InvokeAI/docs/features/TEXTUAL_INVERSION.md

---
title: Textual-Inversion
---

# :material-file-document: Textual Inversion

## **Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation**

You may personalize the generated images to provide your own styles or objects
by training a new LDM checkpoint and introducing a new vocabulary to the fixed
model as a (.pt) embeddings file. Alternatively, you may use or train
HuggingFace Concepts embeddings files (.bin) from
<https://huggingface.co/sd-concepts-library> and its associated
notebooks.

## **Hardware and Software Requirements**

You will need a GPU to perform training in a reasonable length of
time, and at least 12 GB of VRAM. We recommend using the [`xformers`
library](../installation/070_INSTALL_XFORMERS) to accelerate the
training process further. During training, about ~8 GB is temporarily
needed in order to store intermediate models, checkpoints and logs.

## **Preparing for Training**

To train, prepare a folder that contains 3-5 images that illustrate
the object or concept. It is good to provide a variety of examples or
poses to avoid overtraining the system. Format these images as PNG
(preferred) or JPG. You do not need to resize or crop the images in
advance, but for more control you may wish to do so.

Place the training images in a directory on the machine InvokeAI runs
on. We recommend placing them in a subdirectory of the
`text-inversion-training-data` folder located in the InvokeAI root
directory, ordinarily `~/invokeai` (Linux/Mac), or
`C:\Users\your_name\invokeai` (Windows). For example, to create an
embedding for the "psychedelic" style, you'd place the training images
into the directory
`~invokeai/text-inversion-training-data/psychedelic`.

## **Launching Training Using the Console Front End**

InvokeAI 2.3 and higher comes with a text console-based training front
end. From within the `invoke.sh`/`invoke.bat` Invoke launcher script,
start the front end by selecting choice (3):

```sh
Do you want to generate images using the
1. command-line
2. browser-based UI
3. textual inversion training
4. open the developer console
Please enter 1, 2, 3, or 4: [1] 3
```

From the command line, with the InvokeAI virtual environment active,
you can launch the front end with the command `invokeai-ti --gui`.

This will launch a text-based front end that will look like this:

<figure markdown>
![ti-frontend](../assets/textual-inversion/ti-frontend.png)
</figure>

The interface is keyboard-based. Move from field to field using
control-N (^N) to move to the next field and control-P (^P) to the
previous one. <Tab> and <shift-TAB> work as well. Once a field is
active, use the cursor keys. In a checkbox group, use the up and down
cursor keys to move from choice to choice, and <space> to select a
choice. In a scrollbar, use the left and right cursor keys to increase
and decrease the value of the scroll. In textfields, type the desired
values.

The number of parameters may look intimidating, but in most cases the
predefined defaults work fine. The red circled fields in the above
illustration are the ones you will adjust most frequently.

### Model Name

This will list all the diffusers models that are currently
installed. Select the one you wish to use as the basis for your
embedding. Be aware that if you use a SD-1.X-based model for your
training, you will only be able to use this embedding with other
SD-1.X-based models. Similarly, if you train on SD-2.X, you will only
be able to use the embeddings with models based on SD-2.X.

### Trigger Term

This is the prompt term you will use to trigger the embedding. Type a
single word or phrase you wish to use as the trigger, example
"psychedelic" (without angle brackets). Within InvokeAI, you will then
be able to activate the trigger using the syntax `<psychedelic>`.

### Initializer

This is a single character that is used internally during the training
process as a placeholder for the trigger term. It defaults to "*" and
can usually be left alone.

### Resume from last saved checkpoint

As training proceeds, textual inversion will write a series of
intermediate files that can be used to resume training from where it
was left off in the case of an interruption. This checkbox will be
automatically selected if you provide a previously used trigger term
and at least one checkpoint file is found on disk.

Note that as of 20 January 2023, resume does not seem to be working
properly due to an issue with the upstream code.

### Data Training Directory

This is the location of the images to be used for training. When you
select a trigger term like "my-trigger", the frontend will prepopulate
this field with `~/invokeai/text-inversion-training-data/my-trigger`,
but you can change the path to wherever you want.

### Output Destination Directory

This is the location of the logs, checkpoint files, and embedding
files created during training. When you select a trigger term like
"my-trigger", the frontend will prepopulate this field with
`~/invokeai/text-inversion-output/my-trigger`, but you can change the
path to wherever you want.

### Image resolution

The images in the training directory will be automatically scaled to
the value you use here. For best results, you will want to use the
same default resolution of the underlying model (512 pixels for
SD-1.5, 768 for the larger version of SD-2.1).

### Center crop images

If this is selected, your images will be center cropped to make them
square before resizing them to the desired resolution. Center cropping
can indiscriminately cut off the top of subjects' heads for portrait
aspect images, so if you have images like this, you may wish to use a
photoeditor to manually crop them to a square aspect ratio.

