Adobe Photoshop is among the many most recognizable items of software program ever created, utilized by greater than 90% of the world’s artistic professionals, based on Photutorial.
So the truth that a new open supply AI mannequin — Qwen-Picture Edit, launched yesterday by Chinese language e-commerce large Alibaba’s Qwen Workforce of AI researchers — is now in a position to accomplish an enormous variety of Photoshop-like enhancing jobs with textual content inputs alone, is a notable achievement.
Constructed on the 20-billion-parameter Qwen-Picture basis mannequin launched earlier this month, Qwen-Picture-Edit extends the system’s distinctive strengths in textual content rendering to cowl a large spectrum of enhancing duties, from delicate look modifications to broader semantic transformations.
Merely add a beginning picture — I attempted considered one of myself from VentureBeat’s final annual Remodel convention in San Francisco — after which kind directions of what you wish to change, and Qwen-Picture-Edit will return a brand new picture with these edits utilized.
Enter picture instance:
Output picture instance with immediate: “Make the person carrying a tuxedo.”
The mannequin is obtainable now throughout a number of platforms, together with Qwen Chat, Hugging Face, ModelScope, GitHub, and thru the Alibaba Cloud software programming interface (API), the latter which permits any third-party developer or enterprise to combine this new mannequin into their very own purposes and workflows.
I created my examples above on Qwen Chat, the Qwen Workforce’s rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, nevertheless, it must be famous for any aspiring customers that generations are restricted to about 8 free jobs (enter/outputs) per 12 hour interval earlier than it resets. Paying customers can have entry to extra jobs.
With assist for each English and Chinese language inputs, and a twin give attention to each semantic that means and visible constancy, Qwen-Picture-Edit goals to decrease obstacles to professional-grade visible content material creation.
And on condition that the mannequin is obtainable as an open supply code underneath an Apache 2.0 license, it’s protected for enterprises to take, obtain and arrange without spending a dime on their very own {hardware} or digital clouds/machines, doubtlessly leading to an enormous price financial savings from proprietary software program like Photoshop.
As Junyang Lin, a Qwen Workforce researcher wrote on X, “it could possibly take away a strand of hair, very delicate picture modification.”
The workforce’s announcement echoes this sentiment, presenting Qwen-Picture-Edit not as a wholly new system, however as a pure extension of Qwen-Picture that applies its distinctive textual content rendering and dual-encoding method on to enhancing duties.
Twin encodings permit for edits preserving fashion and content material of unique picture
Qwen-Picture-Edit builds on the muse established by Qwen-Picture, which was launched earlier this yr as a large-scale mannequin specializing in each picture technology and textual content rendering.
Qwen-Picture’s technical report highlighted its capacity to deal with advanced duties like paragraph-level textual content rendering, Chinese language and English characters, and multi-line layouts with accuracy.
The report additionally emphasised a dual-encoding mechanism, feeding photos concurrently into Qwen2.5-VL for semantic management and a variational autoencoder (VAE) for reconstructive element. This method permits edits that stay devoted to each the intent of the immediate and the look of the unique picture.
Those self same architectural decisions underpin Qwen-Picture-Edit. By leveraging twin encodings, the mannequin can alter at two ranges: semantic edits that change the that means or construction of a scene, and look edits that introduce or take away components whereas protecting the remainder untouched.
Semantic enhancing contains creating new mental property, rotating objects 90 or 180 levels to disclose totally different views, or remodeling an enter into one other fashion equivalent to Studio Ghibli-inspired artwork. These edits sometimes modify many pixels however protect the underlying identification of objects.
Right here’s an instance of semantic enhancing from Shridhar Athinarayanan, an engineer at AI purposes platform Replicate, who used a Replicate-hosted implementation or “inference” of Qwen to reskin a photograph of Manhattan to appear to be a toy Lego set.
Look enhancing focuses on exact, native modifications. In these circumstances, many of the picture stays unchanged whereas particular objects are altered. Demonstrations embody including a signboard that generates a mirrored image in water, eradicating stray hair strands from a portrait, and altering the colour of a single letter in a textual content picture.
