Higgsfield Visual Styles
Core Platform Styles
These five styles are Higgsfield's named presets. Reference them by exact name.
Cinematic
Look: Polished, high-contrast, vivid colors, balanced exposure — modern blockbuster Best for: Drama, action, narrative films, commercials, any professional content Color tendency: Rich, saturated, clean Prompt phrase: "Style: Cinematic" Pair with: Kling 2.6/3.0, Sora 2, Dolly In, Arc, Crane Up
Example: A detective walks through a night market.
Style: Cinematic. Cold blue shadows, warm amber market stall light.
Shallow depth of field. 16:9.
VHS
Look: Retro videotape grain, color bleed, slight scanlines, analog imperfection Best for: 80s/90s nostalgia, horror, thriller, retro music videos, flashbacks Color tendency: Slightly washed out, warm yellows and reds, low contrast Prompt phrase: "Style: VHS" Pair with: Handheld camera, Wan 2.5, any horror preset
Example: Teenagers at a house party in 1987.
Style: VHS. Warm, grainy, slightly overexposed. 4:3 ratio.
Super 8MM
Look: Warm film grain, soft vignette, muted colors, home-movie feel Best for: Personal stories, romance, nostalgia, indie films, family moments Color tendency: Warm, golden, slightly faded Prompt phrase: "Style: Super 8MM" Pair with: Handheld, natural light descriptions, intimate scenes
Example: A couple dancing in a sunlit backyard in the 1970s.
Style: Super 8MM. Warm grain, soft vignette edges. 4:3.
Anamorphic
Look: Ultra-wide aspect ratio (2.35:1), horizontal lens flares, slight barrel distortion, epic scale — classic Hollywood widescreen Best for: Action, epic fantasy, war films, sweeping landscapes, high drama Color tendency: High contrast, deep blacks, rich highlights Prompt phrase: "Style: Anamorphic" or "Style: Anamorphic, 2.35:1 widescreen" Pair with: Crane Up, 360 Orbit, Super Dolly Out, Sora 2
Example: An army marches across a frozen plain at dawn.
Style: Anamorphic, 2.35:1. Deep blue-grey tones. Lens flare on the rising sun.
Abstract
Look: Non-representational, surreal color schemes, unconventional shapes, artistic Best for: Music videos, conceptual art, dream sequences, experimental content Color tendency: Vivid, unexpected, driven by concept not realism Prompt phrase: "Style: Abstract" Pair with: Wan 2.5, Portal, Multiverse, Glitch presets
Example: Fractured geometric shapes pulse to music in a void.
Style: Abstract. Electric blue and magenta on black. 1:1 ratio.
Color Grade Vocabulary
Use these in any prompt regardless of style preset:
| Mood | Color grade description |
|---|---|
| Cold thriller | "Teal and orange, desaturated, high contrast" |
| Warm nostalgia | "Golden hour amber, soft shadows, low contrast" |
| Cyberpunk | "Neon magenta and cyan, deep shadows, HDR" |
| Horror | "Sickly green-yellow, crushed blacks, desaturated" |
| Romance | "Soft warm pink-gold, lifted shadows, dreamy" |
| Documentary | "Neutral, natural light, no grade" |
| Epic fantasy | "Rich jewel tones, deep shadows, volumetric light" |
| Noir | "High contrast black and white, or near-monochrome" |
| Sci-fi cold | "Ice blue and silver, stark white light" |
| Post-apocalyptic | "Desaturated orange and brown, dust haze" |
Lighting Vocabulary
| Type | Description | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Golden hour | Warm directional light just after sunrise or before sunset | Romantic, epic, beautiful |
| Overcast | Soft diffused light, no shadows | Documentary, emotional, grounded |
| Neon | Colored artificial light from signs/screens | Cyberpunk, night scenes, urban |
| Volumetric | Light rays visible through atmosphere (fog/dust) | Fantasy, cinematic, atmospheric |
| Practical only | All light comes from sources visible in frame (lamps, fire, screens) | Realism, noir, intimate |
| Side-lit | Single strong light from one side creating deep shadow | Drama, tension, portrait |
| Backlit | Subject silhouetted or rimlit from behind | Mystery, romance, epic reveal |
| Low key | Mostly dark with small pools of light | Horror, thriller, noir |
| High key | Bright, even, minimal shadows | Comedy, commercial, lifestyle |
Cinematic Lighting Techniques
Specific lighting setups that AI models respond to well. Use these terms directly in your prompts for precise control over how light shapes the scene.
