Reference
Glossary of AI art direction.
The terms I use to direct a visual production with AI, defined plainly. Each entry is anchored in real project work, not in an argument for the service.
If you have a question rather than a term, the questions and answers cover likeness, consent, disclosure and data.
Direction
The vocabulary of the positioning: what separates a directed image from an image that was merely produced.
- AI art direction
- A method that sets a visual frame from your brand first, then steers an AI tool so that every image serves that frame. The tool executes, the direction decides. It is the opposite of a one-off prompt sent at random.Example. The same face across four registers, corporate, editorial, beauty and personal branding, with one thread held from frame to frame.See also: how the direction works · what this costs
- Directed portrait
- A portrait whose framing, light and register were decided before production, against a stated intent. What settles each decision is the use the image will serve. That decision, repeated frame by frame, is what separates a directed portrait from a model output.
- Sorting
- The step where results that miss are discarded before the client sees them. Roughly one in five AI results is not usable: distortion, inconsistency, an expression that reads wrong. Sorting is part of what I deliver, not part of your work.
- Contact sheet
- A single sheet showing every take of the same shot side by side, so the choice between them can be made by comparison rather than from memory. It is the working tool of the sorting step, and it comes from film practice, not from AI.
- Register
- The overall key of an image: how formal it reads, how much the light sculpts, how present the setting is. Corporate, editorial, beauty and personal branding are four registers of the same craft, not four quality levels.
- Likeness
- How reliably a portrait reads as the actual person. A model optimizes for a plausible face, not for your face, so left alone it drifts. Correction happens on my side: if a portrait does not read as the person, it does not ship.
- Executive presence
- The way a founder or an executive reads before they speak, in a press kit, a conference program, an investor deck or a first call. It is the part of a company image that runs ahead of the company itself.
- AI image generator
- A self-serve tool that returns images from an input, with no direction, no sorting and no accountability for the result. This is what the service is not: a generator produces images, it does not know your brand and it does not hold consistency across a set.
Production
The vocabulary of a project: what happens between the moment you describe what you need and the moment files land.
- Brief
- The opening step, a short form: your reference photos, your brand guidelines, and the intended uses, website, LinkedIn, press, recruitment materials. It is what the direction is set against, so it is the step that decides the rest.See also: start a brief
- Lighting direction
- The named choice of how light falls on a face, decided before production rather than discovered after it. Soft frontal reads as the most approachable, a side triangle adds structure, a high sculpting light adds definition, a direct rim lifts the subject off the background.Example. Four different lighting decisions applied to one face produce four different readings of the same person, with nothing else changed.See also: the direction step in detail
- Revision round
- One included pass of corrections after you review the delivery. You validate every image before it ships. I do not promise a specific outcome; I direct, I sort, and I show you what I would put my name on.
- Scoped estimate
- A price established from your brief rather than from a menu. It combines a fixed direction fee with a per-person rate, so it follows the size of the set and the number of uses. Projects start at $790, and a full team is scoped from the brief rather than published as a rate.See also: how a project is priced
- Consistency across a set
- The property that makes a group of portraits read as one company rather than as a patchwork: the same light, the same treatment, the same distance to the subject, held across every person in the set even though they were never in one room together.See also: team portraits
Consent and data
The vocabulary of the parts that are not negotiable: who agrees to what, where the files sit, and what is said about how they were made.
- Individual written consent
- Consent given by each person pictured, directly and not through their employer. Each person receives their own link, gives written consent, and uploads their own reference photos. Written, timestamped, per person.
- EU data storage
- Your files sit in the European Union, under the GDPR, and are deleted 30 days after the project closes, or earlier on request at any time. The production step itself runs on a third-party service whose processing happens outside the EU, which is covered by prior individual consent and stated rather than buried.See also: privacy and data · the list of subprocessors
- Subprocessor
- Any third party that processes your data on my behalf, rather than on its own account. The term matters because it is the level at which a processing chain becomes auditable: each one is named, with its role and the place where its processing happens.
- AI disclosure
- Stating that an image was produced with AI, plainly rather than in a footnote. Every delivered file is disclosed as AI-produced, and carries the invisible provenance marker the model provider applies. This is a deliberate position: the images are not presented as something they are not.See also: the AI disclosure policy
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Now the part that is not vocabulary.
Definitions only go so far. Describe what you need in five lines and I will tell you whether this is the right fit.
One business day, and a straight answer either way.