Mood Boards Before You Generate

A mood board is a brief, not a collage. Give every reference one job (palette, silhouette, material, light), then branch new images from the board instead of a blank prompt.

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Most weak generations start from a blank prompt. A mood board fixes that, but only if every image on it has a job. Pin a harbour still without a label and the model cannot tell whether you want its colours, its boats or its weather. Label it palette only and it can.

Prompt

Palette from the harbour still: indigo water, brass trim, teal lamp glow. Silhouette from the clock still: one tall tower, narrow crown, off-centre left. Materials: wet stone and oxidised brass. Do not copy faces, signage or boats from either reference.

Three references, three jobs, one explicit exclusion.

Copyable prompt

Palette from the harbour still: indigo water, brass trim, teal lamp glow. Silhouette from the clock still: one tall tower, narrow crown, off-centre left. Materials: wet stone and oxidised brass. Do not copy faces, signage or boats from either reference.

Job	What to take	How to say it
Palette	Three to five dominant colours	palette from the harbour: indigo, brass, teal
Silhouette	Shape and placement of the main mass	silhouette from the clock, off-centre left
Material	Surface and texture	materials: wet stone, oxidised brass
Light	Direction, time of day, temperature	low warm key from camera right, blue fill
Identity	A specific face or character	only when the reference is a character sheet

Build the board in four passes

Collect six to twelve stills: your own generations, gallery finds or photos. Past a dozen, nothing has a job.
Read each one back. Reverse the prompt out of the image so you can see what a model will latch onto.
Cut what you only want for its subject. Remove the background so the backdrop stops leaking into the palette.
Branch. Wire one or two references into a new prompt, edit it, generate, and keep the result on the board as the next reference.

Branch, do not restart. When a generation is close, wire it into the next one instead of rewriting the prompt from scratch. The board keeps the lineage, so you can see which reference introduced which change.

Try it on the Mood Board canvas

The Mood Board tool is a canvas for this loop. Drag a wire out of any image to read its prompt back, edit the text and generate a connected child image. Right-click an image to remove its background. Search the gallery from the sidebar to pull in more references, or drop in your own files.

Common mistakes

Pinning ten images of the same thing. Variety of job beats volume.
Letting a reference's background set the palette. Cut it out first.
Copying identity by accident. Write no faces from references unless one is a character sheet.
Describing the board instead of the shot. The prompt still needs a subject, an action and a camera.