Muted Commuter Scene

Editorial · Muted · City

Download examples
Figures on the plane·Nano Banana Pro
Wide city view·Seedream 4.5
Square crop·Seedream 4.5
Panoramic version·Seedream 4.5

Recipe

The examples above were generated with Nano Banana Pro and Seedream 4.5. The recipes below are written for GPT Image and Flux, so treat the settings as a starting point rather than the exact run.

A description in plain sentences. This is the version to start with, and it works on any current image model. Settings below are the ones we used on GPT Image; treat them as a starting point.

This recipe describes a treatment rather than a thing. Put your own subject in and it is added to the end of the prompt.

Prompt

A quiet illustration built on distance: a small group of dark silhouetted figures standing on a pale flat plane in the lower third of the frame, a dense low city and one large spreading tree behind them, and a soft dusty sky filling everything above. Desaturated pink and grey palette throughout, detail dropping away with depth, no faces readable, fine even grain over the whole image, generous empty space. Subject: a group of office workers waiting on a rooftop.

The prompt gets you close. Feed one of the examples in as a style reference for the rest. Download the images

Use the examples as a reference

Download the examples

Send the example as an input image to the images.edits endpoint alongside the prompt, or attach it in ChatGPT. It follows composition closely, so describe your subject firmly or it will copy the example.

Settings on GPT Image

Size
1536 x 1024
Quality
High
Background
Opaque
Output
PNG

Tips

  • 1Keep the figures small and faceless. Distance is the subject.
  • 2Desaturate hard. Any saturated colour pulls the eye and ruins the calm.
  • 3The tree gives the city a scale. Keep one large element.

Things to try

One figure

the group reduced to a single person

Dusk

the sky gone violet

Coast

water instead of a city

Rain

the haze thickened

Warmer

ochre dust in the air

Similar Styles