Imagine transforming a simple text prompt into a high-quality image with just a few lines of code. Qwen-Image makes this possible by combining advanced image generation with precise text rendering, whether you’re working in English or Chinese. It handles everything from photorealistic scenes and impressionist-style paintings to clean, minimalist designs, adapting its output to your needs. On top of that, Qwen-Image offers powerful editing features: you can insert or remove objects, fine-tune colours and details, edit text directly within an image, and even adjust human poses—all through clear, natural-language commands. Behind the scenes, it also performs tasks like object detection, semantic segmentation, depth estimation and super-resolution, giving you a complete toolkit for creating and refining images with ease.
Getting started is simple. In the next section, you’ll see exactly how to install Qwen-Image and run your first prompt in minutes.
Prerequisites
The minimum system requirements for running this model are:
Step-by-step process to install and run Qwen Image
For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll use a GPU-powered Virtual Machine by NodeShift since it provides high compute Virtual Machines at a very affordable cost on a scale that meets GDPR, SOC2, and ISO27001 requirements. Also, it offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easier for beginners to get started with Cloud deployments. However, feel free to use any cloud provider of your choice and follow the same steps for the rest of the tutorial.
Step 1: Setting up a NodeShift Account
Visit app.nodeshift.com and create an account by filling in basic details, or continue signing up with your Google/GitHub account.
If you already have an account, login straight to your dashboard.
Step 2: Create a GPU Node
After accessing your account, you should see a dashboard (see image), now:
- Navigate to the menu on the left side.
- Click on the GPU Nodes option.
- Click on Start to start creating your very first GPU node.
These GPU nodes are GPU-powered virtual machines by NodeShift. These nodes are highly customizable and let you control different environmental configurations for GPUs ranging from H100s to A100s, CPUs, RAM, and storage, according to your needs.
Step 3: Selecting configuration for GPU (model, region, storage)
- For this tutorial, we’ll be using 1x RTX A6000 GPU, however, you can choose any GPU as per the prerequisites.
- Similarly, we’ll opt for 200GB storage by sliding the bar. You can also select the region where you want your GPU to reside from the available ones.
Step 4: Choose GPU Configuration and Authentication method
- After selecting your required configuration options, you’ll see the available GPU nodes in your region and according to (or very close to) your configuration. In our case, we’ll choose a 1x RTX A6000 48GB GPU node with 64vCPUs/63GB RAM/200GB SSD.
2. Next, you’ll need to select an authentication method. Two methods are available: Password and SSH Key. We recommend using SSH keys, as they are a more secure option. To create one, head over to our official documentation.
Step 5: Choose an Image
The final step is to choose an image for the VM, which in our case is Nvidia Cuda.
That’s it! You are now ready to deploy the node. Finalize the configuration summary, and if it looks good, click Create to deploy the node.
Step 6: Connect to active Compute Node using SSH
- As soon as you create the node, it will be deployed in a few seconds or a minute. Once deployed, you will see a status Running in green, meaning that our Compute node is ready to use!
- Once your GPU shows this status, navigate to the three dots on the right, click on Connect with SSH, and copy the SSH details that appear.
As you copy the details, follow the below steps to connect to the running GPU VM via SSH:
- Open your terminal, paste the SSH command, and run it.
2. In some cases, your terminal may take your consent before connecting. Enter ‘yes’.
3. A prompt will request a password. Type the SSH password, and you should be connected.
Output:
Next, If you want to check the GPU details, run the following command in the terminal:
!nvidia-smi
Step 7: Set up the project environment with dependencies
- Create a virtual environment using Anaconda.
conda create -n qwen-img python=3.11 -y && conda activate qwen-img
Output:
2. Install required dependencies.
pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121
pip install einops timm pillow
pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers
pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate
pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/diffusers
pip install huggingface_hub
pip install sentencepiece bitsandbytes protobuf decord numpy
Output:
3. Install and run jupyter notebook.
conda install -c conda-forge --override-channels notebook -y
conda install -c conda-forge --override-channels ipywidgets -y
jupyter notebook --allow-root
4. If you’re on a remote machine (e.g., NodeShift GPU), you’ll need to do SSH port forwarding in order to access the jupyter notebook session on your local browser.
Run the following command in your local terminal after replacing:
<YOUR_SERVER_PORT> with the PORT allotted to your remote server (For the NodeShift server – you can find it in the deployed GPU details on the dashboard).
<PATH_TO_SSH_KEY> with the path to the location where your SSH key is stored.
<YOUR_SERVER_IP> with the IP address of your remote server.
ssh -L 8888:localhost:8888 -p <YOUR_SERVER_PORT> -i <PATH_TO_SSH_KEY> root@<YOUR_SERVER_IP>
Output:
After this copy the URL you received in your remote server:
And paste this on your local browser to access the Jupyter Notebook session.
Step 8: Download and Run the model
- Open a Python notebook inside Jupyter.
2. Download the model checkpoints.
from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline
import torch
model_name = "Qwen/Qwen-Image"
# Load the pipeline
if torch.cuda.is_available():
torch_dtype = torch.bfloat16
device = "cuda"
else:
torch_dtype = torch.float32
device = "cpu"
pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(model_name, torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
pipe = pipe.to(device)
positive_magic = {
"en": "Ultra HD, 4K, cinematic composition." # for english prompt,
"zh": "超清，4K，电影级构图" # for chinese prompt,
}
# Generate image
prompt = '''A coffee shop entrance features a chalkboard sign reading "Qwen Coffee 😊 $2 per cup," with a neon light beside it displaying "通义千问". Next to it hangs a poster showing a beautiful Chinese woman, and beneath the poster is written "π≈3.1415926-53589793-23846264-33832795-02384197". Ultra HD, 4K, cinematic composition'''
negative_prompt = " " # using an empty string if you do not have specific concept to remove
# Generate with different aspect ratios
aspect_ratios = {
"1:1": (1328, 1328),
"16:9": (1664, 928),
"9:16": (928, 1664),
"4:3": (1472, 1140),
"3:4": (1140, 1472),
"3:2": (1584, 1056),
"2:3": (1056, 1584),
}
width, height = aspect_ratios["16:9"]
image = pipe(
prompt=prompt + positive_magic["en"],
negative_prompt=negative_prompt,
width=width,
height=height,
num_inference_steps=50,
true_cfg_scale=4.0,
generator=torch.Generator(device="cuda").manual_seed(42)
).images[0]
image.save("example.png")
Output:
Conclusion
You’ve seen how Qwen-Image turns simple text prompts into stunning, high-fidelity images, whether photorealistic, painterly or minimal, and offers intuitive editing for objects, colour, text and even human poses, all backed by robust image-understanding capabilities like segmentation and super-resolution. Equally straightforward is getting up and running: a few commands installs the model via diffusers and, in minutes, you’re generating your first visuals. By pairing Qwen-Image with NodeShift Cloud, you gain instant access to scalable GPU instances, automated deployment of your inference pipeline and managed versioning, so you can focus on creativity while NodeShift ensures performance, reliability and easy integration into your existing workflows.
