Character Portraits

AI portraits come from your plan's monthly AI image allowance. The Free plan includes one AI image a month for a character portrait; paid plans include more. Every plan can upload its own image instead.

What Character Portraits Are

Character portraits give your characters a face. Each one is drawn from the character's Story Bible details — their name, pronouns, age, species, appearance and genre — in the style you pick, on demand, in seconds.

Portrait Styles

Genesis Painted is our house style: a realistic painted portrait in a quiet, muted palette, the same look as the artwork across Genesis Writer. You can also pick:

Generating a Portrait

Portraits are made from the Portrait tile at the top of a character's editor. Open the character from the writer's left panel, then:

1. Make sure the character has a name — generation is disabled until it does.
2. Click the portrait tile (it says Add portrait when you hover it).
3. Click the style picker (it reads Choose styles until you pick one) and tick one or more styles — up to four, one portrait each.
4. Optionally add a note, such as an outfit, a mood or a setting.
5. Click Generate and wait a few seconds for the portraits to render.
6. Click the portrait you like best to make it the character's picture. The others stay in the window, so you can switch any time.

A character keeps its latest portrait in each style; generating a style again replaces that style's earlier one. On a phone, the Portrait section keeps its style chips and buttons.

Appearance Notes

The generator reads the character's Appearance field — the free-form description in the editor, up to 1,500 characters — along with their name, pronouns, age, role, archetype, species, and genre category. The optional note in the portrait window (up to 300 characters) adds to that for one round of portraits.

So the best way to steer every portrait is to write good appearance notes. Focus on visual detail: specific hairstyles, clothing, scars, accessories, or expressions. For example:

Silver-haired woman in a dark cloak, sharp cheekbones, knowing smile, holding a lantern

Cost

Portraits don't use tokens. Each one uses one AI image from your plan's monthly allowance — 1 on Free, 15 on Basic, 35 on Writer and 100 on Professional — so picking two styles uses two. The Generate button shows how many a run takes, and the number beside it shows how many you have left this month. A portrait that fails doesn't count.

Uploading Your Own Image

The portrait window has an Upload tab. Drop an image there, or click to choose one from your device, and it becomes the character's portrait.

Uploading is free on every plan, including Free, and it keeps working when you've used this month's AI images. Use it when you already have reference art, or when you'd rather save your images for later.

Where Portraits Appear

Once assigned, your character's portrait shows up in several places:

• The character editor, at the top of the Portrait section.
• Character cards in the writer's left panel and Story Bible views.
• Character node info sheets when you open a character's summary.
• AI generation context is not affected by portraits — they're purely visual.

Storage & Quotas

Portrait images count against your plan's storage quota. Each portrait is a WebP image that typically weighs between 50–150 KB, so they won't eat into your storage quickly. Even so, it's good practice to delete portraits you're not using.

Next Steps

• Creating Characters — the full walkthrough of the character editor, including the portrait section.
• Character Profiles & Biography — how the appearance and identity fields feed both prose and portraits.
• Storage & Quotas — understand how portrait storage fits into your plan limits.