Mood-aware composition for Codex: photographic anchors, distilled recomposition, full-scene color-mass and halftone abstraction, watercolor, risograph, screenprint, relief print, photochrom, and restrained postcard typography.
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Important
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Most photo-style prompts repaint the entire source image or place a uniform filter over it. Handdrawn Postcard starts by asking how much photographic reality should remain:
What part of this photograph would lose its meaning if it stopped being photographic?
The Skill reads visible relationships—gesture, scale, distance, light, weather, color, density, and negative space—before it chooses a composition or medium. It then follows one of three routes:
- Photo-anchor collage keeps one continuous, recognizable piece of the original photographic reality and lets drawing or printmaking grow beyond its boundary.
- Distilled recomposition removes the raw photo window and rebuilds only one to three essential spatial or emotional relationships in a new composition.
- Full-scene abstraction removes all photographic regions and translates the whole scene into three to seven color masses, controlled dot or halftone density, directional rhythm, paper shapes, and quiet negative space.
The result should feel like a scanned paper artwork, not a filter, sticker collage, mockup, or imitation of a named living artist.
The reaching gesture and face stay photographic; the radiating fabric becomes a four-ink screenprint field.
| 📷 Original | 🎨 Handdrawn Postcard |
|---|---|
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Route: photo-anchor-collage · Medium: four-ink screenprint · Copy: “come closer”
The tiled gate and original plaque remain photographic while foliage, shadow, and architecture are rebuilt as contemporary relief-print shapes.
| 📷 Original | 🎨 Handdrawn Postcard |
|---|---|
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Route: photo-anchor-collage · Medium: contemporary relief print · Copy: “門裡還有一段靜”
No raw photo window remains. The upward axis, architectural silhouette, and immense passing cloud are recomposed as an early photochrom travel view.
| 📷 Original | 🎨 Handdrawn Postcard |
|---|---|
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Route: distilled-recomposition · Medium: restrained early photochrom · Copy: “雲過塔尖”
The same colorful source can take a radically different route: every photographic fragment disappears, while its radial motion, warm/cool weight, and open-air energy become controlled screenprint color masses and halftone density.
| 📷 Original | 🟣 Full-scene abstraction |
|---|---|
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Route: full-scene-abstraction · Medium: low-color screenprint and controlled halftone · Copy: “the air moves first”
Example photographs are shown with permission. They are not covered by the MIT License and may not be reused. See NOTICE.md.
flowchart LR
A["📷 Read the visible scene"] --> B["🧭 Build a mood map"]
B --> C{"✂️ Choose a composition route"}
C --> D["Photo-anchor collage"]
C --> E["Distilled recomposition"]
C --> F["Full-scene abstraction"]
D --> G["🎨 Match one print medium"]
E --> G
F --> G
G --> H["⌨️ Write one quiet caption"]
H --> I["🖼️ Generate and quality-check"]
| Capability | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🧭 Mood first | Reads gesture, scale, distance, weather, light, color, texture, and quiet space before choosing a style. |
| ✂️ Three composition routes | Keeps a photographic anchor, distills a few relationships, or abstracts the whole scene into color masses and dot fields. |
| 🎨 Medium routing | Selects one primary process: watercolor, risograph, screenprint, relief print, cyanotype, editorial collage, photochrom, and more. |
| 🧵 Natural boundaries | Connects photo and print through paper fiber, pigment bleed, line continuation, halftone fade, or registration drift. |
| ⌨️ Postcard typography | Writes one original short caption in restrained English typewriter text or accurate Traditional Chinese Ming-style type. |
| 🛡️ Mode-aware guardrails | Protects identity and landmarks when they matter; in full abstraction it protects palette weight, direction, density, and negative space instead. |
| 🔒 Privacy aware | Treats source images as read-only and never invents or exposes GPS, dates, or locations. |
| Mood / structure | Likely direction |
|---|---|
| ☁️ Soft air, water, snow, grassland, intimacy | Watercolor negative space |
| 🟦 Architecture, skyline, hard silhouettes | Screenprint graphic field |
| 🟠 Everyday people, plants, limited colors | Risograph duotone / tritone |
| 🌲 Trees, rock, roads, rough surfaces | Contemporary relief print |
| 📷 A strong real-life moment | Quiet editorial photo collage |
| 📮 Youth, movement, private correspondence | Xerox mail-art zine |
| 🏛️ Travel depth and historic architecture | Photochrom travel view |
| 🟣 Color rhythm, movement density, atmospheric weight | Full-scene color-mass, halftone, or paper-shape abstraction |
The complete routing logic lives in style-library.md and prompt-recipes.md.
Install the handdrawn-postcard skill from https://github.com/maikeliu86-coder/handdrawn-postcard-skill/tree/main/handdrawn-postcard
Codex can route that URL through its built-in Skill Installer.
python "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/.system/skill-installer/scripts/install-skill-from-github.py" \
--repo maikeliu86-coder/handdrawn-postcard-skill \
--path handdrawn-postcard- Open the latest release.
- Download
handdrawn-postcard-v1.1.0.zip. - Unzip it into
~/.codex/skills/. - Start a new Codex turn so the Skill can be discovered.
Attach a photograph and ask:
Use $handdrawn-postcard to read the mood of these photographs. If I have not chosen a route, ask me once whether each image should use A) photo anchor + abstract color, B) distilled recomposition, C) full-scene abstraction, or D) automatic routing, then generate the finished postcards.
Or in Chinese:
使用 $handdrawn-postcard 先判断这些照片的意境。如果我没有指定路线，请只问一次：A 摄影锚点＋抽象色彩、B 影像蒸馏重构、C 整幅意境抽象、或 D 自动判断，再生成带克制文案的复古纸本明信片。
For a batch, answer with one compact mapping such as 1,3=A; 2=C; 4-10=D. A single letter applies to every image.
- Codex with local Skill support.
- An available image-generation or image-editing tool. Native ImageGen is preferred when present.
- A source image supplied by the user or explicitly authorized for use.
Optional fallback providers are never assumed. If they are unavailable, the Skill stops and explains the limitation instead of pretending that a generation succeeded.
handdrawn-postcard-skill/
├── handdrawn-postcard/ # Install this folder
│ ├── SKILL.md
│ ├── agents/openai.yaml
│ └── references/
│ ├── prompt-recipes.md
│ └── style-library.md
├── docs/examples/ # Public before/after demonstrations
├── README.md
├── README.zh-CN.md
├── LICENSE
└── NOTICE.md
- Independently authored, clean-room workflow based on general composition, printmaking, and postcard-design principles.
- Does not contain deleted prompts, private datasets, signatures, or proprietary materials from another Skill or repository.
- Does not use living artist names as prompt shortcuts.
- Does not remove source watermarks or invent location, date, authorship, or publication history.
The visual reference library cites public design, museum, and print-history sources inside style-library.md.
Thoughtful issues and pull requests are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before adding a new visual direction. A proposed direction should describe observable materials and composition—not imitate a named artist or proprietary workflow.
The Skill instructions and repository documentation are released under the MIT License. Example photographs and generated transformations in docs/examples/ are excluded from that license; see NOTICE.md.
