I Created My First DALL·E Image in Python OpenAI Using Four Easy Steps

I have a problem. I’m addicted to OpenAI. Every day I find new exciting ways to use it. It’s like somebody gave me a magic stick and I use it for stupid things like cleaning the kitchen. But I cannot help it! So, how to create images with OpenAI in Python? Easy, follow these four steps! 👇

Step 1: Install the OpenAI Python Library

The first step to using OpenAI’s DALL·E in Python is to install the OpenAI Python library. You can do this using pip, a package manager for Python.

Open your terminal and enter the following command:

pip install openai

I have written a whole tutorial on this topic in case this doesn’t work instantly.

💡 Recommended: How to Install OpenAI in Python?

Step 2: Create an OpenAI API Key

OpenAI is not free for coders — but it’s almost free. I only pay a fraction of a cent for a request, so no need to be cheap here. 🧑‍💻

Visit the page https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys and create a new OpenAI key you can use in your code. Copy&paste the API key because you’ll need it in your coding project!

Step 3: Authenticate with OpenAI API Key

Next, you’ll need to authenticate with OpenAI’s API key. You can do this by importing the openai_secret_manager module and calling the get_secret() function. This function will retrieve your OpenAI API key from a secure location, and you can use it to authenticate your API requests.

import openai_secret_manager
import openai

secrets = openai_secret_manager.get_secret("openai")

# Authenticate with OpenAI API Key
openai.api_key = secrets["api_key"]

If this sounds too complex, you can also use the following easier code in your code script to try it out:

import openai


# Authenticate with OpenAI API Key
openai.api_key = 'sk-...'

The disadvantage is that the secret API key is plainly visible to anybody with access to your code file. Never load this code file into a repository such as GitHub!

Step 4: Generate Your DALL·E Image

Now that you’re authenticated with OpenAI, you can generate your first DALL·E image. To do this, call the openai.Image.create() function, passing in the model name, prompt, and size of the image you want to create.

import openai


# Authenticate with OpenAI API Key
openai.api_key = 'sk-...'


# Generate images using DALL-E
response = openai.Image.create(
    model="image-alpha-001",
    prompt="a coder learning with Finxter",
    size="512x512"
)

print(response.data[0]['url'])

In the code above, we specified the DALL·E model we wanted to use (image-alpha-001), provided a prompt for the image we wanted to create (a coder learning with Finxter), and specified the size of the image we wanted to create (512x512).

Once you’ve generated your image, you can retrieve the image URL from the API response and display it in your Python code or in a web browser.

print(response.data[0]['url'])

Conclusion

Using OpenAI’s DALL·E to generate images is a powerful tool that can be used in various applications. So exciting! 🤩

With just a few lines of Python code, you can create unique images that match specific text descriptions. By following the four easy steps outlined in this article, you can get started generating your own DALL·E images today.