An image model can make a convincing replacement and still put it through another object or change something nearby. It can also turn a leather sofa beige while leaving leather creases in what should be linen. The work for Muse, our node canvas at SplayFlo, spans 405 edited images across drawn and photorealistic scenes. The outputs came from nine named models or variants and Codex's image tool.
TL;DR
- A reference picture produced a sofa with the rounded arms we wanted; a description alone produced straighter arms. Neither version fully reproduced the looped fabric.
- A red box is a practical way to mark what to replace. Editing a cropped piece and pasting it back kept everything outside that piece untouched, but some joins left visible seams. Native masks and boxes were not consistently better than red boxes; results varied by model.
- For furniture and material changes in generated rooms, Meta Muse produced 12 usable edits out of 15 and Nano Banana 10. Those were the highest counts among six models and tools, with three attempts per change. We were surprised that Meta Muse was also the cheapest paid model in this comparison, at $0.01 per image.
- A convincing image can still fail: one FLUX lamp's base fused into the sofa and floated above the floor. When Nano Banana replaced a desk and chair, the laptop disappeared in all three attempts. Naming the laptop, books, and plant in the prompt kept it in all six attempts. However, only three edits were usable overall.
When a convincing edit is unusable
FLUX 3 Image produced a detailed brass lamp and changed little outside the marked area. We nearly called it one of the best results.
| Room and marked lamp | FLUX 3 Image result |
|---|---|
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The marked input and the FLUX 3 Image result.
| Original contact | Replacement contact |
|---|---|
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The replacement's base beside the sofa arm. The red line marks the original edit boundary.
The lamp is badly misplaced: its marble base is fused into the sofa arm and floats above the floor. The result is unusable.
Inspect the full-size lamp input and result.
Text prompts vs. image references
The sofa in our reference was mustard bouclé, with a ribbed back, rounded arms, and wooden legs. One request described those features in words; another included a picture of the sofa.
The original sofa reference sent to the model. Open at full size.
| Description only | Reference supplied |
|---|---|
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Full output frames: the left edit used a written description, and the right also used the product image as a reference. Open either image at full size.
With the pictures, Codex's image tool returned 28 sofa and arch results that resembled the objects in the references. The four text-only results were plausible, but did not match the specific sofa or arch. The text-only sofa had straighter arms and a flatter weave; neither displayed sofa fully recovered the reference's looped bouclé.
The arch prompts differed: the text-only request asked for the existing arch rebuilt in a new material, so this is not a controlled comparison of the reference alone. The sofa's old cushions and throw stayed in some results and disappeared in others. In one collage, the pasted sofa covered tall flower stems; the model did not bring them back.
Inspect the sofa and arch reference comparisons.
What changes outside the marked area
An edit can redraw parts of the picture outside the target. We replaced the cream arch in a plaza with an orange one, and the gray sofa in a room with a mustard one. Both scenes had drawn and photorealistic versions; the photorealistic scenes were generated, not photographs of real places.
The red boxes show the objects to replace. Each pair below shows one whole-image result from Codex's image tool. Open an image to see it at full size.
| Drawn plaza · before | Drawn plaza · after |
|---|---|
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The arch replacement in the drawn plaza.
| Photorealistic plaza · before | Photorealistic plaza · after |
|---|---|
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The same arch replacement in the photorealistic plaza.
| Drawn room · before | Drawn room · after |
|---|---|
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The sofa replacement in the drawn room.
| Photorealistic room · before | Photorealistic room · after |
|---|---|
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The same sofa replacement in the photorealistic room.
The pictures above show one result for each case. The table measures 14 whole-image results per case; each percentage is the median share of the surrounding scene that changed.
Median share of sampled pixels changed outside the marked region and its 16-pixel margin, across 14 whole-image results for each scene and style. A pixel counted as changed when any color channel moved by more than 24/255.
| Scene | Drawn | Photorealistic |
|---|---|---|
| Plaza, replace arch | 21.9% | 22.8% |
| Room, replace sofa | 5.0% | 2.8% |
The plaza changed more than the room in both styles. A small change is not necessarily harmless: the FLUX lamp changed only 6.3% outside its box and still cut into the sofa.
