TL;DR: A Redditor shared a prompt that turns your selfie into a photo of you sitting inside your own phone, legs dangling out the bottom, and the identity match is good enough that people are calling it the best portal-effect prompt they’ve tried.
What’s actually happening here
u/GrowWithMiz posted a single prompt to r/PromptEngineering built for ChatGPT’s image tool. Upload a photo of yourself, paste the prompt, and you get an editorial-style shot: a hand holding a phone at golden hour, and inside the screen, a tiny version of you sitting on the inner edge of the display with your legs hanging out over the bezel into the real world. One hand waves at the camera. It’s the “portal effect” trend, but dialed up with real photography direction instead of a vague one-liner.
The thread blew up fast, and not just because the output looks cool. People started posting side-by-sides of their selfie next to the generated shot, and the resemblance held up shockingly well across different ages, skin tones, and hairstyles. A few commenters tried it with pets and kids’ photos too, swapping “person” for the subject in question, and reported similar results. That’s usually the tell that a prompt is actually well built and not just a lucky roll: it generalizes.
Why this one works better than most
Most viral image prompts are two sentences and hope for the best. This one isn’t. It locks identity first (face, skin tone, hairstyle, expression, age, all preserved at 100%), then spells out camera specs, lighting, aspect ratio, and even the UI on the phone screen. One commenter put it well: the length reads like someone who got burned by AI ignoring half their instructions before and decided to leave nothing to chance. That’s the actual lesson here, not the trick itself: the more physical detail you give an image model (camera type, lens, lighting direction, aspect ratio), the fewer redos you need.
Look at the structure line by line and you’ll see the pattern repeat. Every visual claim gets backed up with a technical reason. It doesn’t just say “the person sits inside the phone,” it says where their hips and torso sit, where the legs cross the display, and what kind of shadow that crossing point should cast. It doesn’t just say “golden hour,” it says the lighting has to match across both the real world and the miniature world, which is the exact detail that keeps a composite from looking like two separate photos stitched together. And it doesn’t just say “realistic phone,” it locks the aspect ratio to 19.5:9 and names the camera app UI elements, shutter button, framing guides, zoom, focus indicators, so the model has zero room to invent a generic screen. Strip out any one of those anchors and you’ll usually see the output drift: the legs stop lining up with the bezel, the lighting goes flat, or the face starts sliding toward “AI average face” territory. Keep them all in and the illusion holds.
Use Cases
- 📸 Personal brand content for creators who want a scroll-stopping profile refresh
- 🎨 A quick way to test how well a model holds facial identity across a complex scene
- 💡 A template you can strip down and reuse for other “impossible photo” concepts
Prompt of the Day
Use the uploaded photo as the strict identity reference for the person. Preserve the exact facial features, facial proportions, skin tone, hairstyle, hair color, expression, age, clothing style, accessories, and overall recognizability. Identity preservation: 100%.
Create an ultra-realistic editorial lifestyle photograph from a first-person perspective. The viewer is looking straight down at a modern premium black smartphone being held naturally with both hands above clean gray stone pavement outdoors during warm golden-hour sunlight.
The smartphone must retain the exact proportions of a modern iPhone with a tall, narrow 19.5:9 aspect ratio, viewed almost perfectly from above with only a thin visible top edge. The screen functions as a realistic miniature 3D world with true depth, reflections, and contact shadows. The person sits on the inner edge of the display, hips and torso inside the phone, legs extending out through the screen opening and hanging freely over the front edge, shoes visible in the real world. The transition where the legs cross the display looks seamless, like a real portal, with contact shadows and subtle glass reflections.
The person smiles and looks up at the camera, one hand raised in a friendly wave, the other resting on the inner floor of the phone. The phone shows a realistic camera app UI (shutter button, framing guides, zoom, focus indicators). Hands holding the phone have realistic skin texture and natural grip. Background pavement is softly blurred for shallow depth of field. Golden-hour lighting matches across both the real world and the miniature world.
Ultra-realistic photography, premium lifestyle advertising, cinematic composition, Canon EOS R5, 35mm lens, shallow depth of field, HDR, 8K resolution, hyper-detailed materials, physically accurate lighting, seamless photo composite.
Try it yourself
Grab a clean selfie, paste that prompt into ChatGPT, and see how close the identity match lands for you. If your first result looks a little off, don’t scrap the whole prompt, just adjust one variable at a time. Swap “golden-hour sunlight” for a different time of day, change the pavement to a desk or a countertop, or try a different camera and lens combo. Because the prompt is so specific, small edits give you predictable, controllable changes instead of a totally different image every time. If you tweak it into something new, drop it in r/PromptEngineering, that’s exactly the kind of remix this community runs on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why is this prompt so incredibly long?
The length is intentional, ChatGPT has a habit of cutting corners when instructions get complex. By spelling out every detail (phone proportions, lighting, seamless transitions), the prompt is essentially a safeguard against the AI ignoring half your instructions. It’s a lesson many prompt engineers have learned the hard way.
Q: What’s the single detail that makes this portal effect actually work?
The legs dangling out through the phone screen. Without that element, you’re just looking at another generic “person on a screen” image. The contact shadows and realistic transition where the legs pass through the glass are what sell the 3D portal illusion and make it feel dimensional.
Q: Do specific camera and lens names (like “EOS R5” or “35mm lens”) actually change the output?
Yes, commenters have noticed that including specific camera specs noticeably shifts the visual style. It seems ChatGPT associates these terms with particular aesthetics and shooting characteristics, so naming them helps guide the AI toward a more professional, specific look.
Q: Can I use this with my own photo to create a version with my face?
Absolutely. The prompt explicitly asks ChatGPT to preserve your identity from the uploaded photo, exact facial features, skin tone, hairstyle, and recognizability. Just upload a clear photo of yourself and paste the prompt in ChatGPT.