Try it now: AI Metadata Inspector
Free, no login — upload an image and read its embedded metadata in your browser.
What to know
The seed — the number that fixes a generation’s starting noise — is recorded alongside the prompt in an image’s metadata: the ComfyUI/Stable Diffusion PNG chunks, or a Midjourney generation record. If the original file is intact, the seed reads out with everything else.
If the metadata was stripped, the seed is not derivable from the pixels: nothing in the image encodes it. Recovering a seed therefore follows the same rule as recovering a prompt — you need the original file or the tool’s history.
How to recover it
- 1
Read the metadata on the original file
Upload the original PNG to the AI Metadata Inspector; the seed appears in the ComfyUI prompt data or the Stable Diffusion parameters chunk.
- 2
Check your tool’s history for Midjourney
Midjourney records the seed with the generation; retrieve it from your web history via the Job ID.
- 3
Reproduce from the recovered seed
With the seed plus the same prompt and parameters, you can rebuild the image or branch controlled variations from it.
A seed is only useful if it is kept. Storing the seed with each result at import turns "I loved that render" into a reproducible starting point.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions.
Related recovery guides
Never lose a prompt again
Numonic extracts the prompt, model, seed, and settings from every AI image on import and keeps them searchable — so recovery stops being a rescue mission and the prompt is always attached to the work.