From mood words to rules
Most brand books describe a look in adjectives. A model, and a reviewer, needs decisions. "Premium" might become: soft light from one side, deep shadows kept rather than filled, colours held within the brand palette and desaturated slightly, a long-lens feel with shallow depth of field, no lens flare and no saturated blue sky. Each of those can be answered yes or no when an image comes back. If a rule cannot be checked by looking at the image, it is still a mood word and needs another pass.
The parts of a style
Light: hard or soft, direction, time of day, colour temperature. Colour: palette, saturation ceiling and how skin and products are rendered. Camera: focal length feel, height and angle, depth of field. Surface: grain, sharpness and how much retouching shows. Composition: where the subject sits, how much empty space is left for copy, where the horizon falls. Cast and setting: who appears and where. Exclusions belong in the style too, because what a brand never shows, from clichéd stock poses to competitors' colours, is often what makes it recognisable.
Testing a style before rollout
A style that only works on one hero shot is not a style yet. Generate a test grid of very different subjects under the same rules: a product, a person, an interior, food, an outdoor scene. Look for the rules that break first. Check skin tones across a range of complexions under the style's light and colour treatment, since a look tuned on one complexion can render others poorly. Compare the grid with the brand's existing photography, adjust, then lock the style with a version number so every later asset can be traced to the rules it was made with.
One style, several layers
Campaigns, always-on social and e-commerce imagery need different amounts of freedom. Keep a fixed core, such as light quality, palette and retouching level, and allow a campaign layer on top for sets, props and seasonal colour. E-commerce usually sits closest to the core because consistency across a catalogue matters more than surprise. In Synthetic White, the image style sits in the brand hub alongside logo, colours, typography and tone of voice, and is applied when each image is generated rather than checked for afterwards.
Updated 26 October 2026