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Motif

Make and edit pictures by describing them. Motif picks the model, tells you the price and saves the file.

Two amber glass bottles, one holding a sprig of dried flowers, and a small brass dish on a walnut shelf against an olive wall, with late sun throwing leaf shadows across it.

Made from one sentence: “amber bottles and a brass dish on a walnut shelf”.

Make

Start from a sentence, or from something you already have.

Jars of pigment and folded green and plum cloths laid out on a worn wooden table in a white studio.
A woman in a linen shirt against a pale plaster wall, looking at the camera.
A cream Georgian house behind clipped hedges and a striped lawn.

A picture from a sentence.

Describe it as you'd brief a photographer. Motif picks the model best suited to that kind of picture.

Variations.

Give it one picture and get several new versions of it.

motif vary
A cream stoneware vase on a linen cloth by a window.
Yours
A rounder stoneware vase holding dried flowers, on a linen cloth by a window.
Variation one
A pale green vase holding dried grasses and honesty, on linen in front of a curtain.
Variation two
A potter's workshop with shelves of pots, a long workbench and a kiln.
Blocks of clay and a thrown pot on a wooden bench beside a wheel.
A lump of clay, a small bowl and wooden tools on a worn table.
Unglazed pots crowded on a workbench by a window.
A brick kiln with its door open in the corner of the workshop.
A dark stoneware pot on a long bench by a window.

A matching set.

Name a theme and how many pictures you want. They come back in the same light and colour.

A tile of pale travertine, laid four times side by side with no visible join.

Seamless textures.

Stone, plaster, linen or paper that repeats with no visible join. Here, one travertine tile is laid four times.

Three amber bottles and a white bowl on a stone shelf, with sunlight falling across the wall.

Film from a still.

A few seconds long. Here the light moves across the shelf and the bottles stay where they are.

motif animate

Edit

Change pictures you already have. Every edit saves a new file and leaves the original as it was.

Three amber glass bottles, two tall and one small, beside a white bowl on a pale stone shelf, with sun slanting across a peach wall.
Before
The same shelf with the small bottle gone: two tall amber bottles and the white bowl, and the stone and shadows filled in where it stood.
After

Remove an object.

Name it, and Motif removes it and fills in the space behind.

motif erase
The original photo: a speckled cream stoneware vase standing on rumpled linen against a pale wall.
The cut-out: the same vase on its own, with no background.

Remove the background.

The subject keeps a clean edge, ready to place on a page or in a new scene.

motif cutout
A sunlit room with a wooden bench draped in a cream throw and a branch in a white vase, made square by painting in more wall above and more floorboards below the wide original.

The original photo

Extend the frame.

Turn a wide shot into a square or a tall one. Motif paints in what lies past the old edges.

motif reframe
The rim of a ribbed cream ceramic pot at 360 pixels, soft and blocky.
360 pixels
The same pot at 1,440 pixels, its ribs and rim sharp.
1,440 pixels

Upscale up to four times.

Detail is redrawn at the new size, so the picture stays sharp.

motif upscale
A farmhouse kitchen with a pine dresser, a scrubbed table and chairs by a sash window, split down the middle: flat daylight on the left, warm evening light on the right.
Flat daylightEvening light

Relight a photo.

Say what time of day it should be. Everything in the room stays where it was. You can also soften harsh light.

The sunlit room with its bench, throw and vase redrawn as a loose ink and watercolour sketch.
A sunlit room with a wooden bench, a cream throw and a branch in a white vase.
Your photo
An ink and watercolour drawing of a kitchen with dark green cabinets, pendant lamps and stools.
The reference

Match the style of another picture.

Use a drawing, print or photograph as the reference. Your picture is redrawn in that style, with everything kept in place.

A woman standing barefoot in a plaster-walled room, wearing a rust cotton work jacket over linen trousers.
Wearing it
The same woman in a white T-shirt and linen trousers.
The person
A rust cotton work jacket laid flat on a cream ground.
The jacket

Put a garment on a person.

Give it a photo of the garment and a photo of the person. Motif shows them wearing it, folds and fit included.

motif try-on
A sage glazed jug and a folded linen cloth on a plaster shelf, split down the middle: blurred and faded on the left, sharp and clear on the right.
BeforeAfter

Repair a damaged photo.

