Step1X-Edit: Setting a New Standard for Open-Source Image Editing

Sun Apr 27 2025

In the field of image editing, users are increasingly demanding high-quality and user-friendly solutions. While closed-source multimodal models like GPT-4o and Gemini 2 Flash deliver strong image editing capabilities, open-source options have often lagged behind in performance. To bridge this gap, Step1X-Edit has been developed and is now available on the WaveSpeed platform.

About the Model

Step1X-Edit is a multimodal large language model (LLM)-based image editing model.It processes a reference image and a natural language editing instruction to generate a target image. The model architecture integrates latent embedding generation with a diffusion-based image decoder to achieve high-quality editing. Additionally, the team built a high-quality synthetic data generation pipeline for training and introduced GEdit-Bench, a new benchmark designed to evaluate model performance on real-world user prompts.

Key Features

Natural Language Editing: Users can edit images simply by providing a text instruction (e.g., “change the outfit”), making the process intuitive and accessible.
High-Quality Output: Combining multimodal LLM capabilities with a diffusion decoder, Step1X-Edit generates professional-grade edited images.
Open-Source Availability: As a fully open-source model, Step1X-Edit offers transparent code and datasets, allowing developers to fine-tune or customize it for their needs.
Superior Performance: In GEdit-Bench evaluations, Step1X-Edit significantly outperforms existing open-source baselines and approaches the performance of closed-source models.

Use Cases

Personalized Image Editing: Users can quickly make custom modifications to images based on their specific needs. Content Creation: Designers and content creators can leverage the model for faster, high-quality image generation and editing. Education and Research: As an open-source solution, Step1X-Edit is ideal for academic research, teaching, and further innovation in multimodal AI.

How to Access

Playground Access: Visit the Step 1X-Edit model page to upload an image and enter natural language editing instructions. Instantly generate high-quality edited results without any coding required — ideal for quick testing and creative exploration.
API Integration: Step1X-Edit offers full API support for developers. Obtain an API key via the Wavespeed platform to seamlessly integrate the model into your applications, systems, or workflows. This enables automated, large-scale image editing. For detailed instructions, please refer to the official Wavespeed developer documentation.