Choose between an image edit, a design template and a coding tool
The best tool depends on what must stay editable, exact or interactive. Ask an image generator for a poster and you can get a beautiful picture with "Thrusday" baked into it, permanently.
What you'll make
a short brief for one visual that says what must stay exact, editable or working, and a first choice of tool that can produce that kind of file.
What you'll need
the job and any source files (a photo, the facts for a poster, the data for a chart), the tools your organisation gives you, and about 10 minutes. You don’t need a new paid plan.
Example result.
Job: open day poster for the staff noticeboard and intranet
Must stay exact: date, time, room
Must stay editable: every word, so the room can change
Route: Canva template, text as text; AI drafts the wording only
Check: click each word in the file; it should select as text1. Name what must stay exact, editable or working
Write down what needs to exist at the end, then the parts that matter: words someone will need to change, numbers that must match data, a face or product that must stay the same, a button that must work. These decide the tool more than any favourite AI brand.
| The job | Tools that usually fit | Check |
|---|---|---|
| Better light or background on a photo | ChatGPT or Gemini image editing | Face and details match the original |
| A person or product that must stay pixel-exact | Canva or PowerPoint: place the original, don’t regenerate it | Subject unchanged at full size |
| A poster or slide with words people will edit | Canva or PowerPoint | Click a word: it’s text, not picture |
| A chart from real numbers | Excel or Google Sheets, or a chart file from ChatGPT or Claude | Values match the data |
| A small interactive tool | A Claude artifact or Gemini Canvas | Every control does something |
Then ask the AI to check your choice against the tools you actually have.
I need [deliverable]. These parts must stay exact: [exact parts]. These must stay editable: [editable parts].
I have these tools: [tools].
Suggest the best first tool, the file type it should produce, and two checks I should do on the file.
If none of my tools can do it, say so rather than suggesting something I haven't listed.[deliverable] is the thing you need; [exact parts] and [editable parts] come from your list; [tools] are the apps and AI accounts you can use at work.
Why this works: a requirement like “every word editable” rules out an image generator before you’ve spent an hour prompting one.
What you should see: one suggested tool, a file type such as .pptx, .png or .html, and two checks.
2. Make it in the tool that can keep those parts
Use the AI for what it’s good at, such as wording, a layout idea, a chart suggestion or a draft image, and build the final file in the tool that keeps your exact and editable parts. For a poster, that means pasting the AI’s wording into a Canva or PowerPoint template, not asking for the finished poster as an image.
Why this works: each tool does the part it’s built for. The AI never gets the chance to bake a typo into a picture.
What you should see: a file in the format you chose, with the exact parts unchanged.
3. Open the file and test how it’s built
A preview can look right and still be the wrong kind of file. Open the real file and test it: click a word, change a number in the chart data, press a button. A poster that looks editable can be one flat image; a chart that looks right can be a picture of a chart.
Why this works: the test takes a minute and tells you whether the file can do its job next week, not just whether it looks good today.
What you should see: words that select as text, chart values that update, controls that work.
Check the result
- Every word that may need to change is editable text in the file.
- Every number in a chart matches your data.
- A person or product that had to stay the same still matches the original.
- The file type is the one you planned, not a screenshot of it.
The usual failure: the right-looking picture in the wrong format. You ask for a poster, and the AI returns one PNG with the words drawn into it, sometimes misspelled. It looks finished until someone needs to change the room. Spot it by trying to select a word.
The poster you made is a single image, so I can't edit the words, and the date is misspelled.
Give me the wording as plain text (title, date, time, room, one line of detail),
and suggest a layout I can build in [design tool] with every word as editable text.[design tool] is the app you’ll build it in, such as Canva or PowerPoint.
Worked example: three visuals for a staff open day
Fictional example. An office manager needs three visuals for an open day on Thursday 19 November.
1 A brighter photo of reception for the intranet story
2 A poster: "Open day · Thursday 19 November · 12:00–14:00 · Room 3B"
3 A chart of sign-ups so far: Finance 14, Sales 22, Operations 9First attempt (wrong): all three asked of one image generator. The poster came back as a picture reading “Thrusday 19 Novmber”, and the chart’s bars showed Sales and Finance at the same height.
Repair: the repair prompt above for the poster, built in Canva. The chart was made in Google Sheets from the three numbers. The photo stayed with image editing, then the faces were compared with the original.
Result: a photo edit with unchanged faces, a Canva poster where the room can be changed in seconds, and a chart whose bars read 14, 22 and 9.
- Image editing was right for the photo: better light was the whole job.
- The poster’s problem wasn’t the spelling. It was that nobody could fix the spelling. The editable poster guide walks through that build.
- An AI-drawn chart is a picture of data, not data. A spreadsheet chart can’t make Sales and Finance the same height.
Task kit for this job: Download (ZIP) · Reusable instructions
Go deeper
Look and file type are different things
An icon can look like a crisp vector and still be a PNG; a poster can look editable and be flattened. When the file type matters, ask for it by name (.svg, .pptx, .xlsx) and check it when it arrives. The icon set guide shows the difference with real files.
Match the check to the job
A photo edit needs comparing with the original. A chart needs its values checked. A small tool needs its buttons pressed. One generic “looks good” review won’t catch the failure each one is prone to.
Start with the smallest testable version
Ask for one slide, one chart or a tool with five rows of data first, and test that before asking for the full set. A small file shows a wrong format or a hidden assumption before you’ve built twenty of them.