How to inpaint with AI: five models compared

Inpainting changes one part of a picture and leaves the rest alone. You paint over what should change and say what should be there instead, and an AI model repaints only that area. At least, that is the idea. On 8 November 2026 we gave Pickframe’s five inpaint models the same three pictures, the same painted areas and the same words, and kept every first result.

How we tested

• Three pictures: a product shot and a portrait of a fictional woman from our first model comparison, both made by Krea 2 Turbo, and a photograph of a living room from Unsplash.
• Each area was painted with round brush strokes, as the Pickframe editor paints them, at the picture’s own size. Every model got the same painted area: white where it may change, black where it should not.
• Five models: Z-Image Turbo Inpaint, GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint, Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint, Qwen Image Edit Inpaint and FLUX.1 Pro Fill. They ran through the same fal.ai routes and requests as the Pickframe editor.
• One result per model and wording: no retries, no picking the best of several, no retouching. Select any picture to open the untouched original file.
• For the room we tried three wordings. We wrote the third after seeing the first two, and sent it to four models: by then, Z-Image Turbo Inpaint had ignored the picture in every test.

One result per model cannot rank models. It shows what each one did with these pictures on one run, which is the kind of difference worth checking on your own picture before you choose.

The results at a glance

Four of the five models edited the picture they were given. They differed in what they drew, in how much of the rest they kept, and in the wording they needed. The fifth never used the picture at all.

Credits are Pickframe’s prices on the day. In the studio you can tick up to four of these models for one edit, and each makes its own version.

Test 1: replace the cap on a product shot

We painted over the bottle’s brushed silver cap and the metal collar under it, with a little of the wall around them, and described the cap we wanted.

• GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint made a matte black cap that sits straight on the glass, with no collar. It looks the most like a real product photograph.
• Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint drew the black cap above a polished chrome collar, as if only the cap itself had been changed.
• Qwen Image Edit Inpaint made a black cap on a black collar. Up close, there is a small notch in the cap’s left edge.
• FLUX.1 Pro Fill made a narrower cap. Up close, a faint, lighter outline of the painted area shows on the wall behind it.
• Z-Image Turbo Inpaint returned a different picture altogether: a black frosted bottle on a windowsill. Nothing of the original is left.

Test 2: remove a side table from a room

Removing something is the most common reason to inpaint, and the one where wording matters most. We painted over the black side table, which stands on the rug and overlaps the edge of the white coffee table. We did not paint its shadow on the rug, which is easy to miss.

• GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint removed the table with every wording and continued the rug and the coffee table convincingly. With the third, it also turned the strip of wooden floor beside the rug into rug: it took “fill this area” further than the area we painted.
• Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint removed it every time and kept everything else, including the table’s shadow, which we had not painted. With the third wording it added a book on the corner of the coffee table, which was inside the painted area.
• Qwen Image Edit Inpaint removed the table only when told to: “Remove the black side table.” Given either description of a rug, it returned the room unchanged.
• FLUX.1 Pro Fill did the opposite. Told to remove the table, it drew a new black side table. Told what should be there, it removed the table but left a dark patch on the rug.
• Z-Image Turbo Inpaint returned a new picture of what the words named: a side table on a herringbone floor, then a grey rug on a wooden floor.

Only Bria returned the photograph at its own size, 960 × 653. GPT Image 2.6 returned it slightly larger and very nearly in proportion. Qwen and FLUX.1 Pro Fill returned it in an exact 3:2 shape, about 2% wider for its height than the original.

Test 3: change the top in a portrait

Clothes are a common edit, and a hard one: the new top has to meet her neck and hair naturally, and her face must not change. We painted over her charcoal top, a little over the neckline.

• GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint made the most convincing jumper: chunky cable knit with a ribbed round neck that sits naturally at her collarbones.
• Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint and Qwen Image Edit Inpaint both made a mustard cable knit with a thin charcoal line along the neckline, as if a T-shirt showed underneath. Bria also drew a dark patch at the shoulder on the left of the picture. Both kept a small dark spot on the sleeve on the right: a few pixels our mask had missed, which they rightly left as they were.
• FLUX.1 Pro Fill made a ribbed jumper with a round neck, but in navy. It ignored “mustard-yellow”.
• Z-Image Turbo Inpaint returned a picture of a mustard jumper on a hanger, with no one wearing it.

Did they leave the rest alone?

