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Direct Flash Night Photo

Hand it an ordinary photograph and it takes the picture again at night on a direct flash — where light falls off with the square of distance, so the near thing is blown out, the far thing is black, and only the background keeps the street's colour. Two fields.

bring a photographicsstillphoto-innightimage-promptminutes
ExamplesOne photograph in · one flash photograph out · lit by distance
in
Padded coat
in
Bowl of noodles

We made two examples, from two different photographs: a woman in a padded coat on a pavement, and a bowl of noodles on a restaurant table. In one the light falls off over a few paces, in the other across a room, and both split into a neutral foreground and a coloured background.

You get the photo as if shot at night on direct flash: the nearest thing close to blown out, a steep falloff and the far things black, with the street's colour only in the distance and a hard shadow just outside the subject. The face stays the same face. Check two things: whatever goes dark can vanish altogether, like the people further down the street, and loose contents such as noodles shift more than solid objects. Compare it with your photo before you use it.

Generated for this library

Input
  Nearest     the woman's face and the front of her coat
  Furthest    the shopfronts down the street
  Ambient     orange sodium streetlights and a green
              convenience-store sign further down
  Photograph  street.png (1254 x 1254)

Returned   1 image · 1:1 · the same woman, at night, on a flash

falloff    steep - the coat is close to white, the
           pavement is gone within a few paces, the
           shopfronts are black
shadow     hard and close, thrown onto the shop window
           just outside her own outline
colour     split - neutral where the flash lands, a
           green sign and sodium orange surviving only
           in the far dark
subject    the same person: features, hair, scarf, coat
           and boots all unchanged, lit flat
street     the pedestrians who were down the road are
           gone rather than dark
words      none, in any script
SKILL.mdthe whole thing, as you would paste it© vibary.ai

You fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.

  1. 1What is nearest the camera, and what is furthest
  2. 2What is lighting the place, apart from the flash

Direct Flash Night Photo

What this makes

Hand it an ordinary photograph and it takes the picture again at night on a direct flash — where light falls off with the square of distance, so the near thing is blown out, the far thing is black, and only the background keeps the street's colour. Two fields.

The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.

How to use it

  1. Copy the whole template with the button above.
  2. Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
  3. Replace the two FIELDS lines. Name the nearest and furthest things from the picture itself, so the falloff has two anchors.
  4. Check the near thing first: if it is not close to blown out, the flash was treated as a mood rather than a light source.
  5. Then check the background. If the whole frame is evenly lit, the falloff did not happen and it is worth another run.

What you swap

What is nearest the camera, and what is furthest
the woman's face and the front of her coat are nearest; the shopfronts down the street are furthest
What is lighting the place, apart from the flash
orange sodium streetlights and a green convenience-store sign further down

Before it runs

  • A photograph, attached to the message. This takes a particular picture again; there is nothing to re-shoot without it.
  • Depth in the picture. A flat wall photographed head-on has no distances for the falloff to act on, and the result will just look bright.
  • A near thing and a far thing you can name. The whole effect is a ratio between two distances, and naming them is what makes it a measurement instead of a mood.
  • Acceptance that things will disappear. Anything far enough back goes to black, and that is the physics rather than a mistake.

When to reach for it

When something needs the look of a picture taken at night on a small camera: a gig, a menu, a zine, a late shot for a feed. Templates in this genre ask for a nostalgic flash photo look and hand back an evenly lit picture with a bright spot in it, because the falloff — the thing that actually makes a flash photograph — is never stated.

What changes

  • One photograph in, one flash photograph out — same subject, taken again in the dark.
  • Brightness falls off with the square of the distance, so what is nearest is nearly white and what is a few paces back is nearly black.
  • The ambient colour of the street survives only where the flash cannot reach, which splits the picture in two.
  • Shadows land hard and close, thrown away from the camera, because the light is at the lens.
  • One image, no grain overlay, no date stamp, no border.

Pairs with