There is a simple test for whether to reach for a reference image: try to describe what you want to a person who cannot see it. If your description is getting longer and still not precise — "her nose is like this, the jaw slightly narrower" — you are describing something that words are the wrong tool for. If instead the description is short and clear and the model simply is not delivering it, the problem is the prompt and a reference will not fix it.
Where references genuinely win
| Goal | Reference or prompt | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Same person across several images | Reference | Identity is thousands of tiny proportions; no sentence encodes it |
| Exact layout or crop you have sketched | Reference | Spatial placement is one of the weakest parts of text conditioning |
| A specific palette from an existing picture | Reference, low strength | Colour relationships transfer even when the content does not |
| Change one element in an image you like | Reference / edit | Keeps everything you did not mention; a rewrite re-rolls the whole frame |
| A concept you have never seen | Prompt | A reference will anchor you to the thing you already have |
| Style of a whole genre | Prompt | Genre words are well represented; a single reference over-fits to one picture |
Strength is the whole game
Every image-conditioned generation has some notion of how much of the source survives. Low influence gives you a nudge — palette and rough mass, new content. High influence gives you the same picture with a different finish. The frustrating middle is where most disappointing results live: enough of the source to feel derivative, not enough to be consistent. If a result feels like a bad photocopy, move decisively in one direction rather than adjusting by small steps.
What a reference cannot do
- —It will not fix hands or text in the source — those flaws are often preserved or amplified, because the model reads them as intended structure.
- —It will not clean up a low-resolution source into a detailed one on its own; that is an upscaling job, and a different one.
- —It does not override a conflicting prompt. If your words describe a night scene and the reference is daylight, you get an argument, usually won by the reference.
Use references from images you have the right to use. A reference is a much more direct copy of a specific work than a prompt is, and "in the style of" a living artist's specific piece is exactly the case that draws objections.