5 ways to get better results from your sketches
The quality of your AI render starts with your sketch. Here are five techniques that consistently produce cleaner, more detailed outputs.
SketchSnap is remarkably good at reading intention — but it still needs clear signals to work from. A sketch that's muddy or ambiguous will produce an output that's muddy or ambiguous. These five habits have the biggest impact on result quality.
1. Use confident, continuous lines
Sketchy, scratchy lines create visual noise that the model has to interpret. Instead of building up form with dozens of short strokes, try to draw each edge in one confident motion. If you're using the 2D canvas, the smoothing slider is your friend — even a small amount of smoothing turns hesitant strokes into clean paths.
This is especially important for silhouettes. The outer edge of your subject is the first thing the model uses to understand what it's looking at. A clean silhouette means a confident render.
2. Close your shapes
Open gaps in outlines — a line that almost meets another line — are one of the most common causes of unexpected results. The model tries to complete the shape, and it's not always obvious which way it should close. A character with an open neckline might have a collar interpreted as an open wound; a room with an unfinished wall might bleed into the background.
Before generating, zoom in and make sure your key outlines are fully closed. It takes ten seconds and saves you multiple regenerations.
3. Separate planes with line weight
If everything in your sketch is drawn with the same pen weight, the model has less information about depth. Use a heavier line for foreground elements and outer contours, and a lighter line (or no line at all) for background elements. This mimics how illustrators signal spatial relationships, and the model picks up on it.
In the SketchSnap canvas, you can switch brush sizes without switching tools — hold the brush size slider to lock it between strokes.
4. Match your sketch density to the style preset
Different style presets respond differently to sketch density. Photorealistic presets like Architecture and Portrait work best with relatively detailed sketches — they need information to fill in. Painterly presets like Watercolor and Oil Painting are more interpretive: they actually perform better with looser, more gestural input.
A dense, fully-rendered sketch fed into a Watercolor preset will often look stiff, because the model has less room to add its own brushwork. Try reducing sketch detail by 30% and see if the output loosens up.
5. Use the Sketch Strength slider deliberately
The Sketch Strength slider controls how closely the output follows your lines. At 100%, the render will stick tightly to your sketch — useful for precise work like product design or architecture. At lower values, the model takes more creative liberty, which can surface details and lighting you wouldn't have thought to draw.
A good starting point for most work is 65–75%. If you're unhappy with a result, ask yourself whether the issue is too much or too little adherence — then adjust accordingly. The slider is the fastest way to move between "faithful to my sketch" and "inspired by my sketch".
These five changes cost almost no extra time and consistently move results from "interesting" to "usable". The underlying principle is simple: the clearer your intention, the more faithfully the model can express it.
If you have a technique that works well for your workflow, share it — tag us on X / Twitter and we'll feature the best ones here.