How to run Stable Diffusion locally – The ultimate guide
Reviewed By: Kevin Pocock
Table of Contents
AI is now attainable for all, with open-source models that you can run on your desktop without an internet connection! If you’re looking for control over your projects, you’ll enjoy our guide on how to run Stable Diffusion locally. Stable Diffusion is a text-to-image model, powered by AI, that uses deep learning to generate high-quality images from text. If you want to run Stable Diffusion locally, you can follow these simple steps. This will let you run the model from your PC. Keep reading to start creating.
Running Stable Diffusion Locally
Stable Diffusion is a powerful tool with many potential applications, such as art, design, and entertainment. With Stable Diffusion, you can generate realistic and detailed images with high fidelity to the text input.
By running Stable Diffusion locally, you can experiment with different text inputs and generate images that are customized to your specific needs. You can then fine-tune and train the model on your data, leading to even better results.
Running Stable Diffusion locally is a simple process that requires only a few steps. By following these steps, you can generate high-quality images from text using deep learning.
Before installing Stable Diffusion locally, be aware of the system requirements. You’ll need a compatible OS (Operating System), as well as sufficient GPU power. This means Windows 10/11, Linux, or a recent version of MacOS. You’ll also need at least 16GB of system memory (RAM) for smooth operation.
In addition, you’ll need a discrete graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM. Don’t worry, this is common for recent graphics cards! To check which graphics card you have, go to Start Menu > Search for “Device Manager” > Click the arrow next to Display Adapters.
Step
Install the Required Software
You must first install Python 3.8 or later on your computer to run Stable Diffusion. You need to install PyTorch, a popular deep-learning framework. Install PyTorch using pip, the package installer for Python, found on the official Python website. For PyTorch, you can then use the following command: “pip install torch torchvision torchaudio.”
Step
Download the Stable Diffusion Repository
Next, you need to download the Stable Diffusion repository from GitHub. You can do this by navigating to the Stable Diffusion GitHub page and clicking the “Clone or download” button, or and executing the ‘git clone’ command in the terminal. You can then download the repository as a ZIP file and extract it to a folder on your computer.
Step
Install the required Python Packages
Once you have downloaded the Stable Diffusion repository, you must install the required Python packages. You can do this by running the command “pip install -r requirements.txt” in the Stable Diffusion folder.
Step
Prepare the Text Input
After that, you’ll need to provide text input to generate an image using Stable Diffusion. Then the text input should describe the image you want to generate.
For example, if you want to generate an image of a cat, you could provide the text input “A brown cat with green eyes is sitting on a blue sofa.” You can save the text input in a plain text file.
Step
Run Stable Diffusion
To run Stable Diffusion, open a command prompt or terminal window and navigate to the Stable Diffusion folder.
You can then run the following command:
python inference.py –text_file /path/to/text_input.txt –output_dir /path/to/output_folder
Replace /path/to/text_input.txt with the path to your text input file and /path/to/output_folder with the path to the folder where you want to save the generated image.
Step
View the generated image
After running Stable Diffusion, you can view the generated image in the specified output folder. You can open the image using any image viewer. You can adjust the image quality and resolution by modifying the command line arguments in the “inference.py” file.
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Stable Diffusion local requirements
To make Stable Diffusion work on your PC, it’s definitely worth checking out the system requirements. Here are the system requirements, as listed per the official Stable Diffusion website.
- You will need Windows 10/11, Linux or Mac operating system.
- An NVIDIA graphics card, preferably with 4GB or more of VRAM, or an M1 or M2 Mac. But if you don't have a compatible graphics card, you can still use it with a “Use CPU” setting. It will unfortunately be slow, but it should still work.
- 8GB of RAM and 20GB of disk space.
Can you download Stable Diffusion?
Yes, you can download Stable Diffusion. It is one of the few popular AI models that you can download! Everything made my Stability AI is open-source, meaning that you’ll find the code and model weight for free online. As long as your PC specs are up to scratch, you can run it locally on your computer at home.
Conclusion
Stable Diffusion is an exciting development in text-to-image generation, and running it locally is a great way to explore its capabilities. This deep-learning model can also generate stunning images that impress you with a few simple steps. After you have installed the software on your PC, you can read about how to write stable diffusion prompts to get your creative journey started.
Give it a try today and see what you can create! For more inspiration, check out our guide to Stable Diffusion here.
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