Inpainting

Inpainting redraws only the painted area (the mask); pixels outside it don’t change at all. It’s suited to fixing hands, faces and small objects, or replacing part of an image.

Basic steps

1. Choose “Inpaint” as the refine mode.
2. Paint the area to redraw on the image on the right.
3. Describe in the prompt what this area should become.
4. Choose the amount of change and press “Redraw”.

Mask tools

Tool	Shortcut	Description
Brush	B	Paint freely
Rectangle	R	Drag a rectangle; hold Shift for a square
Ellipse	O	Drag an ellipse; hold Shift for a circle
Lasso	L	Drag to draw around an area
Polygon	P	Click each corner; click the start point, double-click or press Enter to close, Esc to cancel
Magic wand	W	Click to select a connected area of similar colour; hold Shift to select similar colours across the whole image. Higher “Tolerance” selects a wider range
Color	C	Paint colour as the starting point for redrawing (see the next section)

Every tool can paint or erase: press E to switch, or hold Alt to reverse it temporarily.

Action	Description
Invert (I)	Swaps painted and unpainted areas
Grow, Shrink	Expands or contracts the mask by 8 pixels
Undo (Ctrl+Z)	Undoes the last step
Clear	Clears the whole mask
Brush size	[, ] or Shift + scroll

Area

Option	When to use
Whole image	The model sees the whole image and only the painted area changes. Suited to large changes that need to match the whole image
Around the mask	Only the area around the mask is enlarged, redrawn and scaled back, giving more detail. Suited to faces, hands and small objects. Describe only the painted area in the prompt for best results

“Edge softening” softens the mask edge by a few pixels so the seam is less visible.

Start from

Option	Description
Original	Redraws starting from the existing content; composition and colours carry over
Blank	Smooths the area with surrounding colours before redrawing; suited to removing objects. “Moderate” or stronger is recommended

Painting colour as a starting point

To change an area to a specific colour (for example, red clothing), paint the colour directly onto the image with the “Color” tool and redraw:

• Painted colour is also added to the mask, so it only appears inside the mask.
• Hold Ctrl and click the image to pick a colour.
• Works best with “Original” and “Moderate”.

Removing objects

Choose “Remove” as the refine mode to remove unwanted objects:

1. Paint over the object.
2. “What to remove” is optional; if filled in, use English tags separated by commas. These are added to the negative prompt, and prompt tags that mention them are skipped (the prompt field itself isn’t changed).
3. In the prompt, describe what should be there afterwards (for example wall, sky), not the object you’re removing.
4. Press “Redraw”.

Remove always uses “Blank” and the whole image. Recommended amounts:

Level	Description
Subtle	Conservative; may leave a blurry trace
Moderate	Suits most cases
Strong	Complete redraw; the cleanest, but edges may look less natural

Smoother seams (ControlNet)

With SDXL-family models, Inpaint, Remove and Outpaint can turn on “Smoother seams”. It redraws with reference to the surroundings, so seams look more natural and unrelated things are less likely to appear. It adds about 3 seconds per image.

It needs the union model, which you can download in the generate panel’s “Reference” window (see Reference images).