Adobe Photoshop is one of the most well-known software globally, utilized by over 90% of creative professionals, as reported by Photutorial. A notable development is the release of a new open-source AI model, Qwen-Image Edit, by Alibaba’s Qwen Team. This AI can perform numerous Photoshop-like edits using only text inputs. Based on the 20-billion-parameter Qwen-Image foundation model, released earlier, Qwen-Image-Edit expands text rendering capabilities to cover a wide range of editing tasks, from minor appearance tweaks to major semantic changes.
To use Qwen-Image-Edit, upload an image and type instructions for edits. For instance, an image from VentureBeat’s conference was transformed just by text prompts. This model is available on multiple platforms like Qwen Chat, Hugging Face, ModelScope, GitHub, and Alibaba Cloud API, allowing developers to integrate it into their applications. Users can try it on Qwen Chat but are limited to 8 free jobs every 12 hours, with more available for paying users.
Qwen-Image-Edit excels in both English and Chinese inputs, focusing on semantic meaning and visual fidelity, lowering the barrier for professional-grade visual content creation. It is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, offering potential cost savings from proprietary software. Junyang Lin from the Qwen Team emphasizes its delicate modification capabilities, like removing a strand of hair.
Qwen-Image-Edit leverages dual encodings for edits that preserve the style and content of the original image. Semantic edits change a scene’s meaning or structure, while appearance edits focus on local changes. These capabilities allow creative expansion, from generating imagery like Studio Ghibli art to precise changes like text edits in multiple languages.
Applications span creative design, advertising, virtual avatars, photography, and cultural preservation. The model serves various needs from casual experimentation to production-level photo retouching. It’s available via Alibaba Cloud Model Studio API with pricing of $0.045 per image, offering a free quota of 100 images for 180 days post-activation.
Qwen positions Image-Edit as a tool to lower barriers in visual content creation, showcasing a trend towards AI tools that integrate editing, correction, and refinement. With semantic flexibility and precision, it blends the strengths of large models with professional editing reliability.