Cover refresh: draw the same cover again

Cover refresh re-runs the art already on your canvas through the model, letting you ask for the palette, the composition, both or neither to carry over, without writing a new brief.

Most authors reach the same point eventually: the cover is not wrong, it is tired. The subject is right, the shelf is right, and the execution is a year behind where the book now is. Starting a new brief means describing the story from scratch and hoping the model lands near where you already stand.

Cover refresh starts from the picture instead of from the sentence. It takes the art on your canvas, passes on whatever you asked to have carried over, and draws the whole cover again — one credit, one result. Only the art layer is touched: your title and author name are live vector type on a layer above it, so nothing in this operation can repaint them.

How to use it

1. Open the scene with your cover on the canvas
   Cover refresh reads the art layer automatically — a thumbnail appears at the top of the INPUT column with a note that the source is the art on the canvas, and nothing to upload. If the canvas holds no art at all, the button sends you to the Brief scene to make some first.
2. Decide what should stay the same
   Under "What should stay the same?" sit three chips: Palette, Composition and Neither. Palette and Composition both start switched on, which is the conservative setting — same colors, same framing, new execution. Tap either one off to release it, or tap Neither to release both, which sends your picture with nothing asked of it.
3. Add a direction, or leave the line empty
   The "New direction (optional)" field is exactly that. Its placeholder invites you to leave it empty for a fresh take, and an empty line is a legitimate way to run this operation: the picture alone is the request. Write something when you know what should move — "push the figure into the distance", "colder, later in the evening" — and keep it to two hundred characters.
4. Run it and compare
   Regenerate costs one credit and returns one image, with Before and After tabs on the result so you can flip between the old cover and the new one at full size. Place the version you keep, or run again with a different chip combination. When you would rather see several candidates side by side, the chip under the result opens Variation.

What it solves

A cover with the right bones and the wrong hands

A designer friend, a template, one long afternoon in a layout app: plenty of first covers have a composition that genuinely works underneath an execution that does not. Import the file, keep Composition on, release Palette, and ask for the treatment your category actually uses. One warning specific to this case — if the title is baked into the image, remove that lettering first: the model reads letters as picture and repaints them into something that is no longer your title. Set the title in the studio instead.

The palette is right and the picture is not

Thriller covers announce their category through color long before subject: near-black ground, one accent. Once you have landed that and the scene itself is generic — the lone figure on the pier a hundred other books also carry — keep Palette on, tap Composition off, and let the framing be rethought. The shelf signal survives while the picture carrying it changes.

The subject is right and everything else is wrong

Sometimes only the noun deserves to live: it is a book about a lighthouse, and nothing else on the current cover is worth defending. Tap Neither, write one line of direction, and you get a re-imagining that still begins from your picture rather than from your sentence. That is the whole difference between this and a new brief — the picture is the request, so the lighthouse arrives without you typing it, redrawn rather than reproduced.

Frequently asked questions

Do the keep chips lock anything?

No. Palette and Composition are turned into written requests attached to your line — keep the same color palette, keep the same composition and framing — and a request is not a lock. Colors land close rather than sampled, framing is respected rather than pinned, and small things move. Nothing holds your subject either: those two sentences are the only instruction this scene adds, so with Neither selected and an empty line your picture reaches the model bare. When something must not shift by a single pixel, this is the wrong operation: Region fix repaints a masked area and leaves every other pixel exactly as it was.

How is this different from Variation or Image to image?

They ask three different questions. Cover refresh asks for the same cover drawn again, returns one image for one credit, and is the only one of the three happy with an empty instruction. Image to image asks for a stated change and needs you to name it. Variation asks for siblings and returns two, three or four at one credit each, for comparing rather than deciding.

Can I refresh art that was not generated here?

Yes. The source is whatever image sits on the art layer, so imported files, licensed stock and covers from a previous designer all qualify. Two things travel badly: lettering baked into the picture, which comes back as nonsense, and a very small source file, which gives the model little to read. Strip the text and start from the largest version you own.

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