- For end users: Install Stable Diffusion locally using the instructions for your OS.
- For developers: For container-related development tasks or for enabling easy deployment to other environments (on-premises or cloud), follow these instructions. For general use, install locally to leverage your machine's GPU.
They provide a flexible, reliable way to build and deploy Stable Diffusion. You'll also use a Docker volume to store the largest model files and image outputs as a first step in decoupling storage and compute. Future enhancements can do this for other assets. See [Processes](https://12factor.net/processes) under the Twelve-Factor App methodology for details on why running applications in such a stateless fashion is important.
You can specify the target platform when building the image and running the container. You'll also need to specify the Stable Diffusion requirements file that matches the container's OS and the architecture it will run on.
Developers on Apple silicon (M1/M2): You [can't access your GPU cores from Docker containers](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/81224) and performance is reduced compared with running it directly on macOS but for development purposes it's fine. Once you're done with development tasks on your laptop you can build for the target platform and architecture and deploy to another environment with NVIDIA GPUs on-premises or in the cloud.
Go to [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion-v-1-4-original), and click "Access repository" to Download the model file ```sd-v1-4.ckpt``` (~4 GB) to ```~/Downloads```. You'll need to create an account but it's quick and free.
On the Docker Desktop app, go to Preferences, Resources, Advanced. Increase the CPUs and Memory to avoid this [Issue](https://github.com/lstein/stable-diffusion/issues/342). You may need to increase Swap and Disk image size too.
Copy the data files to the Docker volume using a lightweight Linux container. We'll need the models at run time. You just need to create the container with the mountpoint; no need to run this dummy container.
Get the repo and download the Miniconda installer (we'll need it at build time). Replace the URL with the version matching your container OS and the architecture it will run on.
Choose the Linux container's host platform: x86-64/Intel is ```amd64```. Apple silicon is ```arm64```. If deploying the container to the cloud to leverage powerful GPU instances you'll be on amd64 hardware but if you're just trying this out locally on Apple silicon choose arm64.
The application uses libraries that need to match the host environment so use the appropriate requirements file.
Tip: Check that your shell session has the env variables set above.
If you're on a **Linux container** the ```dream``` script is **automatically started** and the output dir set to the Docker volume you created earlier.
If you're **directly on macOS follow these startup instructions**.
With the Conda environment activated (```conda activate ldm```), run the interactive interface that combines the functionality of the original scripts ```txt2img``` and ```img2img```:
Use the more accurate but VRAM-intensive full precision math because half-precision requires autocast and won't work.
By default the images are saved in ```outputs/img-samples/```.
```strength``` is a value between 0.0 and 1.0 that controls the amount of noise that is added to the input image. Values that approach 1.0 allow for lots of variations but will also produce images that are not semantically consistent with the input. 0.0 preserves image exactly, 1.0 replaces it completely.
Make sure your input image size dimensions are multiples of 64 e.g. 512x512. Otherwise you'll get ```Error: product of dimension sizes > 2**31'```. If you still get the error [try a different size](https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/resize-rotate-or-flip-an-image-prvw2015/mac#:~:text=image's%20file%20size-,In%20the%20Preview%20app%20on%20your%20Mac%2C%20open%20the%20file,is%20shown%20at%20the%20bottom.) like 512x256.
