Thanks for info. I don't use img2img except when i want to "AI" a picture, but this makes sense, as one of the steps. I usually just "run off"* dozens of images and pick the best one - but i don't do this for a living or anything, just to be able to "find" a picture of something in less than a minute.
* like a mimeograph!
By default the random seed is different for each generation, so even if the prompt and every setting is the same you'll get vastly different images ( which is the expected outcome ).
When you set the seed to a fixed number you get the same image every time you generate if all other settings and the prompt are exactly the same.
So I start off with a pretty high CFG Scale to give it enough room to imagine things ( Refiner and Resize turned off )
Once I have a good base image, I'll send it to img2img and iterate some more one it.