Negative prompts are the most misunderstood lever in image generation. Used well, they quietly remove the recurring failures. Used badly, they fight your main prompt and produce flat, lifeless results.
The five that earn their place
For photoreal work, five exclusions cover most failures: blurry, watermark, extra fingers, distorted text, and oversaturated. Each targets a specific, common artifact rather than a vague notion of quality.
The over-stuffing trap
A negative prompt with thirty terms doesn't make the image thirty times better — it dilutes the model's attention and often strips the atmosphere along with the artifacts. If a negative term isn't fixing a problem you've actually seen, delete it.