Featured images & visuals

Structura can generate a featured image for every post, in a consistent visual style you define. This page covers how to turn image generation on, how to shape the style, and what formats are available.

Enable image generation

Two things need to be in place:

An image-capable AI provider is connected on Structura → AI Engine and marked Default Image. Common options: OpenAI and Gemini. See Connect your AI provider. On Cloud skip this step: Structura generates the images and picks the image model.
The campaign has Generate featured image turned on in its Advanced Settings (default is on if you have an image provider).

With both in place, every generated post gets a featured image.

Shape the visual style — Visuals page

Open Structura → Visuals. This page is where global image style lives.

In the customer portal, a site with no visual preset bound yet shows two ways to create one right there: Draft a style from this site reads your homepage and writes an on-brand art direction for you, and Start from scratch opens a blank preset you fill in yourself. Either way the new preset is named after the site, saved to your workspace library, and bound to this site at once.

Image medium

Pick the kind of image Structura makes for this site:

Photography — realistic photos that show the actual subject.
Illustration — flat, editorial vector illustrations.
3D render — premium 3D or abstract conceptual art.

The medium applies to every image generated for the site, on every plan. Changing it doesn’t rewrite your Global Art Direction, so if your style text describes a different look, update that too. Suggest Image Style drafts a style in the medium you’ve selected, so pick the medium first. Click Save Changes to keep it.

Global Image Style

Brand Resources. A list of URLs pointing to logos, brand guidelines, or design-system references. Add them with the Add Resource button. Structura uses these to learn what “on-brand” looks like for your site.
Suggest Image Style. If you don’t know where to start, click Suggest Image Style and Structura drafts a Global Art Direction for you. It looks at your home page to match your brand’s real colours and mood, so you get an on-brand draft even without adding any brand resources — a logo, when you’ve added one, sharpens the exact brand colours further. Edit freely.
Generate Image Style. Runs the same research but prioritises the Global Art Direction textarea’s current contents if it’s not empty.
Global Art Direction — the textarea at the bottom. This directive is applied to every image Structura generates, so your site’s featured images feel cohesive.

A good Global Art Direction is specific: named colours, named moods, specific references. Example:

Warm, confident illustrations in a flat-vector style with subtle gradient shading. Palette: deep navy, muted gold, off-white background. Never photorealistic. No human faces. Favour symbolic compositions over literal depictions.

Output Dimensions

Pick the aspect ratio used for all featured images:

1:1 Square Format — good for social-first sites.
4:3 Classic Professional — the traditional blog thumbnail ratio.
3:4 Standard Portrait — taller; good if your theme uses vertical cards.
16:9 Cinematic Landscape — wide banner format.
9:16 Vertical Portrait — mobile/Stories shape.

Pick once, it applies site-wide.

Format Encoding (BYOK and above)

WebP — smallest file size, best for page speed. Our recommendation.
JPEG — universally compatible, slightly larger files.
PNG — lossless, much larger files. Use only if your theme needs transparency.

Available on BYOK and above. Free tier defaults to WebP.

AI label

The AI label card puts the official EU “AI GENERATED” badge in the bottom-right corner of every image Structura generates with this preset. Turn on Label images as AI-generated and click Save Changes.

It’s off by default and available on every plan.
The badge is the EU icon for AI-generated content, unchanged: a black pill on light images, a white one on dark images. It reads “AI GENERATED” in English.
It applies to the featured and in-body images Structura generates. Images you upload yourself are never labelled.
Images that already exist don’t change. Regenerating an image applies the current setting, and posts Structura prepared in advance get the label when they’re published.

Since 2 August 2026, EU rules ask whoever publishes realistic AI-generated images to mark them visibly as AI-generated. While the label is off, the campaign form shows a reminder next to the image switches when images are on, the site’s image medium is Photography and the campaign writes in an EU language. The switch is a tool for adding the badge, not legal advice.

SEO Automation — always on

Every generated image automatically gets accessible alt-text and a human-friendly, SEO-ready filename during post creation. There’s nothing to switch on — the SEO Automation card on the Visuals page is informational, confirming it’s always active.

Video styling

If you use the Video: Shorts & TikTok channel, the Video section on the Visuals page — part of your visual preset, below the image style — controls how videos rendered from your posts look: the Visual style (Clean, Bold, or Kinetic), Caption placement (Top, Middle, or Bottom), automatic brand-palette caption accents, and a separate Video art direction prompt you can draft with Suggest video style. Included with every Cloud option.

Per-campaign overrides

The Visuals page is the site-wide default. Per-campaign, you can override:

Whether images generate at all (Generate featured image toggle).
Whether in-body images generate (Body image generation, BYOK and above).

Per-post, you can always swap the generated image in the WordPress editor for one you prefer — Structura doesn’t re-touch the image once the post is generated.

Swapping an image manually

After review (if using drafts), or after publish:

Open the post in the WordPress block editor.
Click the featured image; click Replace.
Upload or pick from the Media Library.
Save.

Common issues

Generated images feel off-brand. Your Global Art Direction is too vague or contradicts your Brand Resources. Add more specific directives, run one or two test generations, tighten as needed.

Alt-text is generic or missing. Alt-text and filenames are generated automatically for every image — there’s no toggle to switch on. If the text feels generic, tighten your Global Art Direction so the scene each image depicts is more specific; the alt-text describes whatever the image shows.

Image generation keeps failing. Open the campaign’s most recent run and check the Visuals step. Most common: an image provider whose API key hit a usage cap. Top up the provider account or switch to a different provider — broken BYOK keys also fire a notice in the bell icon.

The images look the same across unrelated posts. Your Global Art Direction may be too restrictive. Loosen it a touch — directives like “always show a single object on a flat background” produce repetitive imagery. Let the system vary.

Last updated October 12, 2026