have image extension capabilities.
• Stable Diffusion for Canva: The online design tool commonly used to create social media, website, and advertising graphics, now has a Stable Diffusion plugin that integrates text-to-word imagery into Canva creations.
• Stable Diffusion for Cinema 4D: Editors can add greater detail, expressions, and features to Cinema 4D graphics to improve and upgrade basic designs.

The major benefit of using a Stable Diffusion plugin is that lower-performance PCs and laptops can execute text-to-image modules without needing impressive processing power–making AI image creation easier and more accessible to use.