Kept Among Its Own
Hand it a photograph of one thing and it gathers three to five companions from the same material world around it — wood with wood, glass with glass — all lower, all behind, none crossing it. Two fields.
One treatment, two different photographs. Turned walnut around a grinder, blown glass around a carafe. The two runs are the argument for naming the family rather than the props: neither run was told what objects to make, and both returned things that plainly came off the same bench as the subject.
Four companions in each, all from the named family, all lower or further back, none crossing the subject's outline — the arrangement rule held on both. So did the camera: overlaid on their originals both subjects sit on themselves as one silhouette, with four objects added around them. That is the useful surprise in this set, because adding things to a frame is what moves the camera everywhere else; what moves it is running out of room, and a subject at a fifth of the frame has plenty. One warning that is not visible in either picture: an earlier run of this template returned a set built for the wrong object entirely — same words, same input file named in the same place, glassware instead of a walnut grinder. It has not recurred, and nothing in the template prevents it either, so look at what came back before you use it. A picture that is beautiful and of the wrong thing is a failure mode this genre has and a brief skill does not.
Generated for this library
Input
Object a walnut pepper grinder
Company turned and oiled hardwood, four of them
Photograph grinder-front.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · the same object, four companions
object unchanged, same place, still the largest thing
camera same eye line and distance; outline lands on
itself
company a bowl, a shallow dish, a beaker and a lidded
pot - all turned walnut, all unmarked
placement all lower or further back, none crossing the
subject's outline
focus the subject sharp, the company softening as it
recedes
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The object, in three or four words
- 2The material world, and how many
Kept Among Its Own
What this makes
Hand it a photograph of one thing and it gathers three to five companions from the same material world around it — wood with wood, glass with glass — all lower, all behind, none crossing it. Two fields.
You are given ONE photograph of ONE object. Return ONE image: the same object surrounded by three to five things made of what it is made of. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the photograph and the fields?
Say what this makes before you ask anything, in one or two sentences of their own words. Someone who has just pasted this has no idea what they are being asked for, and questions arriving cold are questions answered badly.
If no photograph is attached, stop and ask for one. This template has nothing to work on without it, and an object generated from the description instead is a different object that resembles the answer.
If either field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put both questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then work. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
If the photograph is attached and both fields are filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these two lines only
- The object, in three or four words: {what is in the photograph}
- The material world, and how many: {a material family, and a number from three to five}
The law everything else follows from
You can only see the face the photograph gave you.
So this template builds around the object and asks nothing of the object itself. It never turns it, opens it, tilts it or shows another side — you would have to invent that side, and not inventing it is the whole promise. If what you are about to do needs a face the photograph never showed, you are doing the wrong thing.
The object — carried through untouched
- Silhouette, proportions, and the position of every part.
- Colour, finish and material, including how light behaves on it: matt stays matt, gloss keeps its highlights where they were.
- Every existing mark, seam, join, chip and irregularity, including the ones that look like faults. They are how someone recognises their own thing.
- Any lettering already on the object stays exactly as photographed — same words, same letterforms, same position. You are not setting it again.
Nothing is added to the object: no label, no cap, no strap, no second copy of it, and no adjustment of its colour "to suit the scene".
The camera — it did not move
- Same eye line, same distance, same focal length.
- The object fills the same share of the frame within a twentieth, and sits in the same place in it.
- Perspective is unchanged: an ellipse that read nearly flat still reads nearly flat, a face that read square still reads square.
Check it by overlay. Stack the two frames. The object's outline should land on itself. Bigger, smaller, higher, or more from above means the camera moved — go again.
The ground — it must not swallow the object
Whatever you build, the surface behind and beneath the object differs from the object in at least two of these three: value, temperature, texture.
A sand-coloured object on sand-coloured linen under warm light is one object photographed inside itself. It looks tasteful as a thumbnail and vanishes at size, and it is the standing failure of this genre — scenery chosen to flatter the product rather than to show it.
The light — it comes from somewhere
- One dominant source, with a direction and a height you have decided.
- Every shadow in the frame agrees with it, including the object's own.
- The contact shadow starts where the object meets the ground and is darkest there. A detached shadow is an object pasted onto a picture.
The treatment — three to five of its own kind
Gather companions from the subject's material family and arrange them around and behind it.
- The family, not the category. Wood with wood, glass with glass, fired clay with fired clay. What makes a shelf read as collected is that everything on it was made the same way, not that everything on it does the same job.
- Three to five. Fewer and it is a pair; more and the subject is one of a crowd. The fields say the number.
- All lower or further back. Every companion sits below the subject's height or behind its plane, or both.
- None crosses the silhouette. They stop at its outline or sit clear of it.
- The subject stays largest and sharpest. Depth of field falls off behind it; the companions soften as they recede.
- Every companion is unbranded and unlettered, and none of them is another copy of the subject.
The surface and the light stay as they were.
Never
- Lettering, numerals, logos, labels, watermarks, price flashes, badges or packaging copy anywhere in the picture, in any script. Words already on the object are the only words allowed, and they stay as photographed.
- Hands, faces, figures, or any part of a person.
- A border, frame, vignette or sticker laid over the picture.
- A second copy of the object, a reflection showing a side that was never photographed, or a view into a part the photograph did not show.
What it should read as
A shelf in the workshop the object came from — the things around it made by the same hands, out of the same stuff, and none of them asking for attention.
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 your photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. Name the material family rather than the objects — the family is what makes them belong; a list of objects is just props again.
- Count the companions in the result. More than five and the subject has become one of a crowd.
- Check the silhouette. If anything crosses the subject, the run has treated it as a background rather than as a shelf.
What you swap
- The object, in three or four words
- a walnut pepper grinder
- The material world, and how many
- turned and oiled hardwood, four of them
Before it runs
- An actual photograph of the thing, attached to the message. There is nothing here for a description to work on.
- A material with relatives. Wood, glass, ceramic, brass, linen all have obvious company; a moulded plastic housing in an unusual colour has almost none, and the run will invent cousins that do not exist.
- Room behind and to the sides. The companions go there, and a tightly cropped subject leaves nowhere for them.
- A willingness to stay unbranded. Real companions on a real shelf carry marks and labels, and this template strips all of them, which is what keeps the picture yours.
When to reach for it
When one product has to look like it comes from somewhere: a craft brand, a range shot, a shelf that should feel collected rather than styled. Templates in this genre reach for whatever props look nice and hand back a table of unrelated objects with your product somewhere in it.
What changes
- One photograph in, one out — the object where it was, a small company of its own kind around it.
- Three to five companions, all from the subject's material family, so the picture reads as one shelf.
- Every companion sits lower or further back, and none crosses the subject's silhouette.
- The subject stays the largest and sharpest thing in the frame.
- The camera holds, so the subject is the same size it was.
Pairs with
- Lit Across, Not AtHand it a photograph of a thing and it takes one macro shot of the part you name — lit from the side so the surface proves the one fact you would otherwise have to touch it to learn. Two fields.
- One Colour and a ShadowHand it a photograph of one thing and it takes everything away — no surface, no horizon, no props — leaving the object on one flat colour with one soft shadow under it. Two fields; the listing shot.
- Photographed by Somebody Who Owns ItHand it a clean product photograph and it takes the picture again as a customer would — wrong light, off-centre, a real room behind it — with the product itself unchanged. Two fields.