| Technique | Effect | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Rembrandt lighting | Triangle of light on the shadowed cheek, one eye lit | Portrait drama, character intros, moody interviews |
| Butterfly / Paramount lighting | Overhead light casting a shadow under the nose | Glamour, fashion, beauty shots, classic Hollywood |
| Split lighting | Half the face lit, half in complete shadow | Duality, inner conflict, villain reveals |
| Rim lighting / backlit | Edge glow outlining the subject's silhouette | Mystery, epic reveal, separation from background |
| Motivated lighting | Light source visible or implied in the scene (lamp, window, fire) | Realism, narrative grounding, naturalistic drama |
| Practical lighting | In-scene light sources (neon signs, candles, screens) | Night scenes, cyberpunk, intimate realism |
| Chiaroscuro | Extreme contrast between light and dark areas | Renaissance feel, high drama, painterly compositions |
| High-key | Bright, minimal shadows, even illumination | Comedy, commercial, lifestyle, clean aesthetic |
| Low-key | Deep shadows dominate, small pools of light | Noir, thriller, horror, psychological tension |
| Golden hour / Magic hour | Warm amber directional light, long soft shadows | Romance, beauty, epic landscapes, emotional beats |
| Blue hour | Cool steel-blue ambient light just after sunset | Melancholy, transition, quiet tension, urban solitude |
| Harsh midday sun | Hard overhead light, strong defined shadows | Desert, confrontation, exposed vulnerability |
| Overcast diffused / softbox | Even soft light, no hard shadows | Portraits, documentary, grounded realism |
Aspect Ratio Guide
| Ratio | Name | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 16:9 | Widescreen | Standard video, YouTube, film |
| 9:16 | Vertical | TikTok, Instagram Reels, Shorts |
| 2.35:1 | Anamorphic | Epic cinema, maximum widescreen drama |
| 1:1 | Square | Instagram posts, artistic |
| 4:5 | Portrait | Instagram feed, social portrait |
| 4:3 | Classic TV | Retro, VHS feel, vintage |
Negative constraints: For texture/lighting artifacts (flickering textures, style ignored, over-lit output, color grade inconsistency) and their prevention phrases, see
../shared/negative-constraints.md— Texture/Lighting Artifacts section.
Style Best Practices (Cinema Studio 3.0 / Seedance 2.0)
These principles apply to Cinema Studio 3.0's generation engine (Business/Team plan only) and complement the style vocabulary above.
One Style Anchor Rule
ONE primary style anchor beats five adjectives. Beyond 2–3 style tokens, model attention dilutes and the output becomes generic.
Wrong: Style: cinematic, anamorphic, moody, atmospheric, dramatic lighting, film grain, desaturated, noir-inspired, high contrast, vintage feel
Right: Style: anamorphic, subtle grain, muted palette
Pick your anchor (the single most important style element), add 1–2 supporting tokens, stop.
"Cinematic" Does Nothing
Every generated video is "cinematic" by default. The word adds zero information. Replace it with a specific lens or contrast description:
"cinematic"→shallow depth of field, warm highlights, cool shadows"cinematic look"→anamorphic, 2.35:1, horizontal lens flares"cinematic quality"→35mm film stock, natural grain, Kodak Portra palette
Style Transfer via @Reference
Visual style references beat descriptive text. One reference image/video carries more style information than 10 descriptor words:
Match the visual style, color grading, and film texture of @Video1.
A woman walks through autumn leaves in a park.
Camera: slow tracking alongside her.
Use style references for: color grading, film stock emulation, lighting mood, texture quality, era-specific looks.
CGI Material Contract
When prompting CGI or product renders, specify 2–4 material properties per surface to avoid the default "plastic sheen":
| Property | Options | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Base | metal, glass, fabric, ceramic, wood, leather | brushed stainless steel |
| Roughness | matte, satin, glossy, mirror | satin finish |
| Imperfection | scratches, dust, wear, fingerprints, patina | fine scratches from use |
| Edge | beveled, sharp, rounded, chamfered | soft rounded edges |
Example: A matte ceramic vase with hairline cracks and a subtle patina, soft rounded rim, resting on rough-hewn oak.
