The Master Guide / 06 Anchors and stills · Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro)
The full-size check
Every image is checked at 100% before it is filed or used. The file itself is never changed.
Every image is checked at 100% before it is filed or used. The file itself is never changed.
How: open the native file at 100% (actual pixels), in any viewer that shows true size, and pan across it. Or cut untouched crops of each face, hand, label, touch point and panel, never scaled (steps below).
Identity: the face crop beside the close-up or photo at the same height: shape, eye spacing, nose, mouth, jaw, hairline, skin tone, marks. A generic or beautified face fails.
Wardrobe: every garment, panel by panel, colour by colour; one failing panel fails the sheet.
Hands and touch points: fingers, joints, nails, grip, contact shadow. A failing hand fails the image (decided; see The quality bar → The hard stops).
Product and label: the shape against the client's photos; text letter by letter, Arabic included; no extra text anywhere; no other brand's marks.
Layout: the right panel count, one person per panel, equal scale, one ground line; no duplicates, mannequins or reflections.
Plates: no people (silhouettes, backs and reflections count); no animals and nothing the treatment doesn't list; landmarks and counts as written; time and palette as locked; architecture right for the city.
Light: no unrequested flare, glow or self-lit material; on sheets a catchlight and no glare on the hair.
The "too perfect" tells [official guidance]: check each one, and use its first fix (see Making it feel real → The "too perfect" tells). On sheets, a sheet that reads cheap is remade with better surface words, never rescued with a texture photo.
Against the reference: each candidate beside the treatment's department reference on the five points before anyone else sees it; one weaker on two points is remade with a named lever per point. Sheets are scored on colour, surface and the specific choice only (see The quality bar → The reference bar).
Write a verdict per image (pass, or fail with the check), keep the crops beside it, and check any changed file again.
The anchors' client standard
What the client will judge in the anchors presentation, from failing to award-level. Solid is your minimum.
Fails | Solid (the minimum) | Award-level | |
Faces | Generic or beautified faces; a profile panel that drifts; small anatomy faults (double nostrils, misaligned eyes, a darker lower face) | Every panel matches the source under even light, profile included | Unmistakably the same person from every angle, in every wardrobe look |
Wardrobe | Panels of one look in different colours; wrong fit or fabric; changed details; a missing signature item | Every garment matches the locked values, identical in every panel | Brand colours exact; fabric that reads true at full size and will survive motion |
Product and marks | Wrong product colour; a garbled label; another brand's marks | The client's photos and artwork lead; labels letter for letter; only the client's brand | Logos sit in the world as if built there; the macro shows the real texture |
Places | Impossible geography; the wrong culture for the place; extra people; things nobody asked for | Plausible and culturally right; built around the action and the planned camera; only what the treatment lists | One coherent world that serves the story; the client stops noticing AI |
Light | Grey when warm was agreed; dusk when night was asked for; reflections showing nothing in the scene | Each place in the treatment's light and time, motivated sources only | One palette across places, with light that can carry motion |
Voices | Dialect that sounds like MSA, or is mispronounced; a voice cloned from one sample | A native-accent voice per role, cast from a shortlist, its words checked | The voice casts the character as precisely as the face, and the right listener accepts it (see Voice and Arabic dialects → The native reviewer) |
The presentation | Anchors sent piecemeal, or video started before approval; text-heavy pages; cropped verticals; internal material on show | All anchors and voices in one image-led presentation, in plain English, on a new link per send | It feels like the film's world before it moves |
Do it yourself
Look at full size and cut untouched crops (Photoshop, Affinity, ImageMagick or ffmpeg)
To look: open the native file at 100% (actual pixels) in Photoshop, Affinity or any viewer that shows true size, and pan across it.
To keep crops, cut each face, hand, label, touch point and panel at its own size, never scaled. With ImageMagick:
magick sheet.png -crop 700x700+180+120 +repage face.png
Or with ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i sheet.png -vf crop=700:700:180:120 face.png
The numbers are the crop's width and height, then its distance from the left and top edges, in pixels. Change them for each crop.
Sources
Higgsfield's realism guide (the tells).