Using AI to generate a beautiful poster may only take tens of seconds, but if you want it to reach a truly deliverable standard, the trouble has just begun.

If you change the color of the product, the background will change; if you adjust a sentence of copywriting, the facial features of the character will be out of shape; if you want to cut out the material separately and reuse it, you have to do it all over again.AI is getting better and better at drawing, but it has not yet fully learned how to modify images as accurately as Photoshop.

Just now, Bytedance released Seedream 5.5, a new generation image creation model.It focuses on pixel-level precise editing, hundreds of rounds of modification without collapse, and supports native RGBA transparent materials andSmall text rendering, photography textureand other capabilities, further bringing AI-generated images into the field of professional image editing. Volcano Engine will launch Seedream 5.5 API service this week.

From generating images in one sentence to accurately modifying images in one sentence, AI image generation is moving towards the "AI version of PS". This time Aifaner also transformed into a difficult client, and seriously experienced the actual level of torture of this raw model.

From iPhone Duo to "Armed into the Song Dynasty", AI image modification finally has pixel-level control

How far can Seedream 5.5 go with its pixel-precise editing and multi-round consistency? We decided to experiment with the already released iPhone Duo to see if we could turn it into a retro tape player through continuous modification.

In the initial picture, a half-folded iPhone Duo is held in the palm of both hands, with the left and right screens showing different interfaces. The goal was to transform one of the screens into a retro tape player through successive modifications, while preserving as much of the design of the phone itself as possible.

Swipe left to view more content, original picture (left), modified finished picture (right)

The entire process is based on the previous round of pictures, first removing redundant components, changing wallpapers, and then gradually adjusting the interface layout, adding album covers, playback controls and tape elements until the right screen turns into a tape player with a sense of age.

Finally, we proposed a more substantial modification request, replacing the original clean white background with a vinyl record store, changing the entire picture from a product display picture into a retro-style commercial promotional picture.

After multiple rounds of revisions, Seedream 5.5 still retains the main structure of the phone and the confirmed design elements, reflecting SOTA-level local editing capabilities.

If the iPhone Duo tests whether the product structure and UI components can remain consistent during repeated modifications, then we decided to increase the strength of the AI ​​to see if it can balance precise editing and artistic expression in the face of more complex multi-character compositions, so that a movie poster can still maintain a unified aesthetic and visual style despite continuous modifications.

Recently, the AI ​​short drama "Armed into the Song Dynasty" has attracted much attention. We also took this inspiration and tried to transform a modern five-person portrait poster into a promotional poster for the costume suspense movie "Into the Bianjing" through 18 rounds of continuous editing to see if the characters, composition, light and shadow, and movie atmosphere can withstand repeated adjustments.

Starting from the initial modern character shapes, we gradually proposed modification requirements. First, we adjusted the positions and clothing of the five people, then replaced the background with an ancient city gate, then added rain screens, cold-toned movie lights and shadows, and finally added Chinese titles, giving the whole picture the atmosphere of a period suspense blockbuster.

The difficulty of multi-character scenes is obviously higher. The facial features, clothing, positions, and front-to-back occlusion relationships of the five people need to be consistent at the same time. Especially when the background and light and shadow are modified, the model can easily regenerate the characters.

But judging from the final result, Seedream 5.5 still retains the identity of the characters and the previously determined composition well after 18 consecutive rounds of revisions, allowing the same poster to continue to be improved along new creative directions.

Immediately afterwards, we asked it to complete two sets of tasks closer to daily design work.

One group is to create new product posters for the original coffee brand "Monday Life". From the color of the iced latte cup to the text, background and local decoration, more than ten rounds of modification requests were made to observe whether the tabletop texture, light and shadow and product details that were already satisfactory could remain the same.

The other group is an office desktop illustration. Among three coffee cups, five notebooks, two pots of green plants and other sundries, the AI ​​is required to modify only the cup with the blue handle in the lower left corner to test whether it can accurately identify the target from a large number of similar items.

