/adapting-formats

name: adapting-formats
description: Resizes an existing image ad into the other shapes it has to run in — reads the ad first, then regenerates it at each ratio with the original passed in as a reference, so the product, the copy and the look carry across. Each shape is recomposed rather than cropped, with the background extended into the space the new proportions open up and the headline and call to action kept clear of the buttons and captions the platform draws over the top. Use when the user has an ad and needs it in another size, in a ratio family, or in every size a channel takes. Not for making an ad that does not exist yet — that is generating-image-ads; not for writing the words of the ad — that is writing-ad-copy.
license: Apache-2.0
metadata:
  version: "0.3.0"
  category: creative
  summary: "Takes an ad you already have and remakes it in every other size you need it in. It reads your ad first, works out what has to move and what fills the space the new shape opens up, and shows you that plan before it spends anything — then rebuilds each shape around the original so your product, palette and wording stay recognisably the same rather than being stretched, cropped or letterboxed into a mess."
  related-skills: "generating-image-ads, writing-ad-copy"

Resizing an ad

Take an image ad that already exists and produce it in the other shapes it has to run in.

**Each shape is regenerated, not cropped.** A crop cuts the headline in half and pushes the product out of frame; the ad is rebuilt for the new proportions with the original passed in as a reference, so it stays the same ad rather than becoming a different one.

Workflow

Step 1: Get the ad and the shapes

• **The ad** — the image file or URL, at the largest version the user has. Without it there is nothing

to resize; ask for it and stop. Several ads at once is normal: each is read and planned separately, though they can all be generated in one call at the end.

• **The shapes** — the ratios, or the channel they run on. Where the user named a channel rather than

ratios, take them from `references/ratios-and-safe-zones.md`. Where neither is given, ask which sizes they need, offering that table's channels and a free-text way out.

• **The product photo, where they have one** — a clean shot of the product on its own. It is worth

asking for: the ad may show the product small, angled or partly behind copy, and the photo holds its identity far better than the ad can.

**Drop the shape the ad is already in.** An ad supplied at `1:1` and asked for the Meta family needs `4:5` and `9:16` — regenerating its own `1:1` bills for a reconstruction of something the user already has.

Step 2: Read the ad

Run `image_analysis` on it once, and separate what the ad is made of — the parts a resize moves, not a description of the picture:

• **The product** — what it is, and whatever has to stay identical wherever it appears: its shape,

colour and label, the text printed on it, or anything else that would give it away as redrawn.

• **Every drawn string** — captured word for word, wherever it sits: a headline, a support line, a call

to action, a price or a badge. These are regenerated, so a word read wrong here is a word wrong in the ad.

• **The background** — the surface, the scene, the light direction and the perspective, since this is

what gets extended into any new area.

• **The look** — the palette, the character of the type, and whatever else makes it read as this

brand's ad.

• **The layout** — what the eye lands on first, and how the parts sit relative to each other.

Take what this ad actually has rather than working down the list; an ad with no call to action doesn't need one invented for the reading.

Read it once. A second analysis call bills again and tells you what you already have.

Step 3: Plan each new shape

Read `references/recomposing.md` first — it owns this craft: what grows, what moves, what fills the space that opens up, and the things that mark an ad as repurposed.

For each shape, decide and write down:

• **How far it is from the original.** A `1:1` into `4:5` is a nudge. A `1:1` into `9:16` is a real

recomposition. A vertical into `16:9` or `21:9` inverts the frame and keeps very little — close to a new ad than a resize, and worth saying so before it is generated rather than after.

• **What fills the new area** — normally the background extended in keeping with its own light and

perspective, plus deliberate negative space around the product. Never a new element invented to fill it.

• **Where each part goes**, including which part had to move out of the band the platform covers.
• **Whether the copy still fits.** The `9:16` safe area is roughly the middle half of the frame, so a

copy-dense square ad often cannot move into it at a readable size. **Say that; don't shrink the type until it fits.** The answer is fewer words, and that is the user's call, not this skill's.

Step 4: Show the plan and wait

Nothing has been generated yet, and everything after this costs money.

In one short message: the shapes being made, what fills the new space in each, anything significant that had to move, and anything the shape can't carry — copy that won't fit, a ratio far enough from the original that little survives. Then ask, and wait.

Where the user has said they don't want to be asked, say in one line what you're going with and carry on.

Step 5: Choose the model

**One model for every shape**, so the set comes back looking like one campaign rather than three ads. A resize redraws every string the ad carries, so how well a model holds text is usually what decides it.

| Model | Use it when | How it wants the prompt | | --- | --- | --- | | `gpt-image-2` | the ad is a designed, text-forward layout — a headline, an offer, callouts | short labelled segments on separate lines, every string quoted exactly | | `nano-banana-pro` | the ad leads on a photoreal product or a person an