Change background: keep the subject, move the world

Change background replaces the scene behind your subject while the foreground figure or object is instructed to stay exactly as it is.

Covers usually fail behind the subject rather than in front of it. The figure works, the object works, and the world they stand in belongs to a different book — too busy, too literal, or simply the first thing the model thought of. Rebuilding the entire image to answer a question about its back half is an expensive way to spend credits.

This scene asks for one thing: a new scene behind a foreground that stays. You describe the background you want, or tap one of the suggestions offered for your genre, and the subject travels with an instruction not to change. As everywhere in the hub, only the art layer moves — your title and author name are live vector type sitting above it.

How to use it

1. Check the subject tag before you trust it
   The scene loads your canvas art into a large preview tagged SUBJECT — PRESERVED. Read that tag as a statement of intent rather than a selection: it is a frame the interface draws around your source, not a cut-out you can edit. What actually protects the foreground is an instruction sent with the request — change only the background, keep the subject exactly as is.
2. Describe the new background
   Under "What should the new background look like?" write the scene, not the cover: "a starship corridor, emergency lighting", "an abandoned train station, dusk". Two hundred characters is the ceiling and half of that is usually plenty. Name the light as well as the place, because light is what makes a swap read as one picture instead of two.
3. Or tap a suggestion
   Beside the field is a Suggestions row whose chips follow the genre set in the studio: science fiction offers a neon cyberpunk skyline, a starship corridor and an alien desert planet, while other shelves get their own three and anything unmapped falls back to five general moods. A chip writes straight into the field and replaces whatever is already there, so tap first and edit afterwards.
4. Run it and compare the two worlds
   The operation costs one credit and returns a proof with Before and After tabs, which is where you judge the swap at full size. Under the result sit two next chips — Upscale and Variation — the two moves authors most often make immediately afterwards.

What it solves

A character portrait standing in the wrong world

Science fiction is where this bites hardest: a good figure in a good coat, set against a generic dark gradient that says nothing about the book. The figure is the expensive part and it already works, so keep it and put a starship corridor, a colony dome or an alien desert behind it. The genre signal then arrives entirely from the half of the image you replaced.

An author photograph that has to look like a studio shot

Business, self-help and memoir covers often need the author on the front, and the only usable photograph was taken in a kitchen. Load it, ask for a clean minimal workspace or a plain neutral field, and the room goes while the person stays. Inspect hair and shoulder edges at full size before accepting the run — that is where a swap shows if it shows anywhere.

A background louder than the subject

A crowded scene behind a small figure spends all of its contrast on scenery, and the subject disappears into it. Ask for a flat, dark, textured field instead. The figure gains separation, and the cover gains quiet area that your typography can be set into rather than fought over.

Frequently asked questions

Does it cut my subject out first?

No, and it is worth being exact here. There is no mask, no selection and no cut-out in this scene: the framed preview marked SUBJECT — PRESERVED is a label the interface prints, and preservation is asked of the model in words. Usually the subject returns intact; edges, hair, hands and the hem of a coat are where drift appears. When nothing at all may move, mask the background in Region fix and repaint it there instead.

Why do the suggestions keep changing?

They follow the genre set in the studio. Seventeen genres carry their own three suggestions — a foggy abandoned graveyard for horror, a candlelit ballroom for romantasy, a sunlit kitchen table for a journal — and any genre without a set falls back to five general moods. They are shortcuts to a decent line rather than a menu of what is possible; the field accepts anything you can describe.

Will the new background match the light on my subject?

Often, not always. The model lights the scene it is painting, but it cannot relight a subject it has been told not to touch, so a figure lit from the right will not become a figure lit from the left. Write the light into your line — "cold light from the left, dusk" — and when a mismatch refuses to resolve, change the subject's lighting with Image to image first and swap the background afterwards.

Related tools

All 11 AI tools →