split-photo-paper-collage

Community@sumino/split-photo-paper-collage
Community skill — not reviewed. It was shared by Jagulus and has not been checked by Neta. Read SKILL.md below before letting an agent use it.
Use it in Cohub

Paste this into your agent's chat — it fetches the skill and follows it.

Use the skill: split-photo-paper-collage. Run `npx -y @neta-art/neta-search-cli@latest skills use @sumino/split-photo-paper-collage --via site` and follow what it prints. Read its complete output, redirecting it to a temporary file first if necessary, and resolve relative paths from the skill directory it prints.
Install from a terminal
npx -y @neta-art/neta-search-cli@latest skills use @sumino/split-photo-paper-collage
Summary

Turn a photo into a half-photo, half-paper collage where one real element crosses a torn edge and becomes touchable.

  • You get one tall image split exactly in half: a real-looking photograph on top, ivory paper below, reading as one continuous scene.
  • One thing from the photo, like a road, stream or branch, crosses the tear and becomes something usable, such as piano keys or a swing.
  • A tiny ink-drawn figure sits on the paper doing something physical with it, plus a short handwritten title of six words or fewer.
  • The torn edge follows the shape of that element, not a generic ripped-paper border.
  • Works best with a place that has a clear line to follow, such as a street, river, stairway or tree, or a character you want in the scene.
SKILL.md
# Split Photo / Paper Collage

The page is cut in two at exactly the middle. Above: a real photograph of a place, untouched. Below: ivory paper. One element of the photo — a road, a water line, a stair, a cable, a branch — crosses the tear and keeps going, reinterpreted on paper as something you could actually use: the road becomes a piano staircase, the water a sheet you can lift, the branch a swing. A tiny ink figure interacts with it. A few handwritten words in the corner.

**Demo:** Hatsune Miku on a dusk backstreet, the road's painted line continuing as piano keys. Art in `assets/demo-cover.webp`.

## What the user gets

- One vertical image, two halves at exactly 50%, one continuous scene.
- A tear that follows the structure's own shape, not a stock torn-paper edge.
- One core structure crossing the seam, transformed into a playable form.
- An extremely small ink figure doing something physical to it, and a short handwritten English title.
- The Work on the Board.

## When to use

- "split photo and paper collage", "the second world inside the photo", "photo above, paper below";
- "上下对半", "撕口", "照片续成纸面", "像杂志内页的拼贴".

Do not use for:

- two separate pictures or a before/after — the halves must be one scene;
- a painted illustration throughout — this needs a photographic top half;
- a diptych poster with a title plate — that is a web work.

## Hard rules

0. **Sandbox CLI path.** `node /mods/neta/neta …`.
1. **The photograph is untouchable.** No recolouring, no element swaps, no re-composition; only crop.
2. **Exactly 50/50.** Say so in the prompt, then **measure the result** and fix it with `scripts/fix-seam.sh` if the model drifts (it usually does, 40/60 is common).
3. **One core structure, not three.** Pick the single element that can physically cross the boundary; everything else stays in the photo.
4. **The tear follows the structure.** Where the road meets the edge, the paper tears in the road's width and perspective — never a uniform zigzag ribbon across the page.
5. **The paper half is not a doorway.** No windows, portals, stages, frames or floating mini-illustrations: the structure simply keeps growing downward.
6. **The figure is tiny and physical.** One small ink sketch, hands and feet on the structure, mid-action; never a posed mascot, never a second person.
7. **Six words of title, maximum**, handwritten in the empty paper, matching the interaction — "the street had a chorus", not "Collage Artwork No. 3".
8. **Deliver and place.** An image that never reaches the Board is not shipped.

## Pipeline

### 0. Choose the scene and the structure

Look at the request (or the place) and answer one question: **what in this photo can keep going?** Road markings, a stream, a stair, a railing, a cable, a branch, a light beam, a shoreline. Then: **if that thing became touchable, what would it be?** A keyboard, a swing, a slide, a hammock, a ladder of paper steps, a page you turn.

If no real photo exists yet, generate one first — a plain photographic plate of the place, no people — or use a generated photo that already reads as photographic.

### 1. Fill the scene file

Copy `templates/scene.example.json`: `photo.subject` + 3–4 `photo.details` + `photo.structure`, then `paper.transformation`, `paper.interaction`, `paper.fragments`, `figure`, `seam`, `title`.

```bash
node scripts/build-prompt.mjs /tmp/<slug>.json > /tmp/<slug>-prompt.txt
```

It refuses a scene with no structure, no transformation, no figure action, or a title over six words.

### 2. Generate

```bash
NETA_DEFAULT_IMAGE_MODEL=gpt-image-2 node /mods/neta/neta generate image \
  --param size=1024x1536 --param quality=high \
  --work-title "<Title> · Paper Collage" \
  --prompt "$(cat /tmp/<slug>-prompt.txt)"
```

`gpt-image-2` handles the two-layer layout, the handwriting and the photo texture best; pass a character reference with `--image` when the figure is a known character.

### 3. Look, then fix the seam by arithmetic — not by re-rolling

Open the file and measure the torn edge's y. If it is not half the height:

```bash
bash scripts/fix-seam.sh <file> <seam-y> /tmp/final.png
```

This crops only the extra paper, leaving the photograph intact, and prints the resulting ratio. If the handwritten title sat below the new bottom edge, lift it back with a pixel copy (the command is printed at the end of the script) — never retype it.

One generative rework is allowed, but a ratio miss is better fixed by cropping than by spending another image.

### 4. Place on the Board

```bash
node /mods/neta/.agents/skills/board-ops/scripts/place.mjs \
  --title "<Title> · 纸面续景" --work <work.path>
```

## Files

```
scripts/build-prompt.mjs        # scene JSON → prompt, with data checks
scripts/fix-seam.sh             # crop the paper so the seam lands at exactly 50%
templates/scene.example.json    # Miku demo data, fully filled
assets/demo-cover.webp, demo-art.webp
references/art-direction.md, qa.md, publishing.md
```

## Pitfalls

- **40/60 splits.** The model almost always gives the photo less than half. Prompt for it, measure, then crop.
- **Title lost in the crop.** Keep the title high enough in the empty paper, or move it back by copying its pixels.
- **A stock torn ribbon.** "Irregular torn edge" alone produces the same decorative tear everywhere; you must say the tear follows the structure's width and perspective.
- **A portal.** Ask for a doorway once and you get a glowing hole in the paper forever — describe the structure continuing, never an opening.
- **A second small illustration.** Fragments are slivers of the *same* photo, pinned right under the tear; nothing else is collaged.
- **A big figure.** "Small figure" drifts large; say "extremely small, roughly one-tenth of the paper's height".
- **Handwriting garbled.** Six words or fewer; long titles come back misspelled.

## Publishing this skill

Maintainer note — see `references/publishing.md`.