Deep Ocean
- abyssal palette
- deep water blues
- submarine colours
Near black to teal in one long climb, with a single pale foam note at the top.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #04121F
- #082B45
- #0E4C6B
- #12798F
- #4FA8A0
- #CFE3E0
What it is for
Water removes the warm end of the spectrum first, so the deeper a thing sits the fewer colours are left to describe it. The palette is that fact drawn as a strip.
Because it is weighted to the dark end, it makes anything placed in it look isolated and slightly out of reach. That is a mood no amount of blue on its own gives you.
How it works
Run one long climb from near black to teal rather than picking five unrelated blues. The steps between the values are the depth.
Give the picture one light note and no more. A single pale foam or backscatter value tells the eye how dark everything else is.
Keep every colour cool. A warm highlight reads as a lamp, and a lamp changes the story from deep water to a boat.
When to use it
Use it for anything about scale, cold, pressure or isolation: a science piece, a dive brand, a title card, a moody product shot.
Leave it alone for anything sold as fun. The palette is heavy, and lightening it to make it friendly destroys the climb that makes it work.
Told apart from its neighbours
A monochromatic blue scheme holds one hue at five values. This one drifts from navy toward green as it lightens, which is what makes it read as water rather than as paint.
Alpine Snow is also cool and also blue, but its weight is at the light end. The two are mirror images of each other.
Where it was used
Natural history television has used this set since it started filming underwater, and it survives on a phone screen at low brightness, which is exactly where most of that footage is now watched.
- natural history documentaries
- marine research covers
- dive equipment packaging
The prompt
Run it as it stands, or drop the colour clause into a prompt you already have. It works in an image prompt and in a video prompt.
<subject>, deep ocean palette climbing from near black through navy and petrol blue to a cool green teal, one pale sea foam note as the lightest value, no warm colour anywhere, most of the picture in the dark half
What goes wrong
The subject is replaced by a picture of the sea. The palette is a colour set, not a location. Name your own subject first and let the colours sit on it.
The values spread evenly and the depth disappears. Say most of the picture sits in the dark half, with one pale note only.
A warm highlight arrives, usually gold. Say no warm colour anywhere, including in the highlights.
Leave out
warm light, orange, sand, sunset, a bright sky
Watch for
Keep most of the picture dark. If the values spread evenly the depth goes and it turns into a swimming pool.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in landscape
