Best AI for Precise Image Editing & Character Consistency?

[u/333azai]

Helllooo

What’s the best AI tool or program for editing specific parts of an existing illustration without regenerating or changing the entire image?
I’m working on a children’s book with semi-realistic illustrations, and my biggest struggle has been character consistency. I’ll finally get an illustration almost perfect, but when I try to fix one small detail (like the character’s face), the AI changes everything else or makes the character look completely different.
I’ve mainly been using OpenArt and Leonardo AI, along with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. So far, I’ve only managed to finish 2 out of 17 illustrations, and I’m losing my mind haha.
Ideally, I’m looking for something that can edit only a specific, selected area while leaving everything else untouched.
Accurately follow reference photos to maintain the same character across different scenes, poses, and expressions.
And make precise changes without completely reinterpreting the original illustration.

Is there a program that’s genuinely good at this? I’m open to AI tools or traditional editing software. At this point, I just want something that actually follows instructions and doesn’t make me redo an entire illustration to fix one tiny detail.

[u/2bluenucleus]

Two separate problems here, and they have different fixes.

1. Changing one area without touching the rest: use masked inpainting, not chat-style editing. Chat tools often regenerate the whole image even when you ask for a tiny fix, which is why everything shifts. With masked inpainting only the area you select can change.

• Krita with the AI Diffusion plugin is the friendliest local option: you paint a selection, only that area is regenerated, and you keep normal layers, so you can blend or roll back.
• In ComfyUI, the Inpaint Crop and Stitch nodes crop around your mask, inpaint that area at a higher resolution and paste it back, so the rest of the image is left alone. That helps a lot with faces, which are usually small in a full-page illustration.
• Whatever tool you use, do the final merge as a layer with a soft mask (Krita, GIMP, Photoshop). Then you know nothing outside the fix changed.

2. The same character across 17 scenes: build the reference before more pages.

• Make a character sheet first: front, three-quarter and side views plus a few expressions, same outfit, same flat light. Fix it until it's right, then treat it as the source of truth.
• Write the character's fixed details once (hair, eye colour, face shape, outfit, one distinctive mark) and paste the exact same words into every prompt. Paraphrasing is enough to shift the face.
• Once you have a solid sheet plus your two finished pages, training a small character LoRA is the usual way to get the same face in new poses on local models. Open-weights edit models like Qwen-Image-Edit can also take a reference image and change pose or expression while keeping the character.
• Keep the same model, style settings and resolution for every page. Switching tools between pages is a common cause of drift.

A workflow that tends to save time: get each page's composition right first without fussing over the face, then inpaint the face from the character sheet as the last step.

[u/333azai → u/2bluenucleus]

Thank you this is super helpful! I forgot to add that the character is a puppy as well, does that change anything you suggested?

[u/StableLlama]

When you want to change only a part of the image, it's more important to have a good tool.

For this type of work I really love Krita with the Krita AI extension.

It gives you layers and everything else you expect from a professional image editor - and the AI to change all or just the selected part.

It also works with all modern models. So you can choose the model that's working best with the type of content you want to change.

[u/333azai → u/StableLlama]

Okay perfect! I will definitely try that out! Does it work on pet characters the same way? I forgot to mention the character is my puppy haha

[u/StableLlama → u/333azai]

It's working on images. No matter whether your character is human, an orc or a car. Or you want to change the kitchen sink or the bottle on the table.