### Mixed precision

Select the floating point precision for the embedding. "no" will
result in a full 32-bit precision, "fp16" will provide 16-bit
precision, and "bf16" will provide mixed precision (only available
when XFormers is used).

### Max training steps

How many steps the training will take before the model converges. Most
training sets will converge with 2000-3000 steps.

### Batch size

This adjusts how many training images are processed simultaneously in
each step. Higher values will cause the training process to run more
quickly, but use more memory. The default size will run with GPUs with
as little as 12 GB.

### Learning rate

The rate at which the system adjusts its internal weights during
training. Higher values risk overtraining (getting the same image each
time), and lower values will take more steps to train a good
model. The default of 0.0005 is conservative; you may wish to increase
it to 0.005 to speed up training.

### Scale learning rate by number of GPUs, steps and batch size

If this is selected (the default) the system will adjust the provided
learning rate to improve performance.

### Use xformers acceleration

This will activate XFormers memory-efficient attention. You need to
have XFormers installed for this to have an effect.

### Learning rate scheduler

This adjusts how the learning rate changes over the course of
training. The default "constant" means to use a constant learning rate
for the entire training session. The other values scale the learning
rate according to various formulas.

Only "constant" is supported by the XFormers library.

### Gradient accumulation steps

This is a parameter that allows you to use bigger batch sizes than
your GPU's VRAM would ordinarily accommodate, at the cost of some
performance.

### Warmup steps

If "constant_with_warmup" is selected in the learning rate scheduler,
then this provides the number of warmup steps. Warmup steps have a
very low learning rate, and are one way of preventing early
overtraining.

## The training run

Start the training run by advancing to the OK button (bottom right)
and pressing <enter>. A series of progress messages will be displayed
as the training process proceeds. This may take an hour or two,
depending on settings and the speed of your system. Various log and
checkpoint files will be written into the output directory (ordinarily
`~/invokeai/text-inversion-output/my-model/`)

At the end of successful training, the system will copy the file
`learned_embeds.bin` into the InvokeAI root directory's `embeddings`
directory, using a subdirectory named after the trigger token. For
example, if the trigger token was `psychedelic`, then look for the
embeddings file in
`~/invokeai/embeddings/psychedelic/learned_embeds.bin`

You may now launch InvokeAI and try out a prompt that uses the trigger
term. For example `a plate of banana sushi in <psychedelic> style`.

## **Training with the Command-Line Script**

Training can also be done using a traditional command-line script. It
can be launched from within the "developer's console", or from the
command line after activating InvokeAI's virtual environment.

It accepts a large number of arguments, which can be summarized by
passing the `--help` argument:

```sh
invokeai-ti --help
```

Typical usage is shown here:
```sh
invokeai-ti \
       --model=stable-diffusion-1.5 \
       --resolution=512 \
       --learnable_property=style \
       --initializer_token='*' \
       --placeholder_token='<psychedelic>' \
       --train_data_dir=/home/lstein/invokeai/training-data/psychedelic \
       --output_dir=/home/lstein/invokeai/text-inversion-training/psychedelic \
       --scale_lr \
       --train_batch_size=8 \
       --gradient_accumulation_steps=4 \
       --max_train_steps=3000 \
       --learning_rate=0.0005 \
       --resume_from_checkpoint=latest \
       --lr_scheduler=constant \
       --mixed_precision=fp16 \
       --only_save_embeds
```

## Using Embeddings

After training completes, the resultant embeddings will be saved into your `$INVOKEAI_ROOT/embeddings/<trigger word>/learned_embeds.bin`.

These will be automatically loaded when you start InvokeAI.

Add the trigger word, surrounded by angle brackets, to use that embedding. For example, if your trigger word was `terence`, use `<terence>` in prompts. This is the same syntax used by the HuggingFace concepts library.

**Note:** `.pt` embeddings do not require the angle brackets.

## Troubleshooting

### `Cannot load embedding for <trigger>. It was trained on a model with token dimension 1024, but the current model has token dimension 768`

Messages like this indicate you trained the embedding on a different base model than the currently selected one.

For example, in the error above, the training was done on SD2.1 (768x768) but it was used on SD1.5 (512x512).

## Reading

For more information on textual inversion, please see the following
resources:

* The [textual inversion repository](https://github.com/rinongal/textual_inversion) and
  associated paper for details and limitations.
* [HuggingFace's textual inversion training
  page](https://huggingface.co/docs/diffusers/training/text_inversion)
* [HuggingFace example script
  documentation](https://github.com/huggingface/diffusers/tree/main/examples/textual_inversion)
  (Note that this script is similar to, but not identical, to
  `textual_inversion`, but produces embed files that are completely compatible.

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copyright (c) 2023, Lincoln Stein and the InvokeAI Development Team