Chapter 8 of 10

Scale, and wearing two bracelets at once

One slider takes us from invisible all the way to caricature. And every image here is a real output!

Training is over and the bracelet is sealed; whatever it learned is locked in for good. But at painting time we still hold one very valuable knob: scale, which sets how much our painter trusts the bracelet, how hard they lean on it. Turning it costs nothing, and honestly, this is probably where we'll spend most of our time.

From a light touch to caricature

Here's what happens when we turn the scale knob with the prompt and the seed pinned in place:

Output at LoRA scale 0Output at LoRA scale 0.5Output at LoRA scale 1Output at LoRA scale 1.5Output at LoRA scale 2Output at LoRA scale 2.5Output at LoRA scale 3Output at LoRA scale 3.5Output at LoRA scale 4scale: 1.00
00.511.522.533.54

The seed and the prompt never change: a photo of TOK ceramic cat figurine sitting on a sunny windowsill beside a potted plant

  • 0: bracelet off. The painter draws from the base model's general knowledge alone.
  • 0.5: a faint hint. Very handy when we're blending strong styles into each other.
  • 1.0: the sweet spot it was trained at. This is our calibration point, and always our first stop.
  • 1.5 to 2: emphasis. The identity speaks up, and the whole scene starts arranging itself around the subject.
  • 3 and beyond: caricature first, then collapse. We mostly use this range for diagnosis, to see what the LoRA has really learned.
If a LoRA needs scale 2 just to show its subject, it's undertrained; if the image falls apart even at scale 1, it's overtrained. Think of scale as a magnifying glass: it makes whatever is already in the bracelet easier to see, faults included.

Two bracelets at once

Our painter can wear more than one bracelet at a time, and the skills join hands: the subject bracelet whispers what to paint, the style bracelet whispers how. Let's mix our TOK subject LoRA with the TOKSTYLE gouache style:

Subject scale 0.5, style scale 0.5Subject scale 0.5, style scale 1Subject scale 0.5, style scale 1.5Subject scale 1, style scale 0.5Subject scale 1, style scale 1Subject scale 1, style scale 1.5Subject scale 1.5, style scale 0.5Subject scale 1.5, style scale 1Subject scale 1.5, style scale 1.5TOK 1 · TOKSTYLE 1

Both bracelets worn on Klein 9B at the same time: TOK ceramic cat figurine on a harbor pier, a TOKSTYLE painting

Watch the balance here. Open the subject scale too far and photographic realism starts riding over the style; overdo the style scale and the cat figurine drowns in the brushwork. The whole thing plays out like a budget negotiation. Start both at 1.0, and when one side takes over, try easing off the dominant one instead of cranking up the weak one.

Ground rules for mixing

  • Two LoRAs usually get along beautifully. A third behaves fine as long as each one touches something different (subject + style + lighting, say).
  • Two different subject LoRAs in the same frame is the hard case; expect the identities to bleed into each other.
  • Keeping the sum of the scales roughly under 2.5 keeps the image healthy.
  • Pin the seed while tuning, so we see exactly what our change did and nothing else.