After several sets of tests, Seedream 5.5 gives people the most intuitive feeling, that is, when making modifications, you don’t have to worry about other places suffering.

You know, traditional Photoshop can precisely control the editing range through selections, layers, and masks, while generative AI often recalculates the surrounding scene when modifying local content. The more consecutive revisions, the higher the risk that characters, structure, and details will drift.

The progress of Seedream 5.5 is precisely reflected in making the changes happen while retaining the confirmed content as much as possible. Even in the competition with head models such as ChatGPT Images 2.6 and Nano Banana 2.1, its performance in multiple rounds of editing consistency shows that it competes for the best in the industry.

This is also a highlight of this update of Seedream 5.5:Focusing on multi-round consistency, it supports hundreds of rounds of continuous editing to reduce detail loss and image quality degradation, and continuously improves each picture based on new ideas constantly proposed by users.

It can be said that every subsequent test is built on the foundation of this section: only if the results can be retained can the competition of words, textures and materials be meaningful.

The realistic ambition of Seedream 5.5 starts with a mobile phone selfie

Of course, working as a part-time worker is not just about text-based infographics. Many times, commercial posters have to be stuffed with several AI models. In daily life, everyone inevitably wants to create a few atmospheric portraits to post on social platforms.

But portraits are the mirror that most easily exposed AI models in the past.

In order to test the realism ability of Seedream 5.5, we simulated a variety of daily mobile phone shooting scenes in the prompt words, and described photography details such as lighting, skin texture, motion blur, etc. in detail to see if the model can generate images that are close to real casual shots.

Figure｜3:4 Vertical, ultra-realistic iPhone front-facing camera close-up selfie, showing the life photos accidentally left when you just got up and picked up the phone. The character stretches one hand forward, the phone is slightly tilted to the right side of the face, the lens is close to eye level, the composition is tilted, the top of the head is slightly cropped, and the shoulders are naturally relaxed. The same young adult East Asian woman who strictly retains her identity, facial features, hairstyle and body proportions in the reference image wears a loose cotton top and stands by the hotel window, with an out-of-focus bed, half-open suitcase and corner visible behind her. The natural light in the cloudy morning passes through the tulle curtains, forming a large soft light source from one side of the picture. The cheeks near the window are bright, and the cheeks on the far side gradually darken, leaving wide and soft shadows on the lower jaw and neck. The skin presents its true, unmodified state: tiny pores can be seen on the nose and inside of the cheeks, there is slight swelling and fine lines under the eyes, the cheeks are partially reddish, the lips are slightly dry, and there is only a small amount of natural sebum on the forehead to reflect light; the tiny villi are only visible under appropriate side lighting angles. There are natural differences in skin color on the forehead, cheeks, around the eyes and neck, so the entire face is not processed into a uniform color block. Bright windows allow for slight overexposure, and interior backgrounds are darkened, retaining a slight sense of phone compression without the use of beauty filters, strong HDR, or exaggerated pore sharpening.

When taking selfies after the concert, you need to preserve messy hair, light sweat on your forehead, cold white light from convenience stores and signboard reflections, as well as local overexposure, noise in dark areas, and smear of passersby. The portrait of a person in the back seat of a taxi late at night fully expresses the half-darkness of the face when the street lamp passes by, as well as the pores and oiliness on the skin.

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Hotel mornings, convenience store freezers, gym aisles, barbecue stalls and old apartment kitchens were also used to observe skin colors, shadows and expressions under different lighting.

