A storyboard translates words into pictures. It takes a script, which describes what happens, and turns it into a sequence of frames that shows how the audience will actually see it: where the camera sits, what fills the frame, how one shot leads to the next. You reach for one whenever other people need to share your vision before anything gets filmed or animated. That might be a client approving a commercial, a crew planning a shoot day, an animator blocking a sequence, or simply you, checking whether a scene works before you spend money on it.

In 2026, AI image generation has made this process far faster than drawing every panel by hand, but the thinking behind a good storyboard hasn't changed. You still need to decide what each shot is and why it exists. This walkthrough covers both halves: the planning work that makes a board useful, and the practical steps for generating, refining, and exporting frames with Adobe Firefly.

What you need before you start: a script (even a rough draft works), a free Adobe account to access Firefly, and about an hour for a short scene. The free tier includes a limited number of monthly generative credits, which is plenty for learning the workflow and boarding a short piece. If you already have a Creative Cloud subscription, your plan includes credits as well. A pen and paper for quick thumbnail sketches is helpful but optional.

Step 1: Lock the script you are boarding

Storyboarding a moving target wastes time. Before you generate a single frame, settle on the draft you are boarding, at least for the scenes you plan to tackle first. If the script is still changing, board the scenes least likely to change and leave the rest for later.

Number every scene, if your script doesn't already. Then read the scene you are starting with twice: once for story (what happens, and what the audience should feel) and once for visuals (every place, person, prop, and piece of action the script mentions). Highlight anything visual on that second pass. Those highlights become the raw material for your shots.

Step 2: Break each scene into beats, then shots

This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that separates a useful storyboard from a pile of pretty pictures.

A beat is a moment where something changes: a character notices something, makes a decision, reveals information, or reacts. Most short scenes have between three and eight beats. Write each one as a single sentence.

Then decide how you want to show each beat. Some beats need a single shot. Others need two or three (a wide to establish the space, then a close-up to show a reaction). For each shot, jot down four things:

  • Shot size: extreme wide, wide, medium, close-up, extreme close-up.
  • Angle: eye level, low, high, over-the-shoulder, point of view.
  • Action: what is happening in the frame, in plain words.
  • Purpose: why the shot exists (establish the location, reveal the package, show her hesitation).

Here is an example from a short scene about a courier who receives a mysterious package:

  1. Extreme wide, eye level: a quiet city street at dawn, a lone cyclist approaching. Purpose: establish the world and the mood.
  2. Medium, eye level: the courier stops at a shop door and takes a package from the owner. Purpose: introduce the courier and the package.
  3. Extreme close-up: the package label, with no sender's name. Purpose: plant the mystery.
  4. Close-up, slightly low: the courier's face as she reads the label. Purpose: show her unease.
  5. Over-the-shoulder: the courier looks down the empty street. Purpose: build tension.

This is your shot list. Tools like StudioBinder can manage shot lists for large productions, but for most projects a simple document or spreadsheet is enough. The shot list is also your prompt plan, as you will see in Step 6.

Step 3: Write a short visual bible

Consistency is the hardest part of AI storyboarding. The fix starts before you open any software, with a one-page document that describes the recurring elements of your story in fixed, reusable language.

Include:

  • Each main character: age range, build, hair, skin tone, signature clothing, and one or two distinctive details. For example: "woman in her late twenties, short dark curly hair, yellow waterproof jacket, black cycling gloves, gray messenger bag with a reflective strip."
  • Each main location: type of space, time of day, and key features. "Narrow city street with brick shopfronts, wet pavement, streetlights still on at dawn."
  • The overall look: lighting, palette, and rendering style. "Cool blue morning light with warm streetlights, soft film grain, cinematic realism."

You will paste these descriptions into your prompts word for word. Rewriting them from memory each time is the fastest way to end up with a different-looking character in every frame.

Step 4: Set up your project in Firefly

Sign in with your Adobe account and open Adobe Firefly's storyboard tools. Start a new board for your project. Boards give you a flexible canvas where you can generate frames, drop in reference images, and arrange everything in sequence.