One good instance of look enhancing with Qwen-Picture Edit comes from AnswerAI co-founder and CEO Thomas Hill who posted a side-by-side on X displaying his spouse in her wedding ceremony costume under an archway and one other with the identical archway lined with graffiti:
Mixed with Qwen’s established power in rendering Chinese language and English textual content, the editing-focused system is positioned as a versatile instrument for creators who want greater than easy generative imagery.
The twin management over semantic scope and look constancy means the identical instrument can serve very totally different wants, from artistic IP improvement to production-level picture retouching.
Including or eradicating textual content to pictures
One other standout functionality is bilingual textual content enhancing. Qwen-Picture-Edit permits customers so as to add, take away, or modify textual content in each Chinese language and English whereas preserving font, measurement, and elegance.
This expands on Qwen-Picture’s popularity for robust textual content rendering, notably in difficult situations like intricate Chinese language characters.
In apply, this enables for correct enhancing of posters, indicators, T-shirts, or calligraphy artworks the place small textual content particulars matter, as seen in one other instance from Replicate under.
One demonstration concerned correcting errors in a chunk of generated Chinese language calligraphy via a step-by-step chained enhancing course of.
Customers might spotlight incorrect areas, instruct the system to repair them, after which additional refine particulars till the proper characters had been rendered. This iterative method reveals how the mannequin could be utilized to high-stakes enhancing duties the place precision is crucial.
Purposes and use circumstances
The Qwen workforce has highlighted a variety of potential purposes:
- Inventive design and IP growth, equivalent to producing mascot-based emoji packs.
- Promoting and content material creation, the place logos, signage, and text-heavy visuals could be custom-made.
- Digital avatars and artwork, with fashion switch supporting distinctive character representations.
- Pictures and private use, together with background changes, clothes modifications, and object removing.
- Cultural preservation, demonstrated via correcting classical calligraphy works.
By bridging fine-grained enhancing with broader artistic transformations, Qwen-Picture-Edit caters to professionals who want management whereas remaining approachable for informal experimentation.
Benchmarking and efficiency
In keeping with the Qwen workforce, evaluations throughout public benchmarks point out that Qwen-Picture-Edit delivers state-of-the-art efficiency in picture enhancing.
This follows from the broader Qwen-Picture technical evaluations, the place the bottom mannequin achieved main leads to each normal picture technology and textual content rendering duties.
Whereas particular enhancing benchmark figures weren’t detailed within the launch, Qwen-Picture itself ranked extremely in unbiased evaluations equivalent to AI Area, the place human raters in contrast outputs throughout fashions from totally different suppliers.
API pricing and availability
By way of Alibaba Cloud Mannequin Studio, builders can entry Qwen-Picture-Edit as an API. Pricing is ready at $0.045 per picture, with a free quota of 100 photos legitimate for 180 days after activation.
The service is initially accessible within the Singapore area, with a charge restrict of 5 requests per second and as much as two concurrent duties per account.
To make use of the API, builders should receive a Mannequin Studio API key and might name the mannequin by way of HTTP or via the DashScope SDK in Python or Java.
Photos could be submitted as URLs or in Base64 format, with supported resolutions starting from 512 to 4,096 pixels and file sizes as much as 10 MB. Output photos are hosted on Alibaba Cloud Object Storage with hyperlinks legitimate for twenty-four hours, requiring customers to obtain and save outcomes promptly.
What’s subsequent for Qwen?
Qwen positions Picture-Edit as a step toward decreasing obstacles for visible content material creation. By making exact, style-consistent enhancing extra accessible, the mannequin might assist purposes from design studios to informal customers refining private initiatives.
The system additionally indicators a broader development in AI improvement: transferring past single-purpose technology towards instruments that combine enhancing, correction, and refinement.
With each semantic flexibility and appearance-level precision, Qwen-Picture-Edit displays this shift, mixing the generative strengths of enormous fashions with the reliability required for skilled enhancing.