Figure | 2:3 Vertical, ultra-realistic iPhone front camera close-up selfie-style consumer-grade digital photo, like accidentally taken when picking up the phone to check messages after training. The character is holding the mobile phone with one hand stretched forward. The camera is located in front of the left side of the face, slightly higher than the eyes and tilted downward. The composition is not completely correct, the face is tilted to the left, and only part of the collar of the sports top is exposed below. The same young adult East Asian male who strictly retains his identity, facial features, hairstyle and body proportions in the reference image is standing in the narrow aisle leading to the locker room in the night gym, his breathing has not yet completely stabilized, his lips are naturally slightly open, and a few strands of sweaty hair are close to his forehead. The top bar light illuminates the forehead, bridge of the nose and shoulders, and the weak light from the side door softens one eye socket, leaving real shadows under the brow bone, the bottom of the nose and under the chin. The skin shows local redness after exercise, there are small sweat beads of different sizes on the temples and hairline, pores are visible on the wings of the nose, and short stubble remains on the upper lip and mandible; some sweat beads form bright small reflections, and the rest of the area only has a thin moist feeling, and the entire face is not treated to be even and shiny. The background equipment and door frame converge slightly obliquely with the tilted composition. There is a loss of detail in the dark caused by the noise reduction of the mobile phone. No additional outline light is added to sharpen every pore.

We also compared the portrait generation effects of Seedream 5.5, GPT Images 2.6 and Nano Banana 2.1 based on the same prompt word, focusing on comparing skin texture, ambient lighting and photography texture.

After looking at several sets of pictures, Seedream 5.5 and GPT Images 2.6 have an interesting understanding of realism. If I had to sum it up in two words, I would call Seedream 5.5 "regular reality", while GPT Images 2.6 is more like "scrambled reality".

The former is like a photo taken by a photographer who carefully composed the shot and controlled the light. The characters and environment are all arranged just right; the latter has a more casual sense of life capture. Some pictures are not so neat, but they are more reminiscent of the undeliberately modified moments in the photo albums of friends' mobile phones. Both styles have their own merits, which also shows that there is no single standard for realism itself.

Swipe left to see more, Seedream 5.5 (left), GPT Images 2.6 (middle), Nano Banana 2.1 (right)

As for the Nano Banana 2.1 version, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

In addition to static portraits, we also focused the camera on cats and dogs who had just taken a bath. When a cat shakes water, the head and ears need to have motion blur, and the paws on the floor mat are still clear; the dog needs to show wet fur tangles, ear afterimages, and splashing water droplets.

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These details together determine whether the image conforms to the laws of real photography, including where the light comes from, how objects move, and what the moment recorded by the shutter looks like.

The material and light and shadow performance of Seedream 5.5 have also been extended to the game concept design. Whether it's a giant rusty starship stranded in a desolate wasteland, a gloomy and dank Chinese-style horror old house, or an oppressive boss battle in an ancient temple filled with snowstorms, the thick texture of the picture is completely up to date.

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From everyday selfies to fictional scenes, the texture upgrade makes the picture less plasticky. Combined with precise editing, even if Party A later requests to make the skin texture more realistic and dim the light, the skin, material and light can be adjusted along the original image to retain the satisfactory composition.

It is worth mentioning that although many people today believe that one or two sentences can produce a picture, in my opinion, simple prompt words are more suitable for observing the basic ability of the model, while complex prompt words can better test the model's understanding of details and precise control capabilities, and it is easier to find out the upper limit of its capabilities.

Especially for realistic photography, where the light comes from, what the skin should look like, and what kind of blur the lens will produce, the more specific these details are, the easier it is usually for the model to understand the effect you want.

Of course, now writing complex prompt words is not as troublesome as imagined. I usually tell the AI ​​what picture I want first, and then let it help improve the photography parameters, environmental details, and composition requirements. After a few rounds of chatting, I have a professional enough prompt.

To a certain extent, learning to communicate with AI is itself a new creative ability.

The names of the forty dishes must be able to withstand zooming in and taking a closer look.

Friends who often use AI to generate and edit pictures must have experienced similar situations:

When the picture was about to be finalized, Party A made another familiar request, hoping that the information would be richer, preferably including both text and data.