An inpaint model should change only what you paint. We compared every pixel outside the painted area with the original, in the two square pictures, which every model returned at their own size. For scale, saving the original once more as a JPEG changes those pixels by 0.8 in the product shot and 1.0 in the portrait, on average, out of 255.

Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint kept the rest of the picture to within JPEG noise, and returns a lossless PNG. Qwen and FLUX.1 Pro Fill came very close, slightly softer in the portrait. GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint redraws the whole picture, following the original closely outside the painted area. Its changes there are small but everywhere: in the maps below, they trace every edge in the portrait.

At normal size the portrait still looks like the same woman. Up close, GPT Image 2.6 has redrawn her skin: many freckles are fainter or gone. In the product shot it went the other way and added a little grain, which is why its detail figure there is over 100%.

In the room, only Bria returned the photograph at its own size, so the others had to be resized to compare and their figures are not like for like. Side by side, GPT Image 2.6 redrew the room as it redrew the portrait, most visibly when it carpeted the floor, while the other three kept what was there.

The wording that worked

The room test shows two kinds of model. Some read your words as a description of the finished picture; others read them as an instruction to act on.

• FLUX.1 Pro Fill paints what you name. It treats your words as a description of the area, so “remove the black side table” brought back a black side table. Describe what should be there, and leave out what should go.
• Qwen Image Edit Inpaint needs an instruction. A description of a rug, even one starting “Fill this area with”, changed nothing. Only “Remove the black side table” worked.
• GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint and Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint followed all three. They are the safe choice when one wording has to suit every model you tick.
• To replace something, describe the new thing. For the cap and the top, a description of the result worked for all four models that used the picture, apart from FLUX.1 Pro Fill’s colour. Add the light (“in the same soft window light”) so the new part matches the old.

In one Pickframe edit, every model you tick gets the same words, and we found no wording that both FLUX.1 Pro Fill and Qwen took the right way when removing something. Run them as separate edits, or choose GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint and Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint.

How to paint the area

• Paint a little past the edges. A model that keeps the rest of the picture keeps your mistakes too: Bria and Qwen left a dark spot on the sleeve where our mask had missed a few pixels.
• Paint shadows and reflections with the object. The side table’s shadow was outside our painted area, so Bria, Qwen and FLUX.1 Pro Fill left it on the rug after removing the table.
• Include what should change with it. We painted the cap’s collar too, which let each model decide how the new cap meets the glass.
• Do not rely on a redraw to hide mistakes. GPT Image 2.6 also removed the shadow, as it redraws the whole picture; the same redraw faded the freckles.

What happened with Z-Image Turbo Inpaint

Z-Image Turbo Inpaint is the cheapest and fastest of the five: it returned each result in under five seconds. But every result was a new picture made from the words alone, inside the painted area and outside it. The other four models got the same pictures and painted areas and used them. As things stand, it is not a model for edits like these, so Pickframe stopped offering it on 8 November 2026. It comes back if a later version uses the picture.

What we would take from this

• To keep everything you did not paint, Bria Fibo 2.0 Inpaint kept it to within JPEG noise here, and Qwen and FLUX.1 Pro Fill very nearly so.
• For the most finished result, GPT Image 2.6 Inpaint made the most convincing jumper and, with the first two wordings, the cleanest removals. Check faces and small details outside the painted area: it redraws them.
• Match the wording to the model. Describe the result for FLUX.1 Pro Fill; give Qwen Image Edit Inpaint an instruction.
• Paint generously, including shadows, and check the edges of the painted area at full size.
• Compare more than one. In each test at least one model did something the others did not, from a missed colour to a new book on the table.

Inpaint your own picture in Pickframe

1. Open a picture saved in your account and choose Edit with AI. The editor opens on the AI edit tab. AI edits work on pictures in your account, not on the samples.
2. Under Edit operation, choose Edit selected area.
3. Set the Brush size and paint over what should change. Undo stroke and Clear mask take paint away, and Mask whole image selects everything.
4. Write the Edit instruction in the form your models need, as above.
5. Tick up to four Edit models and choose Run AI edit. The button shows the credit cost first. Each version appears next to the original, and your text and logo layers stay in the editor.

To finish an edit elsewhere, Download edit brief saves the picture, the painted area as a black and white mask and your instruction in one file. To add space around a picture instead, see how to extend an image with AI. Every original, the masks, the exact requests, the checksums and the measurements for these 24 results are in the public manifest.