Photo to Monthly Zine Postcard

Create one finished front-side postcard. Treat the supplied photo and the monthly layout as equally important: preserve the photo faithfully, then create a compact editorial lower page that responds to the source.

Required inputs

• Use the user's photo as the only photo source.
• Use the user's provided month, handwritten line, footer fields, or copy verbatim when supplied.
• If the user supplies no month, infer the current month only when that is clearly intended; otherwise ask one concise question.
• Read layout specification before composing any image.

Workflow

1. Inspect the photo for subject, focal relationship, dominant color, light, mood, and aspect ratio r = width / height.
2. Route the unchanged source photo into the upper area using the ratio rules in layout specification. Preserve the entire supplied photo with contain; do not crop, stretch, repaint, remove, or retype its built-in frame, EXIF, branding, or camera text.
3. Curate the right-column book, short text, and song using content curation. Research and verify them before image generation; never tell the image generator to browse or invent sources.
4. Build the lower half as one miniature horizontal monthly photography page, not a second poster or a full-page illustration. Follow every placement and type-scale requirement in layout specification.
5. Generate the final 3:4 card using the locked prompt skeleton in the layout specification. Pass preselected, verified text as exact strings.
6. Check the result with quality gate. Regenerate when a hard constraint fails.

Visual anchors

• Use assets/reference-beach-monthly.png only as a private layout reference when a visual anchor helps. Do not include it in the user's output.
• Preserve the reference's hierarchy: photograph above; free-edge watercolor on the lower left; one unbordered, warm-paper right column; a compact footer at the bottom.

Non-negotiable constraints

• Keep the outer card portrait 3:4, warm ivory paper, subtle paper grain, and restrained single-color typography.
• Keep the upper photo as the actual complete source image. Do not turn it into watercolor.
• Never use the lower section as a full vertical poster, second large photo, date grid, swatch strip, collage, badge, logo, watermark, sticker, or generic decoration.
• Keep the lower watercolor source-specific, free-edged, and limited to the left visual block. It must not duplicate photo-card packaging such as EXIF, a device frame, or a UI.
• Keep the right column empty except for month, literature block, and music block. Do not add a divider line around it.
• Treat supplied copy as locked. Do not paraphrase, translate, alter punctuation, or silently replace dates.

Default copy

Use these only when the user has not supplied replacements:

• Handwritten line: Keep loving, run to mountains and seas.
• Footer left: MIXIAN
• Footer center: 2026.08.10
• Footer right: Free to sway and thrive.

Output

Deliver the generated postcard image and briefly state the selected month, literature source/caption, and song. If the fallback was used, say so plainly.