Say you’ve just finished a cut you like from a lookbook or a concept shoot.
Using it once on a product page and stopping there feels like a waste.
You’d want to fill an Instagram feed in the same tone,
and carry it into an editorial set or a video too.
The catch is matching that tone.
Generate more cuts from scratch and the color and mood drift just enough that nothing hangs together as a series.
Expand Image makes the next cut from that one.
Set it as the reference and its color, lighting, and film tone carry over.
How far the framing, pose, and setting move is up to the expansion level you choose.
What Expand Image does
Pick one reference image and a level,
and you get a new cut that inherits the reference’s tone.
That can mean the same spot with only the camera moved,
or a completely different location that keeps nothing but the mood —
the level decides how far it goes.
Here is how the example set began. The starting point is an ordinary lookbook cut.
Using Reference Lookbook,
we dressed that cut in the café scene and film tone of a concept image.
The same model and outfit stepped into the concept’s café and film tone.
Pick the cut you like, refine it, and you have the reference this guide expands from.
Below, that café cut grows into a lamppost cut in front of the same café,
a brick-alley cut, and a laundromat cut.
All of them keep the same film tone,
so side by side they read like cuts from a single editorial.
What to do with a series like that — Instagram feeds, editorial sets,
video keyframes — is covered separately in Expand Image tips.
Where references come from
The reference is the starting point of every expansion,
and it can come from three places.
My Results is the most natural one.
Once you’ve finished a cut you like from a lookbook or a concept shoot,
you expand straight from it and keep the series going.
My Concept Assets works too — images you’ve saved as assets.
Register a cut that carries your brand tone once,
and you can restart from that same tone whenever you need it.
LaonGen Reference is for when you don’t have a base cut of your own yet.
Pick one of the prepared references and start expanding right away.
What holds and what changes
Before picking a level, one rule holds across all four: the reference’s color,
lighting, and film tone stay.
That’s the backbone that makes a series look like a series.
What changes is the framing, pose, and setting,
and the level decides by how much.
Two toggles sit next to that choice.
Lock Outfit keeps the clothing, shoes, and accessories;
Lock Person keeps the face, hair, and body.
If the goal is one model in one outfit across the whole series,
turning both on is the default.
Every example below was generated with both toggles on.
The four expansion levels
This is the core decision, so let’s walk the café shot through each level.
Closest stays in the same place and framing,
changing only the pose and angle slightly.
It’s the level for near-twins of a cut you want to lead with — same spot,
different gaze or stance.
Expand a Little stays in the same space and moves the camera.
The model who was seated now leans on a lamppost in front of the same café.
The café and the street behind him are untouched,
so this cut sits naturally right next to the original.
Expand a Lot moves to a new space of the same kind.
Now it’s a red-brick alley.
The café is gone, but the frame reads like a scene from a walk through the same city — the right level when an editorial set needs a scene change.
Feel Transfer goes somewhere entirely different and carries only the lighting and mood.
The sidewalk café became a laundromat, then a walk down a brick street.
The places have nothing in common,
yet the film tone and the grain of the light remain,
so either lands naturally as the closing cut of the same editorial.
Line the four frames up and there’s one more thing worth noticing.
With Lock Outfit and Lock Person on,
the outfit and the model’s face hold in every single cut.
Since the setting is the only thing moving,
the person and the clothes staying put is what keeps the four frames reading as one set.
When you have a specific scene in mind
Details the level alone can’t reach go into the instruction field.
Write the change as a plain sentence: “change the wall to red brick,” “make it a jumping pose,” “add a vintage bicycle as a prop.” The laundromat cut above was made this way — its instruction was “walking with an americano, with a moody feel.” The level sets the broad direction of the scene, and the instruction fills in the details.
Queue several, generate once
Once a level and its instructions are set, Add puts the expansion into the queue.
You can stack several expansions at different levels and set how many images each one produces — two at Expand a Little and two at Feel Transfer, say — then press Generate and they all run in one go.
The results land with your other generations,
and any cut you like can be added as an asset,
which saves it to your concept assets and makes it available as the reference for the next round.
Asset management is covered in the My Assets guide.
Expand from one cut, then expand again from a cut you like in the results —
the series keeps growing that way.
Credits
Cost scales with what you queue.
Each image is 10 credits,
so three expansions at two images each makes six images — 60 credits.
It starts with a finished cut
Expand Image assumes you already have a cut to build on.
How to make that first one is covered in the Reference Lookbook guide, and where a finished series earns its keep — feeds, editorial sets, video keyframes — is in Expand Image tips.
Series made this way run real Instagram accounts.
LaonGEN’s own AI models post theirs at instagram.com/lucas.blanc__
and instagram.com/hannah.lindqvist —
see how an expanded series reads as a feed.
Turn one finished cut into a content series in the same tone.