However, in the past, when many graphic models encountered large sections of Chinese, they were prone to omitting characters or even "creating" characters. From a distance, it looked like that, but when zoomed in, it looked like a bible with missing arms and legs, and the layout was even more chaotic.

In order to test the writing skills of Seedream 5.5, we asked it to create a menu for the fictional "Mountain and Sea Divine Beast Restaurant", arranging eight categories and forty dishes into four columns. The dish names, prices, introductions and accompanying pictures must correspond.

It should also be written at the bottom: "Mythical beasts hold the spoon, mortals pay the bill; wealth and thrift are left to people, no fighting is allowed."

Another "Tianting Convenience Service Center" information wall puts eight windows and forty businesses into the layout of the service hall in the 1990s, including somersault cloud annual inspection, Yujian license plate application and other items, as well as charging standards, procedures and "it is prohibited to use clones to occupy accounts at the same time".

These two complete work cases may seem like a joke, but what is actually examined behind the scenes is the model's stroke accuracy of complex Chinese characters, the clarity of extremely small font sizes, and the layout aesthetics of multi-level information.

Behind the excellent performance, there is also quantitative data support.

Officials said that in tests covering Chinese, English and dense small fonts, Seedream 5.5's severe text corruption rate has dropped to 0.4%, and its minor text corruption rate has dropped to 1.7%. Both are significantly improved compared to the previous generation, and it also shows a leading edge in horizontal comparisons with mainstream graphics models.

At the same time, Seedream 5.5 also greatly improves the layout and color matching, making dense information easier to read.

In addition, we also produced an oriental fantasy scroll, using the story of a mountain god girl and a glazed white deer to test the expressiveness of vertical small characters.

Picture | Generate a 21×9 ultra-wide horizontal version of the oriental fantasy art set picture scroll, using coarse-grained natural mineral rock colors (lapis lazuli, cinnabar, malachite green, clam powder) mixed with burnt foil and gold-pasted techniques to draw on the mottled and cracked mud wall texture. Under light and shadow, it presents a real ore crystal sparkle and gold foil oxidation texture. The main visual illustration on the left two-thirds of the picture depicts an Eastern mountain god girl wearing a hundred-bird feather coat and holding a bronze nine-link tin staff. She rides on the back of a six-pointed white deer that is translucent like glass, walking between dark rocks and ancient trees burning with golden phosphorus fire, surrounded by childish and weird lantern demons. The right third of the picture is a vertical inscription area with gold and black gold paper on a black background. The gold brush calligraphy in dignified and beautiful Tang Dynasty script writing style is arranged from right to left. The main title is "Volume 3· Yunmengze Deer Shu Goddess Examination", the three columns of small characters below are clear and sharp, "It looks like a white deer with six corners, its sound is like a ballad, and wearing its feathers can ward off nightmares. Every night when the moon is dark, it parades in Yunmeng Daze, and all ghosts avoid it." In the lower left corner is an ancient cinnabar-engraved seal "Mountain and Sea Strange Stories".

Another example is asking it to create a multi-agent office collaboration technology blueprint in the style of a retro industrial manual.

The "2026 Fishing Annual Report" must accurately present set data such as 520 hours of fishing, 286 cups of coffee drunk, and 93 invalid meetings.

We also asked it to create the main image and six-screen e-commerce details page for the portable coffee appliance brand "Shanwu". From usage scenarios and structural disassembly to parameter tables and user reviews, we comprehensively examined the product texture, accuracy of small print, and the consistency of the matte dark green hand brewing pot and glass filter cup in different images.

Picture | Create an e-commerce long picture detail page and main picture for the portable coffee appliance brand "Shanwu". The vertical long picture can be expanded by 6 screens. Overall structure: Main visual on the first screen → Usage scenarios → Structural dismantling → Parameter table → User evaluation → Reasons for purchase at the bottom. The main title is "Put the morning into a cup of mountain mist" in Song font, and the subtitle is "3 minutes of hand brewing, and the office also has a wild atmosphere." The product is a matte dark green hand-pour pot with a glass filter cup, and the background is off-white and rock gray. The parameters are written in small letters: "304 stainless steel / double vacuum / 240ml / 320g". The whole thing is like a product catalog, not promotional.