Inspect the drawn and photorealistic scene inputs and results.
Red boxes, crops, and masks
We marked the part to change with a red box on the full picture. We also tried cropping that part, editing the crop, and pasting it back. Three models accepted masks or boxes as separate inputs.
Red-box edits across models
For the red-box comparison, the models had to replace an arch, a sofa, a lamp, and a small craft, and add an armchair in an empty corner. Each received a picture of the object to insert. Each listed paid model returned one result per scene; Codex returned two.
One red-box result per scene for each listed paid model, two per scene for Codex.
| Model | Uncertain | Fail | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codex tool | 0 | 4 | 6/10 |
| FLUX 3 Image | 0 | 2 | 3/5 |
| FLUX 3 Klein | 0 | 5 | 0/5 |
| Ideogram 4.5 | 1 | 3 | 1/5 |
| Krea 3 | 0 | 4 | 1/5 |
| MAI Image 2.6 | 0 | 5 | 0/5 |
| Meta Muse Image | 0 | 3 | 2/5 |
| Nano Banana 2.1 | 0 | 4 | 1/5 |
| Sunburst | 1 | 1 | 3/5 |
One or two results per scene are too few to establish how reliably a model performs. The instructions were shared, but some output settings differed. For the craft, FLUX 3 Image, Krea, MAI, and Nano Banana were asked for 16:9 because their available ratios did not include the scene's approximately 5:3 frame.
Inspect an arch result from each model in the table.
For the same five scenes, the table below shows three red-box attempts per scene from GPT Image 2.5 Flare, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst, and Nano Banana, judged against the same checks.
Three red-box attempts per scene for each model. These are separate from the single-attempt screen.
| Model | Uncertain | Fail | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flare | 0 | 7 | 8/15 |
| Nano Banana 2.1 | 0 | 9 | 6/15 |
| Sunburst | 2 | 5 | 8/15 |
Flare and Sunburst each passed 8 of 15; Nano Banana passed 6.
Crop and paste
Cropping and pasting leaves everything outside the crop untouched. The join can still show: one lamp crop shifted, leaving seams through the sofa and rug. In the sofa case, a Codex crop rendered more of the reference's bouclé loops than the full-picture edit.
For the arch, we sent a crop around the target with the reference picture, then resized and pasted the result back. The table compares this with the red-box edits, using three attempts per method where delivery succeeded. The prompts were adapted to each method.
Arch: passes / returned results. Three attempts were planned per method. FLUX 3 Image returned two red-box results; its third request closed without an image.
| Model | Red box | Crop and paste |
|---|---|---|
| Codex tool | 3/3 | 3/3 |
| FLUX 3 Image | 2/2 | 0/3 |
| FLUX 3 Klein | 0/3 | 0/3 |
| Ideogram 4.5 | 3/3 | 3/3 |
| Krea 3 | 0/3 | 1/3 |
| MAI Image 2.6 | 0/3 | 0/3 |
| Muse Image | 0/3 | 2/3 |
| Nano Banana 2.1 | 3/3 | 0/3 |
| Sunburst | 3/3 | 2/3 |
Nano Banana passed all three red-box edits and none of its crop-and-paste edits: people and market edges appeared doubled along the join. Meta's Muse Image model showed the opposite pattern, passing none of its red-box edits and two crop-and-paste edits. Codex and Ideogram passed all three with both methods. These results describe one scene.
Inspect the arch inputs and every returned comparison.
Native masks and boxes
Sunburst and Ideogram can take a mask marking the edit area; FLUX 3 Klein takes box coordinates. The table compares each model's native control with red-box results for the same scene.
