Exploring text to image models

# Exploring text to image models – Replicate blog

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# Exploring text to image models

Posted July 18, 2022 by
* [afiaka87](https://replicate.com/afiaka87)
* [rossjillian](https://replicate.com/rossjillian)

I’m Clay, a member of the team at Replicate. In this post, I’ll show you how Replicate allows you to easily explore many open [text to image models](https://replicate.com/collections/text-to-image).

You can follow along by downloading the accompanying Jupyter notebook [here](https://replicate.delivery/pbxt/blog/exploring-text-to-image-models/replicate_api_notebook.ipynb)

If you’re running the notebook in Colab, it’s recommended to use Firefox/Chrome.

## [](https://replicate.com/blog/exploring-text-to-image-models#install)Install

It’s wise to use a virtual environment to keep your global Python installation clean. `venv` or `conda` will work fine:

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```
python3 -m venv replicate_venv
source replicate_venv/bin/activate
```

or

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```
conda create --name replicate_venv
conda activate replicate_venv
```

In whatever environment you choose, install Replicate’s [Python client](https://pypi.org/project/replicate/).

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`(replicate_venv) % pip install replicate`

## [](https://replicate.com/blog/exploring-text-to-image-models#login)Login

To use the API, you’ll need an API access token. You can get a token by [subscribing to Replicate](https://replicate.com/account). Then, you’ll be able to log in to Replicate using your API token each time you need to run Python.

You should never store your API key directly in a Python file or notebook - this would enable others to gain unauthorized access to your account. Instead, it is recommended to set the `REPLICATE_API_TOKEN` variable in your shell prior to running Python:

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`(replicate_venv) % REPLICATE_API_TOKEN="..." python run_text2image_model.py`

If you’re in a Jupyter notebook, you can use [getpass](https://docs.python.org/3/library/getpass.html#module-getpass) to receive user input beneath a cell without displaying it.

Assuming everything worked, you should be able to import the replicate module now. In our accompanying notebook, we also include `pathlib.Path`, which is needed for some inputs.

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```
import replicate
from pathlib import Path
```

## [](https://replicate.com/blog/exploring-text-to-image-models#generate-an-image-from-text)Generate an image from text

Using a few lines of Python, you can programmatically generate an image via text.

Replicate allows us to look up models by `f"{username}/{model_name}` with `replicate.models.get`.

For the example in our notebook, we’ll use [“afiaka87/glid-3-xl”](https://replicate.com/afiaka87/glid-3-xl), a great model for generating photorealistic images. For fun, let’s generate an image of an avocado lightbulb!

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```
model = replicate.models.get("afiaka87/glid-3-xl")
version = model.versions.get("d74db2a276065cf0d42fe9e2917219112ddf8c698f5d9acbe1cc353b58097dab")
```

Models on Replicate are run using the `.predict` method. Let’s take a quick look at the named/keyword arguments for `.predict`.

The named/keyword arguments for each model will vary. `glid-3-xl` requires one input `prompt` - a scene descri