A look recipe is the structured specification behind one generated look. Where a prompt is a sentence typed once and lost, a recipe is a stored, versioned description of every photographic decision that produces a specific result.
What a recipe specifies
- Scene. Background, setting, depth.
- Lighting. Direction, quality, colour temperature.
- Wardrobe. Garment type, formality, palette.
- Camera direction. Framing, angle, focal-length character.
- Constraints. What must not appear — text, watermarks, borders, distortion.
Why store it instead of prompting
Three reasons, all practical:
Reproducibility. The same recipe produces the same look next month. A colleague generating from it gets a matching photo — which is the entire basis of consistent team headshots.
Reviewability. A recipe is a file. It can be diffed, improved, and rolled back. A prompt typed into a box cannot.
Improvement over time. When image models change, recipes can be re-tuned against the new model without users noticing anything except better output.
Recipes and packs
A headshot pack is a curated set of looks. Each look is backed by exactly one recipe. Choosing a pack means choosing a group of recipes designed to produce a coherent visual family.
Why this matters to you
You never see a recipe, and that is the point. The value is that the photographic expertise is encoded once by someone who knows what a "three-quarter lit corporate portrait at 85mm" means, rather than being demanded of every user at the moment they just want a LinkedIn photo.
Related: what is an AI headshot and what is identity retention.