Intent page
AI image style keywords when you can picture it but cannot name it.
Use these terms when the image in your head is clear, but your prompt keeps producing generic, plastic, stock-looking output.
Use these terms
Art direction
Defines the whole visual system: taste, mood, references, styling, and what the image should avoid.
Editorial photography
Signals a real magazine, campaign, or documentary look instead of generic AI gloss.
Cinematic lighting
Controls the mood through key light, fill, shadow, contrast, and motivated light sources.
Lens choice
Adds realistic perspective, intimacy, distortion, or compression through camera language.
Composition
Places the subject, negative space, foreground, background, and visual weight deliberately.
Color grading
Moves the image away from default saturation into a controlled palette and finish.
Negative prompt
Names the visual defects to exclude: plastic skin, distorted hands, fake text, over-sharpening, or stock-photo poses.
Prompt pattern
Weak ask
Make a cool image that looks premium and realistic.
Exact Terms ask
Create the image with clear art direction, editorial photography, cinematic lighting, deliberate composition, realistic lens choice, restrained color grading, material texture detail, and a negative prompt for generic AI artifacts.
Related guides
AI image prompt vocabulary cheat sheet.
A visual prompt vocabulary cheat sheet for art direction, editorial photography, lighting, lens choice, composition, texture, and negative prompts.
Art direction vs. editorial photography vs. cinematic lighting: which AI image term should you use?
A practical guide to art direction, style keywords, editorial photography, cinematic lighting, lens choice, production design, and negative prompts for AI images.
Negative prompt examples for realistic AI images.
Copyable negative prompt examples for realistic AI images, founder portraits, product scenes, editorial photography, photorealism constraints, and common AI artifacts.
How to make AI images look less stock and less fake.
AI image vocabulary for making generations look less stock: editorial photography, art direction, production design, cinematic lighting, photorealism constraints, and negative prompts.
Common questions
Why do AI images look generic?
The prompt often names the subject but not the art direction, camera language, lighting, composition, texture, or defects to avoid.
What is the fastest fix?
Add one visual reference direction, one lighting term, one lens or composition term, and a negative prompt for the artifacts you keep seeing.