Edit character: change the figure, keep the scene

Edit character rewrites the figure on your cover — clothing, age, pose, expression — from a plain-language instruction, while the rest of the scene is asked to stay as it is.

Character-led covers carry a great many decisions in one figure: age, clothing, posture, where the eyes go. When a model gets the scene right and the figure wrong, you own a cover that is nearly finished and cannot be used, and re-rolling the whole thing to move a coat gambles everything that already worked.

Edit character works on the figure and asks the rest of the frame to hold still. You write what should change in plain language and, when precision matters, paint over the exact area first. The art layer is the only thing in play: your title and author name are live vector type above it and never enter the request.

How to use it

1. Load the cover and read the input panel
   Your canvas art appears as a large preview tagged CHARACTER — DETECTED. That tag is a label the interface prints, not a detection you can adjust or correct. What steers the run is an instruction sent with your line — change only the character, keep the scene and composition exactly as is.
2. Say what should change
   The field is "What should change?" and its own example shows the right shape: turn the trench coat into a red leather jacket. One change per run reads far better than three at once. Describe the target state rather than the fault — "a woman in her late teens" works, "she looks too old" gives the model nothing to draw.
3. Mark the area when precision matters
   With art on the canvas, a "Mark the area" chip sits above the field. Tapping it opens a brush over your cover with an eraser, a clear button and a size slider. Paint the coat, the face or the hands and the request narrows to what you painted; leave it unmarked and the whole figure is re-rendered from your line. The credit cost is identical either way.
4. Run it and check the figure, not the scene
   One credit, one result, with Before and After tabs. Flip between them looking at the figure at full size: the scene is what the instruction protects, the figure is what you asked to have redrawn, so unwanted surprises will be there. The chip under the result opens Variation when you want to see neighbors of the version you just got.

What it solves

A wardrobe that contradicts the book

Romance readers date a book from its clothing long before they reach the blurb. A model handed "a woman on a staircase" will happily deliver a Regency gown for a story set in 1926. Name the garment you want and leave the staircase, the light and the framing alone — on a character-led cover this is the fastest single fix available.

A lead who reads ten years too old

Young-adult covers get mis-shelved when the figure looks thirty. Ask for the age you mean in terms a picture can carry: a younger face, a softer jaw, less makeup, a different posture. Expect more than one run — age is something models overshoot in both directions, and two attempts here still costs less than one new brief.

A face that should be turned away

A great many romance and thriller covers deliberately withhold the face so readers can project onto it, while models default to the opposite and stare straight down the lens. "Turn her away from the camera, looking out over the water" changes how the whole cover reads while keeping the scene you already approved.

Frequently asked questions

Will the face stay the same across runs?

No, and nothing here promises it. Every run re-renders the figure, so the face can shift — a little when you have painted a small area, considerably more when you have not. Do not plan a multi-book series on the assumption that this operation returns the same person twice. The dependable route to a recurring character is to settle on one figure, keep that image, and make small corrections to it with Region fix rather than asking for the person again.

What does marking the area actually change?

It changes which request is sent. With a mark, the run becomes a repair confined to the pixels you painted and everything outside them is preserved. Without a mark, the whole image is re-rendered under an instruction to leave the scene alone — quicker to set up, looser in what it protects. Same cost, different guarantee.

What if the problem is not the character?

Then the studio has a closer tool. A wrong world behind a good figure belongs to Change background, which leaves the foreground alone. A single broken detail — a hand, a piece of jewelry, invented lettering on a sign — belongs to Region fix, which repaints only what you brush. Reach for Edit character when the figure itself has to be different.

Related tools

All 11 AI tools →