Studio Portrait Photo
Hand it any photograph of somebody and it comes back as a proper studio portrait of them — new light, new background, new styling, and a face that is still theirs down to the features you named. Two fields.
We made two examples, from two different photographs: two people in two opposite setups: a soft key light on grey, and a hard key from high right on near-black. Both faces are still theirs; everything else about the shoot is new.
The face is not beautified: lines, pores, an uneven eyelid and age all stay. The features you name usually come through, but not always. Here the mole, the eyelid and the lines at the mouth came through, and the hair came back longer than asked, so check the list item by item. Name only features your photo shows: a crooked tooth cannot appear if the mouth is closed.
Generated for this library
Input
Must not the mole on her left cheek · the slightly
change heavier left eyelid · the line either side
of the mouth · the jaw-length straight
black hair
The shoot one soft key from the left and a weak
fill, mid-grey seamless, a plain dark polo
neck
Photograph snapshot.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · a studio portrait of her
named three of four held - the mole, the heavier
eyelid, the lines at the mouth. The hair did
not: jaw-length going in, past the jaw coming
out
unnamed held where it matters - pores, lines and age
all still there, no smoothing
shoot as asked: one soft key from the left, weak
fill, mid-grey seamless, dark polo neck
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The features that must not change
- 2The shoot — light, background, wardrobe
Studio Portrait Photo
What this makes
Hand it any photograph of somebody and it comes back as a proper studio portrait of them — new light, new background, new styling, and a face that is still theirs down to the features you named. Two fields.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. In the first, name the things a stranger would use to pick them out of a room.
- Check it feature by feature against the original before shipping — and check the ones you did not name too, because those are where it drifts.
- If it comes back better-looking than the photograph, it has averaged the face. Say which feature went and run it again.
What you swap
- The features that must not change
- the mole on her left cheek · the slightly heavier left eyelid · the line either side of the mouth · the jaw-length straight black hair
- The shoot — light, background, wardrobe
- one soft key from the left and a weak fill, mid-grey seamless, a plain dark polo neck
Before it runs
- A photograph of the person, attached to the message, with the face clearly visible. This makes a new photograph of a face, so the face has to be legible in the one you hand it.
- Permission from the person, if it is not you. This produces something that looks like a photograph of them and will be read as one.
- Your own list of what must not change. Left to itself the run improves a face, and improving a face is how it stops being that face.
- Willingness to keep the parts people usually retouch out. If the list does not include the lines, the marks and the asymmetries, they will go.
When to reach for it
When somebody needs a decent portrait and all that exists is a snapshot: a speaker page, a team wall, a profile, a programme. Templates in this genre promise to preserve identity and then hand back a smoothed, symmetrical, better-looking stranger — the pores gone, the nose narrowed, the face averaged into whatever the model thinks a portrait looks like.
What changes
- One photograph in, one out — the same person, photographed properly.
- Background, light, wardrobe and pose are rebuilt to the shoot you describe; the face is not part of that rebuild.
- You name the features that have to survive, and each one is checkable in the result.
- No beautifying: the lines, the asymmetries, the skin and the age all stay, because those are the person.
- Nothing in it says anything about making somebody look more or less like anybody — the rule is simply that their features do not change.
Pairs with
- Stylised Group PortraitHand it a photograph of several people and it comes back as one stylised group portrait — everybody still themselves, because you name what tells each of them apart. Two fields.
- Caricature PortraitHand it a portrait and it comes back as a caricature that is still unmistakably them — because it only exaggerates what the photograph already had most of, in the order you rank it. Two fields.
- Handmade Collectible FigureHand it a photograph of somebody and it comes back as a small handmade collectible figure of them — you name the few features that have to survive, because a toy face has room for about six. Two fields.