From menus to reports, useful infographics need to be visible from a distance as well as readable up close, allowing words, numbers and graphics to work together to make the information clear.

Native RGBA material allows completed characters to be used repeatedly

After the draft is finally passed, the tossing in the delivery process is often not over yet.

For example, export the characters separately with a transparent background so that they can be easily placed on other posters. In the past, AI-generated characters were often merged with the background, requiring additional cutout and edge processing.

Seedream 5.5 supports native RGBA image generation and can output materials with Alpha transparency channel for subsequent typesetting and synthesis.

We have designed a set of white ghost emoticons, with nine states in total, including "out of body", "read chaos", "mental resignation" and "resurrection after get off work".

Although it is generated with a normal background by default for the first time, as long as it is further explicitly required to include an Alpha channel, the model can immediately spit out a transparent basemap with clean edges.

Another set of workplace slang stickers combines "empowerment", "granularity", "grasping", "emotional value" and "cyber merit" into small icons in the style of computer systems in the 1990s. Combined with Chinese rendering capabilities, it can be placed on official account covers, PPTs and event posters after generation.

The addition of native transparent materials not only eliminates the tedious process of memorizing, but also facilitates designers to rearrange, combine and re-process at any time, allowing the polished original characters and design elements to be used repeatedly in different works.

The second half of the raw image model starts with pixel-level image modification.

Looking back at the history of the development of digital tools, many far-reaching technological advances revolve around the same goal.Allow people to build on existing results without having to start from scratch each time。

In 1994, Photoshop 3.0 introduced the layer feature, allowing different elements in an image to be edited independently. Since then, functions such as adjustment layers and history have been added one after another, gradually laying the foundation for modern image editing.

Similar logic appears in Git's version control and the archiving mechanism of video games.Only when the achievements of the past can be preserved can people dare to explore the next possibility with confidence.

Today, AI mapping has reached a similar stage.

From Photoshop layers and masks to MeituXiuXiu lowering the threshold for photo retouching, Seedream 5.5 is trying to achieve pixel-level precise editing through natural language.Bring professional image editing further into the era of natural language interaction.

Users only need to state clearly what they want to modify, and AI can accurately adjust the corresponding area, leaving other parts that are already satisfactory as they are. Even after hundreds of rounds of revisions, the characters, structure and details in the picture can still be preserved.

Seedream 5.5’s emphasis on “born for professionalism” is also reflected here.

In global competition, Seedream 5.5 has entered the first echelon of GPT Image 2.6 and Nano Banana 2.1. Pixel-level precise editing, hundreds of rounds of continuous modification, and natural realistic texture are its three important cards for competing in the professional market.

Price is also an important competitive advantage of Seedream 5.5.it costsAbout 1/3 of GPT Images 2.6, and the production quality has reached the first echelon. Good guy, isn't this the killing line of the raw model?

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Currently, Seedream 5.5 has launched products such as Doubaojiu and Jimeng, which can be continuously adjusted with canvas and layered editing. Enterprises and developers can also access the model API through the Volcano engine and use relevant capabilities for e-commerce marketing, film and television games and other workflows.

Going back to the beginning of the article, those workers who stayed up late and revised more than a dozen versions probably don’t care about the parameters and lists. He only cares about one thing:Tools are used to share labor or to create new labor. The answer to this question determines whether AI is productivity or another form of customer service.

The weight of the answer will ultimately fall on every modification.

Creation is never just a flash of inspiration, it is also about standing on the shoulders of the last time and taking another step. This is exactly what Seedream 5.5 is betting on, and it’s also the question that all models that want to become professional productivity tools must ultimately answer.

Author: Mo Chongyu, Shang Lin

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