Lesson 1 of 4 · 5 min
Inpainting
You can change one part of an image and leave the rest untouched.
Inpainting replaces a region you mark and leaves everything outside it untouched. It is the right tool whenever you would otherwise regenerate a whole image to fix a corner of it.
Steps
- Open the image and mark the area you want changed.
- Describe what should be there, not what is there now.
- Keep the mask slightly larger than the object, so edges have room to blend.
- Compare the untouched areas to confirm nothing moved.
Getting the mask right
Too tight and the new content has no room to meet the old, so you get a visible seam. Too loose and you are regenerating things that were fine. A small margin around the object is usually right.
What to watch for
Inpainting struggles when the replacement has to obey lighting that is only implied elsewhere in the image. If the light source is out of frame, say what it is in the description.