Ghibli Style Photo Prompts: How to Get the Look Right

To turn a photo into a Ghibli-style picture, ask for flat cel colour with very little shading, slightly uneven hand-inked outlines, a wide painted sky and a quiet moment. On reRAW AI you can skip the prompt: the Ghibli Style page is preselected, so you upload one photo and pick a crop.

You can also write your own prompt, here or in another image tool. reRAW AI is an all-in-one AI video and image studio, and the Ghibli Style look is one style of its Cartoon effect.

A prompt you can copy

The prefilled sentence in the Cartoon effect's Your own words tile is shorter:

How to use it in four steps

1. Pick one photo of one person, or one couple, in daylight with the face easy to see.
2. Upload it to the image tool and paste the prompt above.
3. Choose the crop you want before you generate. Portrait photos can become landscape frames, as in the rooftop example below.
4. Generate, then change only one line of the prompt if you want a second version.

What each phrase does

• Flat cel colour, very little shading. Even skin tones and solid blocks of colour, muted greens and sky blue, are what cel animation looks like.
• Slightly uneven hand-inked outlines. Bold lines that wobble a little behave like hand-inked ones. Clean, uniform lines read as a vector filter.
• A country road or a leafy street. The setting carries the frame: a road, telegraph poles, trees massed into one green shape, a red roof on a far hill, painted as colour and not as detail.
• A quiet moment with nothing dramatic. The look is a paused frame from a film. Of the cartoon styles we offer, Ghibli is the one that is deliberately underdrawn.
• Keep the hairstyle, outfit and proportions. Hair, parting and face shape are what carry the likeness into the drawing.

We describe the look in plain terms and leave out the names of characters and films.

Swap the setting line

The first three sentences of the prompt define the style. The setting sentence is the one to change. Three replacements for "a country road or a leafy street":

• A summer countryside path with a red roof on a far hill.
• A quiet train platform in the late afternoon, wind moving her hair.
• A small town street after rain, puddles reflecting a pale sky.

Each keeps to one or two things to paint, the way the look itself does: a road, some poles, a mass of trees, a roof on a far hill.

What it looks like on our photos

Both examples start from photos we made ourselves.

Other styles, same method

Change what defines the drawing and the same prompt shape works for other looks. Our Cartoon effect builds each style from its own: flat cel colour for Ghibli, three-point light for Pixar-style 3D, a printed face for LEGO, thumbprints for clay.

If the result drifts

• Use one person in daylight, with the face easy to see. A plain phone photo works better than a heavily filtered one.
• Keep the prompt to colour, line, setting and mood, plus what to preserve about the person.
• A declined photo or a failed run is refunded. Try another photo.