Section 1: The One Rule

Every other rule in this guide hangs off this one. Your words live in HTML — in the slide itself — where they stay razor sharp on every screen and stay editable forever. The image is the backdrop. It is never the message.

Why this rule exists:

• AI-generated text is unreliable. Image models misspell, mangle and invent words. Your headline is too important to gamble on.
• Baked-in text can't be edited. Change one word and you're regenerating the whole image. HTML text changes in seconds.
• Baked-in text gets soft. Scaled, compressed, projected — image text blurs. HTML text never does.

Section 2: Which Slides Get an Image

Not many — and that's the point. An image slide works because the slides around it are clean. Aim your polish at three kinds of moments:

• The cover. First impression, biggest payoff.
• Section breaks. The divider slides between spans — a full-bleed image tells the room "new chapter."
• Story moments. Your origin story is the emotional center of the deck; one strong image behind it earns its keep.

Section 3: Two Sources — Both Work

Section 4: Connector Setup, Step by Step

Both sources work the same way: a one-time connection, then you just ask. Set up Kie.ai for generated images (below); the Freepik connector follows the identical pattern — create the account, copy the API key, ask your AI to connect it.

Section 5: The Prompting System

We generate hundreds of slide images with an 8-layer prompting system — it's how every image in our own decks lands on-brand, in one style, again and again. You don't need all eight layers. Here's the 20% that gets you 80% of the result: five moves, in order, every prompt.

1. Say what it is. "Premium full-bleed cover image for a presentation slide" — the model behaves differently when it knows the job.
2. Name your palette — exactly. Your two brand colors, by name or hex, every single prompt. This one habit is what makes five images generated on five different days still look like one deck.
3. Describe the scene, not the vibe. Specific objects, a specific moment, where the light comes from. "A tidy desk, one glowing laptop, a single stack of receipts, morning light from the left" beats "professional business imagery" every time.
4. Paste in your character. If a person appears, use the same named character from your characters file (next section) — word for word. Same description in, same person out.
5. End with the no’s. The closer, every time: no text, clean composition with open space for overlay text, 16:9 — plus your own bans as you discover them (colors that drift, styles you hate).

Section 6: Your Characters File

Here's the move that separates decks that feel like a brand from decks that feel like stock: create a characters file in your project — my-characters.md — and use the same two or three named characters in all your marketing. Slides, ads, thumbnails, social — the same faces, everywhere.

These aren't random people. Do the market research first: who are your main two or three avatars, really? Then write each one down, specifically:

• Name, age, job title, characteristics, situation — for each avatar. Specific enough that anyone (or any model) would draw the same person.
• Paste the character verbatim into every prompt where a person appears. Consistent words in, consistent person out — across your whole deck and every asset after it.
• Keep it in your project next to your script — one more small file your AI reads whenever it generates for you.

Section 7: The Three Layouts

1. Full-bleed — the vault look

The image is the entire background. Your headline and sub-headline sit on one side, with shadowing behind the text so it stands out. Highest impact — covers and section breaks.

2. The 50/50 split — the workhorse

Image on one half, content on the other. Clean, professional, and genuinely hard to get wrong — the text sits on a solid background at full contrast, so any decent image works. When in doubt, split.

3. Lower-two-thirds — the hardest

Headline zone on top, image band below. It exists, and when it works it's beautiful — but the proportions and the image crop have to be exactly right. Master the first two before you touch this one.

Section 8: Add an Image Slide in Four Steps

1. Pick the slide — a cover, a section break, a story moment. Most slides stay clean.
2. Get the image — a stock site, or your AI connector with the prompt formula.
3. Pick your layout — full-bleed with shadowed text, or the 50/50 split.
4. Keep the words in HTML — the image is the backdrop, never the message.

Section 9: The Six Mistakes

#	The mistake	The fix
1	Text inside the image. The One Rule, broken — mangled words, blurry headlines, unfixable edits.	Words in HTML, always. Use the closer in every prompt.
2	An image on every slide. Polish becomes noise, and nothing stands out.	Two to five image slides per deck. Covers, breaks, story moments.
3	Words over a busy image with no shadow. The headline disappears into the picture.	Shadow the text or darken the text side — or use the 50/50 split.
4	Off-palette images. One image in a stranger's colors and the deck stops feeling like one thing.	Name your two brand colors in every prompt; pick stock that matches them.
5	Unlicensed or hand-downloaded images. Grabbing from a search result is a legal problem waiting for a big audience — and manual downloading breaks your workflow.	Stock through your Freepik connector (licensed automatically) or your own generations. Nothing else.
6	Letting polish delay publishing. The deck already works — image-hunting for a week is procrastination in a nice outfit.	Record and launch with the clean deck. Add image slides in version two.