Realism isn’t a look—it’s the consistent physics of causes across geometry, light, and camera capture.
Previous · Part 12
Shot Design for AI Images: Framing, Blocking, and Camera Position Like a Director
Next · Part 14
The Real-Camera Prompt Cookbook (Part 14): Shot Recipes That Don’t Look Like AI
This builds on Part 12: Shot Design for AI Images: Framing, Blocking, and Camera Position Like a Director
Continue with Part 14: The Real-Camera Prompt Cookbook (Part 14): Shot Recipes That Don’t Look Like AI
Repair Mode: How to Fix an Almost-Good AI Image Without Rewriting Everything
Most people “fix” AI images by starting over.
But the better move is repair. Because almost-good images already contain the physics—your job is to restore the parts that drifted.
What “Almost-Good” Usually Means (and why it matters)
An almost-good image is typically coherent in structure:
- framing is close
- subject reads
- lighting direction feels plausible
- materials are mostly behaving
The failure is usually in one tight cluster: a mismatch between what the image implies (geometry, contact, scale, lens character) and what it actually delivers (edge contrast, micro-contrast, depth cues, or exposure behavior).
The Repair Stack: Change Order, Not Just Content
If you jump straight to “rewrite the prompt,” you waste the existing good signal. Instead, work in this order.
Step 1 — Diagnose the Failure Channel (The part you can’t skip)
Use the “reader test.” Ask what feels wrong in one sentence, without blaming the whole image.
Common failure channels:
1) Edge & Contour Wrongness (the “cutout” feeling)
Symptoms:
- subject edges look too clean or too obedient
- silhouettes lack tactile tension
- hair/leafage boundaries feel smeared or over-resolved
Unlock the full applied series
Get all 15 parts of The Physics of Better AI Images — 92 min read · 18,266 words across the full sequence.
Inside the series
Parts 1-4: Constraints make it real
Parts 5-9: Camera causes, not vibes
Parts 10-12: Surfaces, framing, and truth priority
Parts 13-14: Repair and recipe workflows
Part 15: Master Prompt Sheet
Realism isn’t a look—it’s the consistent physics of causes across geometry, light, and camera capture.
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