From Realistic to Flat: A Four-Stage Leap Across the Illustration Style Spectrum

Using the same street portrait photo as the sole reference image, Seedream 4.5's image-to-image capability is used to push the illustration transformation through four stages—"realistic → semi-realistic → semi-flat → minimalist flat"—to test how far the model can abstract materials and light and shadow into planes and flat fills while preserving the figure's pose, the direction of light, and the composition. The work uses a 16:9 landscape format with 2K output, making it suitable for exploring illustration styles, setting the stylistic direction for brand illustration, and design workflows that need to rapidly produce multiple style drafts from photographic source material. For developers, this entry demonstrates a typical call pattern of a single reference image plus pure text editing instructions: only one original image is placed in image_urls, and all stylistic shifts are controlled by the prompt.

Style Illustration · style-transfer · Poster Design

Model Seedream 4.5

Reference inputs

image_urls

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Prompt

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Convert the reference photo into a flat vector-style editorial illustration while keeping the subject's pose, composition, and spatial layout unchanged. Simplify all volumes into clean geometric shapes, reduce the palette to five low-saturation tones (warm sand, brick red, deep teal, off-white, charcoal), replace gradients and photographic textures with solid color fills, and add only subtle grain in the form of print texture. Keep the lighting direction consistent with the source image, but render shadows as hard-edged shapes rather than soft gradients. The figure has no outlines; use thin dark contours only on foreground objects. 16:9 editorial poster composition with ample negative space, modern European picture-book aesthetic.

Copy the full prompt and adapt it for your own generation.