AI Image Editing Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the AI image editing terms you will run into - from face swap to upscaling.
Key takeaways
- Know the difference between a face swap and a deepfake.
- Upscaling changes size; enhancement changes quality.
- Transparency, alpha channel and inpainting come up constantly in editing.
- A seed plus identical settings reproduces the same result, which is handy for fine-tuning an edit.
Face swap & deepfake
Face swap: replacing a face in one photo with a face from another, with consent, as a creative edit - try it on AI Face Swap. Deepfake: synthetic media designed to deceive, usually without consent. Same family of tech, very different intent - see our comparison.
Upscaling & enhancement
Upscaling increases an image's resolution by reconstructing detail (Image Upscaler). Enhancement improves quality - light, colour, sharpness - at the same size (Image Enhancer). They solve different problems.
Restoration, colourisation & background removal
Restoration repairs old or damaged photos. Colourisation adds natural colour to black-and-white images (Photo Colorizer). Background removal cuts the subject out onto transparency (Background Remover).
Formats & technical terms
Alpha channel: the transparency layer in PNG and WebP. Inpainting: filling in or removing parts of an image. Prompt: the text description used to generate an image (AI Image Generator). Aspect ratio: the width-to-height proportion of an image.
Generation and model terms
- Diffusion model - the type of AI behind most modern image tools; it starts from random noise and gradually refines it into a coherent image.
- Denoise - the step-by-step removal of that noise; the denoise strength controls how much an input image is changed.
- Latent space - a compressed internal representation of an image the model works in, rather than on raw pixels directly.
- Seed - a number that fixes the starting randomness, so reusing the same seed and settings reproduces the same result.
- Prompt - the text description guiding generation on the AI Image Generator.
- Super-resolution - the technical name for AI upscaling that reconstructs new detail rather than stretching pixels.
Editing and image-property terms
- Inpainting - filling a selected area with new, context-aware content to remove an object or repair damage.
- Outpainting - extending an image beyond its original borders, inventing plausible surroundings.
- Mask - a black-and-white map marking which pixels an edit should affect and which to leave untouched.
- Aspect ratio - the width-to-height proportion of an image, such as 1:1 square or 16:9 widescreen.
- DPI - dots per inch; the pixel density that determines how large a photo can print sharply.
- Lossy vs lossless - JPEG is lossy and discards data to save space, while PNG is lossless and preserves every pixel, useful for cut-outs from the Background Remover.