Selective Memory Editorial Poster

Selective Memory Editorial Poster

Use the system imagegen skill and image-generation tool. Treat every uploaded photo as a separate edit target. The result should feel like a privately kept visual diary, an independent art journal, and a carefully art-directed poster: light, intelligent, relaxed, slightly naive, and visually mature.

Output contract

• Produce one independent raster poster for each uploaded photo. Never combine photos into a collage, contact sheet, diptych, comparison layout, or shared canvas.
• Use a 3:4 portrait composition with a natural upper/lower two-layer relationship. The upper half is real photography; the lower half is selective artistic memory.
• Preserve the upper photo's subject identity, count, anatomy or construction, structure, pose, silhouette, spatial relationships, natural light, real texture, and original color atmosphere.
• Apply only restrained high-end editorial color correction. When the ratio needs more room, extend only plausible environmental background; never stretch, warp, mirror, or redesign the subject.
• Keep the result recognizably photographic in the upper half and clearly reconstructed in the lower half. It must not read as a full-scene illustration of the source.

Find the memory before designing

For each source, privately determine:

1. the central subject, action, relationship, or emotional event;
2. what is genuinely worth remembering rather than every visible object;
3. the 3–6 most meaningful visual fragments that can tell that story together;
4. the source-derived temperature, quiet background color, and one or two characteristic accent colors;
5. one optional, very small text opportunity—or decide that no text is needed.

The lower half must be organized around one core theme. Fragments may be the subject itself, a partial feature, a gesture, an environmental clue, a sound translated into a shape, or a poetic form naturally implied by the photo. Every metaphor must remain traceable to the source's subject, action, mood, setting, or visual relationship. Do not randomly list attractive objects.

Build the upper photographic half

Keep the original photograph as the truthful anchor. Preserve recognizable faces, bodies, animals, objects, architecture, proportions, direction, pose, surface, and relationships. Use a subtle magazine, independent-publication, or exhibition-photography grade: clean exposure, gentle tonal control, and quiet color refinement without changing the scene's identity or light logic.

If expanding the image for 3:4, continue sky, wall, ground, water, foliage, or another believable surrounding field. Do not duplicate edges, invent a new background story, retouch away meaningful evidence, or place graphic elements over the photographic region.

Reconstruct the lower selective memory

Use 3–6 related visual fragments, not a literal redraw of the whole scene. Choose one dominant form or scene-memory, then supporting fragments that clarify its emotion, movement, place, or metaphor. Simplify boldly into large silhouettes, geometric shapes, cut forms, broad color blocks, and a few visible handmade marks. The lower half should preserve the source's visual truth at the level of recognition and feeling, not photographic detail.

Use a light, slightly imperfect flat language combining paper cutouts, gouache, soft pastel, Risograph, and screen-print sensibilities. Allow handmade contour variation, restrained registration drift, powdery edges, and paper grain, while keeping the result refined rather than craft-shop busy.

Avoid full-scene tracing, realistic lower-half rendering, polished 3D objects, glossy vector gradients, dense linework, decorative clip art, cartoon/anime styling, or a collection of unrelated icons.

Composition and visual path

Create a nearly white, clean tonal field for the lower section, subtly derived from the source's overall light, temperature, and mood. It may lean warm white, cool white, pale blush, mist blue, or soft gray-green. Large quiet areas are a primary design element.

Arrange the fragments through controlled improvisation rather than a template:

• no regular grid, fixed center, fixed left/right formula, or equal-size row;
• vary scale, rotation, height, spacing, overlap, and directional emphasis;
• use scale contrast, diagonal echoes, staggered levels, positive/negative shape, and sparse/dense rhythm to create a hidden reading route;
• keep the overall visual weight stable even when the layout is asymmetric or casually off-balance;
• let each fragment breathe as if it were an observation or thought on paper.

The composition should look spontaneous at first glance but clearly guided on second viewing. Keep the lower section spacious enough that the fragments do not become a sticker sheet, catalog, scrapbook, or busy infographic.

Palette and text

Derive a soft, translucent, slightly desaturated healing palette from the source. Favor pale pink-blue, mist blue, sky blue, cream, ivory, pale beige, soft gray-green, milky apricot, blush pink, soft peach, and dusty rose. Retain only a small amount of a clearer source color as a visual punctuation point. Avoid muddy gray, neon, high-saturation clashes, heavy brown, dirty vintage filters, and thick dark shadows.

Do not predefine a title, number, location, year, language, or repeated label system. If the photo supports it, add only a few meaningful characters, words, short phrases, or handwritten observation fragments in the user's language. Text may sit near a shape, follow its direction, rest in a quiet gap, or act as a subtle bridge between fragments. It must be sparse, legible enough to read, and semantically tied to the source's action, mood, sound, memory, or metaphor. Never add pseudo-text, filler captions, invented factual metadata, logos, watermarks, or typography solely to make the poster look designed.

Prompt compilation

Before generating each poster, compile one direct source-specific image-edit prompt that states:

1. one independent 3:4 portrait output and the real-photography / selective-memory lower-half relationship;
2. the upper-half preservation invariants and any safe environmental extension;
3. the core theme and the exact 3–6 lower visual fragments, with their hierarchy;
4. the pale background field, fragment sizes, positions, rotations, overlaps, and intended eye path;
5. the paper/gouache/pastel/Risograph/screen-print material language and source-derived palette;
6. the exact minimal text, if any, and its placement;
7. hard exclusions: no multi-photo layout, no distorted subject, no full-scene literal redraw, no random objects, no regular grid, no sticker catalog, no dense decoration, no fake metadata, no watermark.

Do not quote or display this production brief. Use it internally to make the image edit. Return only the independent generated images, with at most one short status sentence if needed.

Inspect and correct

Review every result at full size and thumbnail size. Check that the upper half still reads as genuine photography, the lower half contains 3–6 recognizable source-connected fragments, the core theme is legible, negative space remains generous, and the composition has a stable but non-formulaic eye path.

If the result is merely a filtered photo, strengthen the lower reconstruction. If it is a full illustration, restore photographic detail above. If the lower half feels random or crowded, remove fragments and consolidate them into larger forms. If it resembles a grid or sticker sheet, vary scale and placement and restore breathing room. If text is decorative or invented, delete it. Use one targeted correction and regenerate only when the visual contract is missed.