If you're reading this in a panic because it is the week before Christmas and you’re still missing some creative assets for your holiday marketing, take a deep breath. A brand photoshoot is off the table, and your designer might already be out of office, but there’s still a way to make things merry and bright.

The best time to start working on your marketing was weeks ago, but the second-best time is right now. AI can lighten the load, delivering professional-grade results quickly so you can slide into the holidays with one less item on your to-do list.

Missing a couple of images for your blog post? Use AI to match your aesthetic and fill in the gap. Got an image that’s almost perfect but is missing some holiday sparkle? Tools like inpainting and AI-powered editors can handle the details. Whether you’re adding festive cheer to an email, decking out social feeds, or winterising your website, AI has you covered.

If time feels tighter than Rudolph’s flight schedule, learning a whole new tool might sound daunting. Generative AI can deliver polished, festive assets—but only if you know how to steer it. And like any creative process it can take a few tries to get it right.

The good news? We've been using AI to create branded imagery for our blog posts for some time now. Consider our time-saving tips a little gift to help you sprinkle some AI magic, wrap up those last-minute jobs, and get your campaign out the door.

The Gift of Inspiration

If you’re fresh out of ideas, you’re in luck. Both Midjourney and Adobe Firefly have inspiration galleries. Scroll through until you see a look you like, then click to see the prompt used to create it. You can edit and reuse the prompt, or use the image itself as a reference image for your own generation.

Take, for example, the image of the decorated Valentine’s Day cookies. While they’ve got nothing to do with Christmas, that style of photograph is useful for a background image.

All we need to do is edit the prompt to generate our own festive banner image:

“Close up of Christmas decorations on a fir tree in shades of orange, purple and teal. Some baubles are matte, some shiny, and others glittery. Flat lay photography, high resolution, high quality, professional photography, commercial photography, product photography, high key lighting, high detail.”

Crafting Prompts That Sleigh

Small tweaks to your AI prompts can make a big difference. If you’re not getting the results you want, you might need to be more specific about the style, colours, or elements you want. For example, instead of “a festive scene in an office” try “a modern office with floor to ceiling windows and lots of natural lighting that is tastefully decorated for Christmas.”

If you’re at a loss to describe what you want, AI can help there too. Fire up ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and ask it to:

“Write a Midjourney prompt to generate a photo realistic scene of a modern office decorated for Christmas.”

Alternatively, your existing brand assets can be your best friend. Using images that have already been signed off and Midjourney’s ‘Describe’ command can help to keep things consistent while adding a touch of holiday spirit.

To use it, all you need to do is upload a reference image, hover over it, and click on the info icon. Midjourney will then offer a selection box of building blocks to create your prompt. The “subjects” and “descriptors” typically include details about the image's content, style, colours, and sometimes even technical aspects like camera lenses or aspect ratios.

While it is designed to be suggestive and inspirational, not to recreate the uploaded image exactly, it’s a very handy shortcut.

Take this non festive image from our blog post on account based experience, for example:

When we upload it to Midjourney, the AI offers us lots of helpful hints for how to reverse-engineer a prompt to create something similar.

Now all we need to do is think about what we want our image to look like and use Midjourney’s suggestions to build a creative brief that will have us heading in the right direction.

“A hyper-realistic photo of a confident young woman sitting on an orange sofa working on her laptop in a stylish modern office. The office has been decorated for Christmas. The scene has a filmic quality and cinematic lighting.”

Find Your Creative Flair

Another way to find inspiration and add some spice to your images is to experiment with style reference codes.

SREF codes act as shortcuts to predefined aesthetic effects. They help to maintain a consistent style across multiple images, which is particularly useful for creating a cohesive series of images.

Instead of writing complex prompts to describe your desired style, you simply input the code related to your required visual effect. If you search online for style reference or SREF catalouges, you’ll find sites offering curated collections such as midjourneysref.com and lummi.ai.

Using a single, simple prompt we can get wildly varied results:

“A beautifully decorated Christmas tree with presents underneath.”

Here’s what you get as standard:

So far so Home Alone. But now let’s look at what happens when we use exactly the same prompt but apply different style references.

