Worlds

The art direction the whole page lives inside. Pick one, write it as a style preamble, and paste that preamble verbatim at the top of every image and video prompt. Reusing it word for word is what makes eight separately generated assets look like one shoot. Paraphrasing it is what makes them look like eight prompts.

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The default is photographic

Soft matte low-poly clay diorama, isometric miniature, tilt-shift toy world: banned as a default. It is the house style of AI scroll sites, it announces that nothing on the page is real, and for any brand selling an actual product it actively works against the sale. A clay render of a can does not make anyone thirsty.

Use an illustrated world only when the brand is genuinely illustrated: a children's product, a game, a brand whose existing identity is drawn. Then commit to it properly, matched to the brand's real illustration style, not to the generic diorama look.

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The eight

Each is a starting preamble. Tune the light, lens and grade to the brand; keep the structure.

1. Low-key cinematic: the default

Dark, controlled, one light source. Works for almost anything premium: spirits, coffee, tools, apparel, software, professional services.

Cinematic product photography shot on 35mm anamorphic lenses. Shallow depth of field, high dynamic range, true blacks, matte film grain. Low-key lighting: one warm key, cool ambient fill, deep falloff into shadow. Colour grade of deep charcoal, warm amber highlights, desaturated mid-tones. Photographic realism. NOT 3D render, NOT clay, NOT illustration, NOT CGI, no digital glow, no plastic sheen.

2. High-key editorial

Bright, airy, shadowless. Wellness, skincare, home goods, healthcare, fintech that wants to feel calm.

Editorial still-life photography on a seamless bone-white cyclorama. Large soft overhead source, huge white bounce, near-shadowless with one soft contact shadow. High key, gentle contrast, colour grade of warm white and pale neutrals. Medium-format sharpness, fine grain. Photographic realism, no CGI.

3. Natural documentary

Real people, real places, available light. Service businesses, trades, restaurants, anything where trust comes from "these are actual humans."

Documentary photography, available light only, handheld 35mm. Natural skin tones, honest imperfect surfaces, slight motion in the frame. Muted realistic grade, no colour cast, visible grain. Candid, unposed, nobody looking at camera. Absolutely not stock-photo styling, no fake smiles, no CGI.

4. Hard-light graphic

Direct sun, saturated ground, sharp shadows as composition. Streetwear, energy drinks, sports, youth brands.

Studio product photography with a single hard undiffused source. Crisp high-contrast shadows used as graphic shapes. Saturated seamless colour backdrop. Punchy contrast, slight halation on specular highlights. Shot on digital medium format, sharp throughout. Photographic, not rendered.

5. Macro texture

Closer than the eye gets. Food, drink, materials, ingredients, craft.

Extreme macro photography, 100mm macro lens at high magnification. Razor-thin plane of focus, everything else falling to soft black. Backlit so edges glow. Visible surface texture, condensation, grain of the material. Near-black negative space. Photographic realism, no CGI, no illustration.

6. Architectural

Space, scale, geometry, almost no people. Real estate, agencies, manufacturing, B2B infrastructure.

Architectural photography, tilt-shift corrected verticals, wide 24mm. Vast negative space, strong linear geometry, raking daylight through structure. Cool neutral grade with one warm accent. Long exposure stillness. Photographic, no render, no CGI.

7. Nocturne

Night, practical lights, wet surfaces, reflection. Nightlife, automotive, gaming, security, anything with edge.

Night photography, practical light sources only: neon, sodium, screen glow. Wet reflective surfaces doubling every light. Deep blue-black shadows, warm point highlights, heavy atmosphere. Anamorphic flare, visible grain. Photographic, cinematic, not rendered.

8. Technical drawing

The one non-photographic world that reads as premium rather than cheap, because it is honest about being a diagram. Engineering, hardware, complex services.

Precise technical illustration in the style of a patent drawing or exploded assembly diagram. Fine consistent line weight, no fills, monochrome ink on warm paper ground, dimension lines and leader callouts. Orthographic projection. Restrained, engineered, no shading, no gradients, no 3D render.

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Writing your own

Every preamble names five things. Miss one and the set drifts.

1. Medium and lens: "35mm anamorphic", "100mm macro", "handheld 35mm". This is what sets depth of field and perspective.
2. Light: count the sources and place them. "One warm key, cool ambient fill" is directable. "Beautiful lighting" is not.
3. Grade: the colour story in three words. "Deep charcoal, warm amber, desaturated mid-tones."
4. Texture: grain, halation, condensation, imperfection. This is what makes an image read as photographed rather than generated. Skipping it is the single biggest cause of the plastic AI look.
5. The negative list: what it must not be. "NOT 3D render, NOT clay, NOT illustration, no digital glow, no plastic sheen." Models drift toward rendered-looking output; the negative list is what holds them.

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If the canvas is light

Every worked example above is dark, and a high-key build inverts four things at once. Getting them wrong costs a full iteration:

1. The scrim washes toward the canvas, it does not darken. Over footage on a paper ground the density has to go up, not down, or the type has nothing to sit on.
2. The type over media stays ink. Light text on a light page over a bright frame is unrecoverable.
3. --sc-edge is an ink-tinted inset highlight tuned for a near-black ground. On paper it reads as dirt along the top lip. Invert it to white, or drop it and carry the raise with a hairline.
4. The --sc-e1/2/3 shadow alphas are tuned for a near-black ground too. Halve them and re-tint --sc-shadow-color toward the canvas hue.

The contrast direction flips with all of this: dark type fails on the darkest patch under it, not the brightest. The harness picks the direction per line, so it grades a high-key page correctly (see verify.md).

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Composition, per shot

The preamble sets the world. Each shot prompt then names the subject, the frame, and where the empty space is.

Name the empty space in every scene prompt, not only in the preamble. This is a requirement, not advice. It is the single highest-leverage line in a prompt: seven stills across three aspect ratios came back on-grade and cohesive with zero rerolls on the build that did it every time. Copy sits on these images, so composition has to leave room for it:

• "large empty shadowed space across the upper left of the frame"
• "the subject low and to the right, negative space above"
• "centred with even empty space on both sides"

Generate the space, do not crop for it later. And never ask for text in the image: markup is selectable, translatable, sharp at every density, and editable after the fact.

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Cohesion checks

Lay every generated asset side by side and look for:

• One light direction across the set, or a deliberate reason it changes.
• One grade. If one image is cooler than the rest, reroll it rather than correcting it in CSS; a filter over a full-bleed image flattens it.
• One level of realism. A photoreal hero followed by a rendered-looking product shot is worse than either style used consistently.
• The brand object identical everywhere. Pass the real packaging, logo or product shot as --ref on every prompt that includes it. A label that drifts between shots is the thing a client notices first.