Period Control
Don't just name the decade — specify the materials and lighting of the era:
"1970s style"→Kodachrome warm tones, wood paneling, orange shag carpet, tungsten bulbs casting amber light"1940s noir"→high-contrast black and white, Venetian blind shadows, fedora silhouettes, wet asphalt reflecting streetlamps"1990s home video"→Hi8 camcorder grain, autofocus hunting, timestamp overlay, oversaturated greens
Register Poles — the style dial has opposite ends
[FIELD — 13-project community harvest, 2026-07-18] — "photoreal cinematic"
is not one register. Production projects sit at named poles of a dial, and
the pole decides the whole camera grammar:
| Register pole | Camera grammar | Texture stack |
|---|---|---|
| Film register (drama/romance features) | Handheld breathing, off-level allowed, natural motion | 35mm grain, milky low contrast, gate weave, halation, "corners as bright as center" |
| Broadcast-TV register (early-2000s drama) | Locked-off tripod, frontal compositions, held reaction beats, ONE camera move per shot maximum | Heavy soft diffusion, blooming highlights, telecine grain, flat neutral daytime |
| Stop-motion / hand-animated | Stepped motion — "true 12fps, animated on twos: each pose held two frames then snapping, never gliding" + constant painterly boil | Split-motion rule: atmosphere (snow, breath-vapor, smoke) moves SMOOTHLY while figures step on twos — an explicit constraint that fights the video model's default smoothness |
| Anime / cel | Per-shot named camera, fewer physics/skin blocks (the template contracts) | "Cel-shaded 2D, clean flat fills, two-to-three value cel shading — not painterly, not 3D, no CGI smoothness" |
The style-anchor slot swaps vocabulary by register. Same slot, different language: photoreal anchors on a DP/director look (short-form only — block prompts describe the look instead, per the seedance measurable-language rules) · anime anchors on an art era ("early 2000s retro anime, vintage cel proportions") · stop-motion anchors on medium physics ("12fps on twos, painterly boil"). Never carry one register's anchor into another.
One saturated accent color, reserved for the story. The corpus-wide color discipline: the plot-critical prop owns the only saturated accent in a muted grade (an acid-green device, a chartreuse remote LED) — and the same reservation works temporally ("golden hour is reserved for the twist"; everything before it stays flat neutral). State the reservation explicitly.
Style Recipes — eight proven shapes
[OFFICIAL — Higgsfield cinematic-prompt-builder skill, 2026-07] — starting
recipes, each a distinct render contract. Combine and deviate freely; the
load-bearing part of each is the is / is-NOT declaration and the
shots-per-15s shape:
| Recipe | Look declaration | Structure + signature | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live-action epic | 8K photoreal, anamorphic, fine grain — "photoreal, NOT 3D/game" | Oner or multishot; one "hook" event triggers one held slow-mo beat, then snaps back; scale contrast (tiny figures vs vast subject) | Diegetic; slow-mo drops to muffled vacuum + heartbeat, snaps back with a whoosh |
| 3D animated feature | Vibrant glossy CGI, Pixar-quality stylized, subsurface fur/skin | 6 shots / 15s montage — "don't use one camera angle"; per-shot spoken lines with delivery described; land a visual gag | Light score allowed; often still SFX-forward |
| Game cutscene | UE5 real-time in-engine render — "hyperreal but unmistakably GAME-rendered, NOT film" | 3 shots / 15s, hard cuts; screen-pinned HUD in a locked accent hex, every element enumerated with exact text — HUD never parallaxes | No music; SFX + subtle UI ticks |
| Gameplay footage | AAA arcade (racing) — hyper-saturated engine render, "in-game, NOT a film plate" | Rock-steady chase-cam locked to vehicle, NO slow-mo anywhere, live HUD (RPM, boost, minimap) | Engine, gears, boost, tyre screech, UI beeps |
| FPV / POV oner | One unbroken take, photoreal macro, anamorphic | Beats by timestamp in one paragraph; one named speed ramp (240fps bullet-time beat → snap to 24fps); macro brushes against surfaces | Slow-mo swaps ambience for amplified rhythmic sound |
| Product / commercial | 8K editorial, deep black crush, per-section color worlds | 8–10 short sections, hard match-cuts on action; rapid 0.3s macro montage; resolves on a hero packshot (product in one third, dark negative space, slow dolly, particle drift, hold) | No music/VO/text — product-handling SFX only |
| VFX composite (on a source clip) | Photoreal practical-FX realism; composition + grade INHERITED from the source | INPUT LOCK: plate preserved unchanged, camera inherited exactly; only additions = new element + its light + contact shadows; parallax-locked to an anchor plane | New element's diegetic sounds over preserved room tone |
| Kaiju / creature | 8K photoreal anamorphic, ORIGINAL design ("not based on any franchise") | ~6 cuts, per-cut OPTICS; the detail that opens CUT 1 is the one CUT 2 zooms into; containment rule ("stays at the sea surface, never airborne") grounds physics and scale | Diegetic only — rumble, roars, water-burst, subsonic boom |
Full engine-side counterparts: the HUD recipe and INPUT LOCK live with
worked patterns in ../higgsfield-seedance/SKILL.md and
../higgsfield-seedance-vfx/SKILL.md; the containment rule doubles as the
build-safe construction law (../higgsfield-seedance/SKILL.md § Build-safe
construction).
Related skills
higgsfield-camera— Camera controls to pair with styleshiggsfield-mixed-media— Artistic style overlays (non-photorealistic)higgsfield-moodboard— Moodboard + Soul Hex for project-level style lockinghiggsfield-cinema— Cinema Studio built-in color grading suitetemplates/— Annotated genre-specific prompt templates with style examples