Imagery and Photo Treatment
When to use
Use this skill when photos clash in crop, color, or treatment. Symptoms include one warm stock photo next to one cold one, images at three different aspect ratios, some photos full color and some greyscale, inconsistent cropping that cuts heads or leaves dead space, and a low-resolution image stretched to fill. Run this in Stage 3 with the other brand-asset work.
What it does
It brings the deck's photography onto one treatment: a consistent aspect ratio and crop convention, a single color treatment (for example a brand duotone or a defined filter), consistent placement, and a minimum resolution. The result is imagery that reads as one library shot for this brand rather than assorted stock.
Method
A brand image style is usually a small ruleset: a treatment, an aspect ratio or two, a crop convention, and a placement pattern. The job is to apply it to every photo.
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State the image rules. From the brand, record the treatment (full color, brand duotone, or a defined filter and overlay), the allowed aspect ratios, the crop convention (rule-of-thirds focal point, no cut heads), the placement pattern (full-bleed, half-bleed, or framed), and the minimum resolution.
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Inventory the images. Walk the deck and record each photo: its current treatment, aspect ratio, crop, placement, and resolution. Flag the off-rule ones.
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Apply the color treatment. Convert each photo to the brand treatment. For a duotone, recolor the image to the brand's two-color duotone (in PowerPoint, Picture Format then Color then a duotone recolor, or set a brand-color overlay at a fixed opacity). For a filter, apply the same correction to every photo so warmth and contrast match.
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Normalize aspect ratio and crop. Crop each image to an allowed aspect ratio and apply the crop convention: place the focal point on a third, keep faces and product whole, and avoid awkward dead space. Use Crop to Fill within a picture placeholder so all images in a row share a ratio.
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Standardize placement. Apply the placement pattern consistently: if the layout is half-bleed image plus text, every image slide should follow it rather than one being framed and another full-bleed.
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Enforce resolution. Replace any image below the minimum resolution or that is visibly soft when scaled. Do not upscale a small image to fill; source a larger one.
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Fix overlays and text legibility. Where text sits on a photo, use the brand's scrim or overlay (a consistent dark or brand-color gradient at a set opacity) so text stays legible without each slide inventing its own overlay.
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Keep real imagery honest. Do not warp a photo to fit a frame; crop instead. Do not mirror a photo that contains text or a recognizable place if that misrepresents it.
Inputs
- The deck.
- The brand image rules: treatment, aspect ratios, crop convention, placement, overlay, and minimum resolution. If undocumented, ask, or define a single consistent treatment and state it.
Output format
An imagery treatment report:
- The image rules, restated.
- A per-image list: current state and the action (apply duotone or filter, re-crop to ratio, reposition, replace low-resolution, add overlay).
- A note on any image that must be replaced rather than treated.
Close with a confirmation that all photos share one treatment, allowed aspect ratios, and the crop convention.
Example
Input: three image slides, one warm full-color photo, one cold one, and one greyscale, at three aspect ratios.
Output:
- Rules: brand duotone, 16:9 and 4:3 only, focal point on a third, half-bleed placement, dark scrim at 35 percent for text.
- Apply the brand duotone to all three so color matches.
- Crop all to 16:9 with the focal point on a third; fix the one with a cut head.
- Result: one treatment, consistent ratio and crop across the three slides.
