LESSON 2 OF 5
The four levers
BY THE END OF THIS LESSON
Change an image deliberately by naming subject, style, composition or light.
Four things, not one big description
Almost every change you want falls into one of four: the subject (what is there), the style (how it is rendered), the composition (where things sit in the frame), and the light.
Naming them separately is what turns a prompt from a paragraph you rewrite wholesale into four dials you can move one at a time.
Composition is the one people forget
Subject and style get all the attention, and composition is what usually decides whether an image is usable. An image with nowhere to put the headline is the wrong image however beautiful it is.
Say the shot: the distance (wide or close), the height (high or low), what is in the foreground, and which part of the frame stays empty.
Borrow the vocabulary of the medium
If you want something photographic, the useful words are photographic ones: the lens, the depth of field, the time of day. If you want an illustration, name the medium — ink, gouache, screen print, cut paper.
You are not being clever by using jargon. You are using the words that were attached to the pictures the model learned from, which is why they steer it and "make it look nice" does not.
WORKED EXAMPLE
ONE LONG PARAGRAPH
A nice modern illustration of a team working together in an office, bright and friendly and professional, good for a blog header.
FOUR LEVERS, NAMED
Subject: three people around a table with laptops and paper printouts. Style: flat vector illustration, limited palette of two blues and a warm sand. Composition: wide, slightly above eye level, table running left to right, top third empty. Light: even, no strong shadows.
The paragraph gives one dial with everything soldered to it — any change means rewriting all of it and hoping. The second is four dials: if the palette is wrong you change one line and everything else holds still.
YOUR TURN
Split a prompt you already use into the four levers.
RUN THIS
Here is an image prompt I use: [paste it]. Split it into subject, style, composition and light. Tell me which of the four I left unspecified — and for each of those, what the tool will have defaulted to. Then rewrite it with all four named.
What a good result looks like
Composition and light are the ones most often missing. If the rewrite is not obviously more specific in those two, ask what shot it is and where the light comes from.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Answer all 3 correctly to complete this lesson.
1. What are the four levers?
2. Why does composition decide whether an image is usable?
3. Why use the vocabulary of photography or illustration?
REMEMBER THIS
Name subject, style, composition and light separately — four dials, not one paragraph.