13 Comments
User's avatar
Sweet Serenity's avatar

Thank you so much for this post! You have no idea how you have “educated” me and made me more confident in “swimming” across the platform of Substack!

I have said this before and I repeat You are a GEM!! 😘

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

Am glad it was helpful! Thank you for the kind words.

Expand full comment
Sweet Serenity's avatar

Absolutely. Sincerity is the best policy. 🤗

Expand full comment
Barbara at Projectkin's avatar

In building out our new Members’ Corner, I've discovered that one of the biggest challenges for many of our Projectkin.Substack.com members has been coming up with images that help tell the story. This post is now one of my favorite referrals to show people just how easily it can be done.

🤫 A related trick is to realize that you do NOT have to choose the first image in your post as the social share image. You get a chance in settings to select one of the other images in your post, OR upload a specific one for sharing. That's crucial since the (landscape preferred) image can make all the difference in the visibility of a post.

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

Thanks, Barbara! Appreciate the feedback!

Expand full comment
Dave Karpowicz's avatar

Thank you Jayshree - this might be fun to play with the grandkids. D

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

lol. Sure is!

Expand full comment
Rat's avatar

A caveat: if your publication has low subscriber count, you get low quality images (the threshold seems to be 100 but there might even be several).

For examples, see: https://substack.com/@ratsays/note/c-48834968

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

I saw no connection to subscriber count or free/paid subscribers as I used it sub-100 too, when I first started on Substack - not sure if it is the prompt or the basic quality. I would be surprised if Substack has implemented such a gated feature!

Expand full comment
Rat's avatar

Added fresh examples below that note.

I'm still not 100% sure there is a threshold (I'll know soon :) but there is a difference.

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

Interesting. If this is a gating criterion (layer of diffusion models?), it is strange, but why? What does Substack gain, especially if it is not transparent to a user? Is it a cost saver? But the feature is hardly used as far as I can see, and there isn’t even good documentation on it. In any case, as I show in my post, there are better free image generators online. Good catch!

Expand full comment
Rat's avatar

Well, I guess they wouldn't want people joining just to generate lots of pictures for outside purposes, so some gatekeeping might be needed. However weird it's tied to publications, not user accounts.

Expand full comment
Jayshree Gururaj's avatar

They have the info that the user has multiple pubs too. Hmm. Still surprising, as it can be an incentive for new writers to add more subscribers through good visual art selections. It may be gated to weed out less serious writers, who don't put in the effort to grow on the platform and a min of 100 subs is considered to be a serious publication? lol. Pure conjecture again. Well, it would be nice if they explained more given Substack is still considered a growth 'startup.' raising funds, and growing revenues.

Expand full comment