Fixes blur, noise and faded colour without changing what's in the picture.

Read and convert

Ask what's in a picture, or turn it into layers, maps, vectors and 3D.

Four blocks of raw clay on a board by a studio window, beside a clay pot on a round wooden turntable.

You

How many blocks of clay are there, and where are they?

Motif

There are four blocks of clay arranged on a wooden work surface.

Ask about a picture.

Get captions, alt text, counts or the words on a label. A question costs a fraction of a penny.

motif ask
Three clear glass bottles, faded back, and a cream ceramic bowl picked out at full strength on a white stone ledge.

Select one object.

Say “the white bowl” and you get the bowl alone, cut along its real edge. Works on video too.

A still life pulled apart into three tilted transparent sheets: a plaster wall, a stone plinth and a ribbed pot.

Split a picture into layers.

The wall, the plinth and the pot each become a separate transparent layer you can move or replace.

motif layers
A depth map of a pottery studio: the kiln near the camera in pale grey, the shelves behind it fading to black.
Depth
A standing figure drawn as a stick skeleton of coloured joints and limbs on black.
Pose
The outlines of a ribbed pot on a plinth, traced in white lines on black.
Edges

Depth, pose and edge maps.

Use them to hold a picture's structure while another tool changes the rest.

Materials for 3D.

A photo of linen becomes the maps a 3D app needs to render it.

motif material
Folds of natural cream linen, its weave visible, lit evenly.
Colour
The same linen as a blue and violet normal map, its folds and weave as shifts of colour.
Bumps
The same linen as a roughness map in dark greys.
Shine

Convert to SVG.

Logos, icons and illustrations traced as SVG, sharp at any size.

Close on an olive-green drawing of a sprig printed on textured paper, its edges soft with the paper's grain.
Original, zoomed in
The same sprig traced as flat olive-green shapes with clean, sharp edges on a plain ground.
SVG, zoomed in
A woman in a loose linen top and trousers standing in a bare room with a tall window.
The photo
The same woman as a textured 3D model, standing on her own with no room around her.
The 3D model, rigged

A 3D model from a photo.

It comes textured, with a skeleton if you want to pose it.

motif mesh
A contact sheet of nine pictures in three rows, each labelled underneath with its file name and some with a price.

Make a contact sheet.

Point it at a folder. Each picture can carry its name or price.

motif sheet

Looks and moods

Nine house styles you can add to any prompt. A mood sets the light.

Pigment jars and folded cloth on a scrubbed wooden table in daylight
Editorial
A woman in a plain linen shirt, hair tied back, against a plaster wall in soft evening light
Portrait
A sage-green glazed pot and two rough white clay pots on a plaster ledge in raking sun
Still life
A restored country house in pale lime render with sash windows, seen across a clipped lawn between pleached limes and yew
Architectural
A linen-covered sofa before green shelves of books and pottery, a lamp on a skirted side table, on a pale wooden floor
Interior
A sage-green ceramic table lamp with a white shade, lit, on a sage ground
Object
A stoneware jug with an olive branch and two shallow bowls on a table by a tall window, drawn in line and gouache
Illustration
Sand-coloured plaster seen flat and edge to edge, combed in sweeping arcs
Surface
Two long gestures in oatmeal and putty over a pale vertical band on coarse linen, one charcoal mark low right
Abstract

One kitchen prompt in six moods.

A farmhouse kitchen with a scrubbed pine table, lit softly from a window
Window
The same kitchen at dawn, cool light through a tall glazed door
Dawn
The same kitchen with low sun raking across the table and floorboards
Raking sun
The same kitchen in grey light from a rainy window
Overcast
The same kitchen in the evening, lit by lamps, candles and a fire
Lamplit
The same kitchen at night, lit by one wall lamp and candles
Nocturne

See the price before you run it.

A dry run shows what Motif would do and what it would cost. Nothing is spent.

Count the blocks of clay in a photo
$0.002
Upscale a photo four times
$0.062
Make a seamless travertine tile
$0.063
Five seconds of film from a still
$0.840

Prices from dry runs.