Inspirations and Style References

What are Inspirations?

An Inspiration is an image you add to your library so you can reference its visual style in a generation. FatThumb analyzes each inspiration and extracts four style properties — overall style, color palette, composition, and mood — and uses those to guide the AI without reproducing the image literally.

The core rule: borrow style, never the face. If an inspiration contains a person, the face in that image is suppressed and replaced by your Person profile (if you have one attached). The inspiration contributes aesthetic signal only.

Adding an Inspiration

From the Inspirations section in the sidebar, you can add sources two ways:

Paste a YouTube URL. FatThumb fetches the video's thumbnail, displays it for your review, and then runs the style analysis. The extracted metadata — overall style, color palette, composition, and mood — is stored alongside the image.

Upload an image. Upload any image file directly. The same style analysis runs on upload.

Using an Inspiration in a generation

In the Advanced lane (Studio), open the Style References panel and select one or more inspirations from your library. You can also open the community picker from within the panel to browse a curated, shareable community library.

When you generate, selected inspirations are attached as reference images with explicit framing: each one is labelled as a mood-board reference to be used for its aesthetic properties only, not as a subject or face to reproduce.

The community picker

The community gallery contains curated, shareable inspirations. Filter by category or search to find references that match the look you're going for without having to build your own library first.

Competing face detection

If an inspiration's caption or style analysis suggests the image contains a person's face, the editor shows a warning badge on that tile. The competing face is suppressed in the prompt, but it is worth reviewing the image manually. If the inspiration is primarily a portrait (the face is the whole composition), the style extraction may not produce useful signal — better to find an inspiration where style (background, lighting, color, composition) is the dominant element.

Tips for good inspiration images

• Use thumbnails with a strong, clear aesthetic: a distinctive color grade, a bold background, a recognizable framing style.
• Avoid inspirations where the entire composition is a face close-up — there is little style information to extract beyond "portrait."
• Multiple inspirations can be combined in a single generation; the style signals are blended.