Why does my prompt return a photograph of the thing itself?

Because the palette name was doing all the work. The palette is a colour set, not a subject. Name your own subject at the front of the clause and let the colours describe it, the same way you would use any other palette here.

Is a natural palette the same as a colour grade?

No. A grade is done to footage after it is shot, and those live in the cinematic catalogue. A palette is chosen before anything is made, and it decides what is in the picture rather than how the picture was treated.

Can I use these with a style from another catalogue?

Yes. Each prompt here is a clause rather than a whole picture, so it drops into a prompt from any other catalogue: a Bauhaus layout in desert colours, or a risograph print in sea glass greens.

Nature and material

Palettes taken from landscapes and materials, with the words for each.

A natural palette is already agreed. Nobody has to be told what a desert looks like, so the colours arrive with their own weather, their own light and their own temperature, and a picture built on one of them reads as a place rather than as a colour choice. These twelve are taken from things that exist: six landscapes and six materials. Each one lists the colours the real thing has, and the wording that gets those colours out of a model without getting a photograph of the thing itself.

Landscape

Six places, and the colours the light in them produces. Each one carries its own temperature, so the palette sets the weather before anything is drawn.

Desert Sand

Pale sand and warm clay, held down by grey green scrub and a bleached sky.

Deep Ocean

Near black to teal in one long climb, with a single pale foam note at the top.

Autumn Woodland

Dark bark under russet, amber and gold, with one olive green left over from summer.

Spring Meadow

Four greens climbing from pale to deep, with a buttercup yellow and a clover pink in them.

Alpine Snow

White to slate in five cool steps, with the weight held at the light end.

Volcanic Basalt

Four steps of black rock and ash, lit by one ember red and one sulphur gold.

Material

Six substances, and the colours they have before anybody paints them. A material palette carries an age and a surface as well as a set of colours.

Concrete and Moss

Four warm greys with two greens growing out of the damp ones.

Terracotta

One clay colour at six depths, from raw slip to a hard fired brown.

Sea Glass

Frosted greens and a soft blue, with one amber and a chalky off white.

Verdigris

Four patina greens over the bare bronze and brass they came from.

Raw Linen

Six undyed fibre tones, from bleached flax to a dark unwashed brown.

Brass and Walnut

Dark wood climbing into warm metal, with one cream to lift it.

Run one of them

Copy a palette into a prompt and pay for that one run. No subscription.

Open an image model

Other palette groups

Colour harmonyThe ways to choose a set of colours, and the wording that gets each one.10 harmony schemes Period palettesThe sets of colours that date a picture, and the wording for each one.15 period palettes Screen palettesThe palettes from film and television, and the wording for each one.12 screen palettes Functional palettesPalettes chosen to do a job, with the real numbers behind them.10 functional palettes

Print stylesDesigning the whole poster rather than choosing its colours? The same reference, for ink on paper.

A set of colours taken from a real place or a real material, rather than from a rule on the colour wheel. Everybody already agrees what a desert or a piece of concrete looks like, so the palette arrives with its own light and its own temperature.