Guides

Ask an image generator for a "Tiger tank" and you will get something that looks right at thumbnail size. The trouble starts when you build, paint or model from it. The road wheels do not line up. A hatch has no hinge. The track floats past the sprocket. Do AI reference images ruin your art? Not by themselves. They cause problems when you treat them as a record of a real object, because they are not one. This guide explains why generated images go wrong in the details, which errors appear most often, and how to check any reference before you commit hours to it. Why generated images are not records A photograph records light that came from a real...

A stock site sells you the single perfect shot of a harbor at sunset. If you are designing a harbor level, painting a matte of it or building it in 3D, that shot is not enough. You need the crane from the side, the rust on the bollards, the warehouse wall up close, and all of it in the same light. Those are the 400 "boring" frames around the hero shot. That is the real difference between reference photos and stock photos. Both have their place. This guide explains what each one is made for, where they differ, and how to choose. What a stock photo is made for A stock photo is a finished image. It is made to...

Photobashing means building an image from pieces of photographs, then painting over them until they become one picture. It is fast, and it gives you real detail you could never invent in the same time. It also fails in a very recognizable way: the pieces don't agree. One building is lit from the left, the next from the right. One rock was shot with a wide lens, the next with a telephoto. The result looks like a collage, not a place. This guide walks through the process from a blank canvas to a finished paint-over. The steps work in Photoshop, Krita, Affinity Photo or any program with layers and masks. You can practise every step with a free pack. Step...