A Realistic-to-Flat Style Spectrum: Four-Stage Illustration Translation of a Single Reference Image

Starting from the same realistic reference image (a silhouette scene of a figure by the sea in the early morning), this demonstrates how gpt-image-2.6-flare advances along the style spectrum of "realistic → semi-realistic → semi-flat → minimalist flat" in image-to-image editing. The author's pipeline requires only prompt and image_urls as mandatory inputs, so the work generates only one reference image; the prompt describes the form simplification and color-block compression at each stage, and the output keeps the reference image's scene structure and figure position unchanged, replacing only the visual language and color layering. This kind of translation suits visual exploration that needs a unified artistic illustration style: first establish a realistic asset, then use the same pipeline to progressively strip away detail level by level, obtaining a continuous comparison from mood image to flat illustration, which makes it easy to make consistent choices across mood boards, marketing visuals, and social media covers. Because the model family is limited in precise proportions and text reproduction, this work deliberately avoids elements such as labels and logos that require pixel-perfect consistency, and examines only style-level transformation.