Before generating, decide on your aspect ratio. Use 16:9 for most film, commercial, and YouTube work, 9:16 for vertical social video, and a wider ratio like 2.39:1 if you are boarding for a cinematic widescreen feel. Choosing now saves you from reformatting frames later.

It also helps to drop a few reference images onto the board: location photos, a still from a film whose lighting you admire, a color palette, or a rough sketch of your character. These serve as visual notes to yourself and, in the next steps, as references for generation.

Step 5: Create an anchor frame to lock the look

Rather than generating shot one and hoping the rest match, begin by creating a single anchor frame that defines the visual style of the whole piece. Usually your establishing shot is the best candidate, because it shows the most about the world.

Write a prompt that combines your first shot with your visual bible:

"Extreme wide shot, eye level, narrow city street with brick shopfronts and wet pavement at dawn, streetlights still on, a lone cyclist in a yellow jacket approaching from the distance, cool blue morning light with warm streetlight glow, soft film grain, cinematic realism."

Generate several variations. Pick the one whose lighting, palette, and texture best match what you imagine for the whole project. That frame is now your anchor, and you will use it as a style reference for everything that follows.

Do the same for your main character. Generate a clean medium shot of the courier using her fixed description, choose the best result, and keep it on your board as a character reference.

Step 6: Generate the sequence, shot by shot

Now work through your shot list. For each frame, build the prompt from the same pieces in the same order:

  1. Camera: shot size and angle.
  2. Subject and action: who is in the frame and what they are doing, using your fixed character description.
  3. Setting: the location description from your visual bible.
  4. Look: lighting and style terms.

Then apply your anchor frame as a style reference so the palette and rendering carry across the sequence. Keeping the structure identical and changing only the camera and action is what keeps a board coherent.

For shot three in the example, the prompt might be: "Extreme close-up, a gloved hand holding a small brown paper package, the shipping label clearly visible with a blank sender field, soft focus on wet street background, cool blue morning light, soft film grain, cinematic realism."

Expect to generate a few variations per shot. Choose the one that best serves the shot's purpose, not simply the prettiest image. A frame that clearly shows the courier's unease is more useful than a stunning frame where her expression is ambiguous.

This combination of a written shot plan and controlled generation is how AI genuinely helps with pre-production planning and visual shot creation. The AI handles rendering; you handle storytelling.

Step 7: Control framing with sketches or reference photos

Some shots need a specific composition that is hard to describe in words: a character in the exact lower-left corner, a doorway framing a figure, a precise over-the-shoulder angle. For these, use a composition reference.

Draw a quick thumbnail (stick figures and boxes are fine), take a phone photo of a friend posed in the right position, or grab a rough layout from any image. Use it as the composition reference, and Firefly will follow its framing while applying your prompt and style reference. This is often faster than rewriting a prompt five times to nudge a subject into place.

Step 8: Fix frames instead of starting over

Almost every board has a few frames that are close but not right. The jacket comes out red instead of yellow. An unwanted figure appears in the background. The package is missing from her hand in the next shot. A square frame needs to be widescreen.

Rather than regenerating, edit. Open the frame in Photoshop or use Firefly's editing tools, select the problem area, and use Generative Fill to describe the change (for example, "yellow waterproof jacket" or "empty street, no people"). The rest of the frame stays intact. For aspect ratio changes, use Generative Expand to extend the canvas and have the new space filled in to match.

This is the habit that makes AI storyboarding feel controlled rather than random. It also keeps continuity tight, because you can correct small details that would otherwise break the illusion of a single, consistent world.

Step 9: Arrange, annotate, and check continuity

Lay your frames out in order on the board. Then review the sequence as a story, not as individual images.

Add short notes under each frame: the shot number, any dialogue or voiceover, sound cues, and camera movement (a slow push-in, a pan left, a handheld follow). These notes turn pictures into instructions.