You can do this by amending your prompt as follows:

“A beautifully decorated Christmas tree with presents underneath. --sref xxxx”

You can also vary the intensity of the applied style using the style weight parameter. This ranges from 0 to 1000, with 100 being the default. All you do is add --sw and a number to the prompt.

If you want something even more unique you can even use multiple SREF codes in a single prompt, allowing for more complex style combinations.

Fast-Track Festive Perfection

Even with Midjourney and a vast community of AI creators helping to construct the prompt, generating the right image can still be a little hit and miss. And with deadlines fast approaching, you don’t have much time to experiment.

That’s where inbuilt editors and generative fill features are a lifesaver for last-minute fixes and festive enhancements. Most AI image generators now have them, including Midjourney and Adobe Firefly.
If you want more precise control over the selection area, generative AI is also integrated into Photoshop itself. It makes it that much easier–although perhaps still inadvisable–to add a Santa hat to the CEO’s official portrait.

But for now, let’s go back to Midjourney and our marketing manager sitting on a sofa, working on her laptop.

This image is ok. The sparkly lights and the small table decoration in the background give a nod to the festive season. But wouldn’t it be more pointed if that potted palm was a Christmas tree?

Luckily, it’s easy to redecorate using the Editor. All we need to do is paint out the palm tree and edit our prompt to specify what we would like instead.

Et voilà… a selection of Christmas trees.

Unwrap New Possibilities

But what do you do if you don’t like the output and changing the prompt and editing isn’t helping?

One of the keys to getting good results fast from AI image generators is not being too wedded to the outcome. If an approach isn’t working, be prepared to experiment and see what happens.

Midjourney makes this easy in the form of Creation Actions buttons. Adobe Firefly also has a range of options to experiment with. Try clicking around to explore alternative styles or compositions that might better suit your needs.

Vary: Makes images similar to the one you’re working from.
Remix: Builds on the image you created, providing an opportunity to update the prompt.
Zoom: Creates a new zoomed out image, adding extra content around the edges.
Pan: Reframes the image by creating new content in a specified direction
Use: Reference either the image or the style, or copy the prompt into the input bar

So, back we go to our festive office. None of the trees we’ve created so far have really hit the ideal Christmas tree vibe. One of them is unevenly decorated, which as anyone can tell you is a Christmas crime. The baubles are far too big and far too sparse on another. And at least one appears to be hovering in mid-air. So let’s see what some random acts of generation can achieve.

Selecting ‘Vary, Strong’ results in a new composition. All bar one of the Christmas trees now looks pleasingly bushy and plausibly decorated and, being tucked away behind the sofa, we don’t have to worry about them defying the laws of physics.

For a final festive flourish, we could paint out our subject’s tasteful ecru sweater and go for something a little more “ugly Christmas jumper” instead. To get a good result, you need to erase extra space around the area you want to replace to give the AI room to work. Which is why she is now holding a tablet as well as sporting some natty knitwear.

Alternatively, if we’re not too concerned about keeping a strong steer on the subject and the composition, we could let the AI take the reins. By opting for a ‘strong remix’ and using the prompt “wearing a garish Christmas jumper” we get a completely new results.

Add the Finishing Touches

AI might be faster than a workshop full of Christmas elves, but it has its limitations. Depending on what you want to achieve, you might need to blend AI-generated visuals with manual edits.

Tools like Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Canva make it easy to create finished graphics using your AI assets. You can fine-tune colours, resize elements, or layer on text and your own branding in the usual way.

The key is to treat AI as a creative partner rather than a one-click solution. With a little persistence, you’ll have polished assets ready to impress your audience—just in time for the holidays.

From Ho-Ho-Hopeless to Holiday Hero

Your holiday campaign might have started late, but it doesn't have to look rushed or feel stressful. The tools are out there, the techniques are learnable, and with a bit of creative thinking, you can turn last-minute marketing challenges into an opportunity to have a bit of a play. After all, it’s Christmas.

Start generating your images today, schedule your content tomorrow, and you'll soon be ready to sign off for the holidays.

Make this your last holiday rush job. If your New Year’s resolution is to stay well ahead of your marketing plan next year, get in touch. We can plan and execute your content calendar and deliver a stress-free 2025.

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