Turning a piece of insight into an actual ad used to be where everything stalled — you'd know exactly what to make, then lose a week getting it made. Image generation is the bit of Atria we most enjoy showing people, because it closes that gap in about a minute. Here's how we'd work through it.
Start with your brand — please don't skip this
Everything on-brand comes out of your brand profile, so a thin profile means weak output. Go to Brands in the left sidebar and fill in your logo, colours, tone, USPs and audience. No brand set up yet? Raya can build one from your website URL and you tidy it up afterwards.
Then add your products — import them from a product URL or add them by hand. This one matters more than it looks. It's the difference between Raya using your product and Raya inventing a plausible-looking version of it. If you sell several similar SKUs, give each one its own profile with its own images and description, rather than one catch-all entry.
Four ways in
Start from a reference. In AI Gen → + Create new image you'll get Quick start with top templates — theme pills plus a Trending pill showing what people are saving most right now. Pick your references (up to ten in one go), set Brand, Product and Objective along the bottom, and generate.
Clone Ad. Point at a competitor static that's clearly working and Raya rebuilds the concept as yours.
Iterate from Radar. Open an ad's AI Recommendation and Raya drafts the next version from real performance.
Prompt Raya in a chat to generate a static for you.
If you already have an ad that's nearly there, go straight to number three — you're building on evidence rather than a hunch. Number one is for when the page is blank.
There's also a fifth route that runs without you: Auto-Gen, which sits under Analytics and iterates automatically on ads that are already performing. It's set when you connect an ad account, and you can switch it off from Analytics whenever you like — worth knowing it's there, because it generates in the background and draws on the same credit pool. How to turn off Auto-Gen covers it, and it's not part of the manual flow below.
Before you hit Generate, open More settings and set Variants, Aspect ratio, Scenario, Persona and Notes. we'd set aspect ratio here every single time rather than mentioning it in passing and hoping.
Choosing a model — and seeing the cost first
There's a model picker at the bottom-left of the generation modal, with a few options behind it.
You don't need to know what's under the bonnet; you do need to know they differ in quality and in what they cost you. Each option shows its per-variant cost right there in the dropdown, and hovering the Generate button gives you the total for your current model, quality and variant count — updating live as you change them.
How we'd use that: keep the default while you're exploring directions and generating in volume, and step up to a higher-quality option once you've found the concept you actually want to run. One thing to know — when you regenerate an image, it reuses the model you generated with the first time. If you want a different one, start a fresh generation. Broader detail on usage lives in Understand & manage AI credits.
Two things that make output look properly yours
Custom fonts. Upload your typefaces once — .ttf, .otf, .woff, .woff2 — and your generated images stop using a generic stand-in for your brand.
[IMAGE: Full Brand settings panel with the parent page/tab title visible, including Brand colors, Brand fonts with Headline and Body rows, both family + weight dropdowns, Upload custom font, and Communication below.] The library you upload into isn't capped, but Brand fonts on the brand gives you two named roles — Headline and Body — and each one takes a font family and a weight from its own dropdown. So you're picking two faces at two specific weights, which is exactly why it pays to upload the full family: a weight that isn't in your library can't be selected. You can swap what sits in those two roles for a single generation in Visual identity on the brief. One honest limitation: font uploads currently support English letters and Arabic numerals only, so non-Latin typefaces will be rejected at upload. Full walkthrough in the Custom Fonts article.
Magic Layer. When an image is almost right, this is what saves you. Open a generated image, click the Magic Layer tool, and it splits into its parts — text, main object, background — which you can then edit directly on the canvas: rewrite a headline, change a colour, move or scale an element, flip an image. No regeneration, so no fresh spend and no quality drift. It's v1 and it works best on images with one clear subject and not much overlap. Full walkthrough in the Magic Layer article.
Our rule of thumb: small fix, use Magic Layer. Different direction, regenerate. Most of the frustration we see comes from people regenerating five times for something they could have nudged in ten seconds.
When it comes out wrong
Wrong product, or two of your SKUs blended together. Select the exact product in the Product dropdown rather than relying on the brief text, and make sure that product's profile has real images on it. If it still invents a product, send us the generation — that's one we want to see.
Reference beating your instruction. If a reference image carries text or a logo you asked to lose, it can win over your written note. Swapping the reference is usually faster than arguing with it.
Copy coming back in English when your brand isn't. This is a setting, not something to ask for in a note on the brief. In the brand's settings, under Communication, there's a Default language field — a single-select with a × to clear it, and helper text that reads "The default language for your generated images." Set it there and your image generations inherit it.
Brands built from a website URL usually get it filled in automatically, but do check it's right.
When you've got a keeper
Click Save to Assets and pick a board — boards sit under a brand, so it lands where your team will look for it.
You'll get a Saved to [board] toast with a View in Assets link. Edited it in Magic Layer first? The edited version is what gets saved.
And as always — if you'd like a hand getting your brand profile into decent shape, or you've got a batch that keeps coming back wrong, just shout. Happy to look at your actual generations with you.