Then do a continuity pass. Check that:

  • Characters look the same from frame to frame.
  • Props stay consistent (the package is in her hand when it should be).
  • Screen direction holds (if she rides left to right in one shot, she shouldn't suddenly ride right to left without reason).
  • Lighting and time of day match across the scene.

Fix anything that breaks using the editing approach from Step 8. This review is what turns a set of images into a cohesive visual narrative, one where a viewer can follow the story from picture to picture without confusion.

Step 10: Add timing and motion

Static frames can hide pacing problems. A short animatic, where each frame appears on screen for its intended duration, shows you whether a scene feels rushed or drags.

Bring your frames into Premiere Pro, set approximate durations, and add a temp voiceover or music track. Even a rough version reveals a lot. For key moments, you can also use Firefly's video generation to turn a frame into a short clip, such as a slow drift across the skyline for your opening shot or a gentle push-in on the courier's face. A few moving shots mixed with still frames make an animatic far more persuasive for clients and collaborators.

Step 11: Export and share

When the board is ready, export it in the form your audience needs. Clients and stakeholders usually want a PDF or a clean presentation deck, which you can assemble quickly in Adobe Express. Crews want printable pages with shot numbers and notes. Editors and animators often want the frames as individual image files alongside the animatic.

Keep your visual bible, anchor frame, and character references saved with the project. If the script changes or you need to board a new scene later, those references let you pick up exactly where you left off with the same look.

Tips for best results

Speak the language of cinema. Firefly responds well to specific film terms. "Low-angle close-up, shallow depth of field, rim light from behind" gets you much closer to your intent than "dramatic picture of her face."

Keep prompts structured and repetitive. The same order, the same character descriptions, the same style terms. Change only what needs to change between shots.

Choose frames for clarity, not beauty. A storyboard's job is communication. If a gorgeous frame muddies the story point, pick the plainer one.

Board the key moments first. On tight deadlines, start with the shots that carry the story (reveals, reactions, turning points) and fill in transitional shots afterward.

Use Firefly's own models for client work. Firefly's models are trained on licensed Adobe Stock and public domain content, which gives you a clearer commercial-use footing than many image generators. The Firefly app also offers some third-party partner models, so stick with Adobe's own when your boards are headed into pitches, lookbooks, or published materials.

Know when a specialist helps. If you want a script parsed into shots automatically, tools like Katalist or Boords do that, though with less control over the finished frames. If you are running a large shoot, StudioBinder can connect your shot list to schedules and call sheets. If you need advanced motion tests, Runway focuses on video. For most creators, though, the workflow above covers the whole journey from script to shareable board.

Common mistakes to avoid

Skipping the shot list. Jumping straight into generation produces frames without purpose, and you end up with too many shots of some beats and none of others. Ten minutes of planning saves an hour of regenerating.

Describing characters differently each time. "Young woman with curly hair" in one prompt and "twenty-something courier" in the next produces two different people. Paste from your visual bible.

Regenerating instead of editing. If a frame is ninety percent right, fix the ten percent. Rerolling often introduces new problems and burns credits.

Ignoring screen direction. Flipping a character's direction between shots confuses viewers. Check it during your continuity pass.

Overloading a single frame. One shot should communicate one idea. If a prompt tries to show the courier, the shop owner, the package, the street, and a mysterious stranger all at once, split it into multiple shots.

Forgetting the audience of the board. A client pitch needs polished frames and a clean deck. A crew needs shot numbers, camera notes, and printable pages. Decide who the board is for before you export.

Waiting too long to show anyone. Share an early draft with a collaborator. Fresh eyes catch story gaps and confusing frames long before a finished board would.

Turning a script into a storyboard comes down to two skills working together: planning each shot with a clear purpose, and producing frames that show it consistently. Firefly takes care of much of the second skill, from generating cinematic frames to keeping a sequence cohesive and letting you fix details without starting over, which leaves you free to focus on the story itself. Start with a single scene, follow the steps above, and you will have a board you can confidently put in front of a client, a crew, or your own critical eye.