All glossary terms
AI & Generation

What is Inpainting?

An AI technique that fills in or modifies a masked region of an image while preserving the unmasked area. The standard method for AI-healing seamless tile boundaries.

In detail

Inpainting takes three inputs: an image, a binary mask defining which pixels to edit, and (optionally) a text prompt describing the desired output. The diffusion model runs its denoising process only on the masked region while using the unmasked pixels as fixed context. The output is the original image with the masked region replaced by AI-generated content that visually continues the surrounding patterns. For seamless tile creation, inpainting is used in the offset-and-inpaint workflow: shift the tile so the seam moves to the center, mask the seam region, run masked inpainting to heal it, un-shift to put the heal back at the edge. This produces a seamless tile from any starting image. Modern textile AI platforms use SDXL Inpaint or FLUX Fill for this workflow.

Example

A user has a hand-painted floral with motifs running off the edges. The seam between left and right edges does not match. Texloom's pipeline: shift image by W/2 horizontally → mask center vertical band → SDXL Inpaint heals the band → un-shift. The tile now has invisible seams.

Related terms

Diffusion model
A class of generative AI models that produce images by iteratively denoising random Gaussian noise into coherent imagery. The dominant architecture for AI image generation in 2026, including textile pattern AI.
Outpainting
An AI technique that extends an image beyond its original borders by generating new content that visually continues the existing image. The complement of inpainting.
Seamless tile
A rectangular image whose left edge continues into its right edge and whose top edge continues into its bottom edge, allowing it to repeat across a surface without visible seams.
CFG scale
Classifier-free guidance scale — a parameter controlling how strictly a diffusion model follows the text prompt. Higher values produce more literal interpretations; lower values allow more creative variation.
Mask
A grayscale image that defines which pixels of a primary image should be edited (white) vs. preserved (black) during inpainting or compositing operations.

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