Layouts

A layout says where things go. You draw boxes on the picture and say what each one holds: an object, a person or character, or words. MOSS-Image follows the boxes closely: things land in their boxes, and lettering is sized to fill its box.

The layout editor: boxes on the left for a window, a man, a woman, a waiter, a table, a wine bottle and two glasses, the man's box selected; on the right the description of the whole picture, the list of boxes, and the selected box's kind and description

Making a layout

  1. Set the picture’s Size. (You can change it later; the boxes stretch with the picture.)
  2. Click Layout… beside the prompt. Whatever you had typed becomes the description of the whole picture.
  3. Drag on the picture to draw a box. On the right, choose what kind of box it is and describe it. For a text box, type the exact words; press Return for a new line.
  4. Describe the whole picture at the top: subject, setting, style, light.
  5. Close the window and Generate.

The line at the bottom of the window says what’s still missing, such as a box with no description.

Moving and resizing boxes

  • Drag a box to move it, and drag its corners or sides to resize it. Edges and centers snap to the picture and to each other, shown by pink lines.
  • The arrow keys move the selected box 16 pixels at a time, or 1 pixel with ⇧. Delete removes it. Position shows its exact place and size.
  • Where boxes overlap, a click picks the smallest one, so you can pick the words on a sign from inside the sign.

Tips

  • A text box’s size is the lettering’s size. Draw a big box for a big title, a small one for small print. Lines that should stay together go in one box; lines placed separately get their own boxes.
  • Say how things look in each box’s description: for text, the lettering (chalk, painted, bold, its color).
  • Boxes can overlap. The words on a sign go inside the sign’s box.
  • Many boxes? An Adherence of 6 holds them more firmly.

Examples

The café layout's boxes over the picture
The boxes, drawn over the picture made from them
A Paris sidewalk café: a waiter with a tray of sushi beside a chalkboard menu, two cats watching from the cobblestones
The picture

A Paris café, 896 × 1344, nine boxes. The menu is one text box: five lines in chalk, word for word, with the prices lined up. The sushi on the menu and on the waiter’s tray, in its own small box, were added to see whether the model would follow a layout that made no sense for a French café. It did.

The date layout's boxes over the picture
The boxes
A couple toasting with red wine at a candlelit table by a window with the Eiffel Tower, a waiter looking on
The picture

Dinner in Paris, 1344 × 896, eight boxes: the window, the man, the woman, the waiter, the table, the bottle, and a box for each glass, side by side, so the glasses meet in a toast.

Using, setting aside, and deleting a layout

  • While a layout is in use, the prompt box shows its description and how many boxes it has. Click it to edit.
  • Remove layout goes back to the typed prompt. The layout is kept, even after you quit, and Layout… brings it back.
  • Delete layout throws it away. It only asks first if the layout would be lost for good: if a picture was made from it as it is, it’s deleted at once.
  • Every picture made from a layout keeps it. Edit layout on the picture’s card puts its settings back and opens the layout with the picture behind the boxes, so you can see what to nudge. Reuse settings brings the layout back too.

Pasting a layout

A layout written as JSON, such as the examples in the MOSS-Image User Guide, can be pasted as the prompt; click Layout… to open it in the editor. The format is described in For developers.