AI Image Editor 2026: Remove Objects, Extend Photos and Fix Faces With Free Tools

Photoshop's AI features cost $20/month. Open source AI editing does the same job locally - here are the tools and the exact workflow.

💡 What You Will Learn

Photoshop's AI features cost $20/month. Open source AI editing does the same job locally - here are the tools and the exact workflow.

📜 Table of Contents

• The Open Source Photoshop Moment
• The Tools
• The Three Editing Moves Everyone Needs
• Hardware Reality
• The ComfyUI Advantage

The Open Source Photoshop Moment

Generative editing - removing objects, extending images, changing faces - was the killer feature that pushed people to paid tools. Every one of those features now has a free local equivalent, and the quality gap has basically closed for most tasks.

The Tools

• ComfyUI (125,304 stars) - the power tool. Node-based interface where you build editing pipelines: inpainting (remove/replace objects), outpainting (extend beyond borders), face restoration. Steeper learning curve, unlimited ceiling.
• Stable Diffusion WebUI / A1111 (164,462 stars) - the friendlier all-in-one. One-click installers, inpainting built in, huge community of models. Start here.
• InvokeAI - a middle ground: production-grade editing UI (object inpainting, canvas tools) without the node-graph complexity.
• CodeFormer (18,102 stars) - the face-fix specialist. Restores old, blurry, or AI-degraded faces. One command line, dramatic results on old photos.

The Three Editing Moves Everyone Needs

1. Object removal. Paint over the object (tourist in your photo, power line in your landscape), run inpaint, done. The model fills with plausible background.
2. Outpainting. Extend a photo beyond its original edges - make a square photo 16:9, add sky above a cropped building. The model invents continuation that matches.
3. Face restoration. Run CodeFormer on old family photos. It rebuilds faces at realistic detail, then you dial the strength back to avoid the plastic look.

Hardware Reality

Inpainting on a 6-8GB GPU: a few seconds per edit. On CPU-only: 1-3 minutes per edit - usable, but batch work will test your patience. For occasional edits, CPU works; for volume, any used GPU with 8GB+ makes the difference.

The ComfyUI Advantage

Once you have done manual edits a few times, ComfyUI workflows turn them into one-click presets: load a photo, press a button, get a cleaned version. That is the 2026 way - not editing faster, but automating the edit.