Four scenes, by model and method: passes / returned results. Uncertain results are identified separately. The native column uses a mask for Sunburst and Ideogram and boxes for FLUX 3 Klein.
| Model and scene | Red box | Native |
|---|---|---|
| FLUX 3 Klein · Arch | 0/3 | 0/3 |
| FLUX 3 Klein · Sofa | 0/3 (1 uncertain) | 0/3 |
| FLUX 3 Klein · Lamp | 1/3 | 0/3 |
| FLUX 3 Klein · Armchair | 0/3 | 2/3 |
| Ideogram 4.5 · Arch | 3/3 | 3/3 |
| Ideogram 4.5 · Sofa | 0/3 (3 uncertain) | 0/3 (2 uncertain) |
| Ideogram 4.5 · Lamp | 0/3 | 1/3 |
| Ideogram 4.5 · Armchair | 0/3 | 2/3 |
| Sunburst · Arch | 3/3 | 0/3 |
| Sunburst · Sofa | 2/3 | 0/3 |
| Sunburst · Lamp | 0/3 | 0/3 |
| Sunburst · Armchair | 1/3 (2 uncertain) | 2/2 |
Sunburst passed all three red-box arch edits and none with a native mask. Ideogram passed all three by either method. On the sofa, some results were uncertain because a throw or foreground object hid the cushion seam needed for the check. Sunburst's armchair mask has two returned results because one request produced no image.
Some red-box images appear in more than one table. For Sunburst and Nano Banana, the paired comparisons use the first three attempts, chosen by time. Two AI agents independently checked 64 method-comparison images; a third reviewed their disagreements. A check against 15 previously judged images kept the same overall verdicts but found differences in individual answers. The agents rechecked lamp and sofa cases after the model identities were known.
Replacing furniture and materials
The interior tests used generated stand-ins, not clients' rooms. We asked for five changes: a specific chair, a desk and chair together, shelf veneer from a swatch, leather changed to linen, and leather changed to aubergine. Codex's image tool and five model variants each returned three images per task, for 90 results. They used the same scenes, references, and instructions, but providers and output settings varied.
Chair reference
| Marked room | Nano Banana result |
|---|---|
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The marked room and result are detail crops. The complete chair reference is shown above them.
Nano Banana returned two usable single-chair edits in three attempts. The result above matched the product's proportions and kept the desk and window in place.
Replacing the desk and chair together was harder: none of the 18 edits was usable. Nano Banana lost the closed laptop in all three attempts, although the prompt said the things on the desk should stay.
| Before: laptop behind chair | After: laptop gone |
|---|---|
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Detail crops of the desk before and after the edit. The closed laptop sits behind the old chair in the input.
The laptop sat inside the area that had to be edited with the desk. The books and plant survived, making the missing laptop easy to overlook.
We changed one sentence in the prompt to name the laptop, books, and plant and describe where they belonged. Nano Banana kept the laptop in all six attempts, compared with none of the three using the general instruction. Three of those six results were usable overall; the others added a trailing vine or extra brass parts to the chair. These six images used a different prompt and are separate from the 90 results in the table below.
Inspect all six edits with the named desk items. Compare the Meta Muse and FLUX desk edits.
Turning leather into linen brought a different problem. GPT Image 2.5 made the sofa beige but left leather-like creases on its seats. Nano Banana's three linen results lost those creases and passed the material check.
| Nano Banana: linen | Sunburst: leather creases remain |
|---|---|
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Detail crops of the sofas. Both changed the color. At 2×, the right-hand result still has the old material's creases.
Results across five interior tasks
We counted an edit as usable only when no applicable check failed or remained uncertain. The checks covered the requested object or surface, its size and position, the objects that should survive, physical contact, and the surrounding room.
Usable interior results as returned, scored to the same calibrated standard. One Codex attempt per task and one FLUX aubergine attempt have one review; their totals are provisional.
| Model | Chair | Desk + chair | Shelf | Linen | Aubergine | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Codex | 2/3 | 0/3 | 1/3 | 0/3 | 3/3 | 6/15 |
| Flare | 0/3 | 0/3 | 0/3 | 0/3 | 3/3 | 3/15 |
| Sunburst | 3/3 | 0/3 | 0/3 | 0/3 | 3/3 | 6/15 |
| Nano Banana | 2/3 | 0/3 | 2/3 | 3/3 | 3/3 | 10/15 |
| Meta Muse | 3/3 | 0/3 | 3/3 | 3/3 | 3/3 | 12/15 |
| FLUX 3 Image | 2/3 | 0/3 | 1/3 | 1/3 | 3/3 | 7/15 |
Meta Muse produced 12 usable results out of 15 and Nano Banana 10. Both passed all three linen and aubergine edits; neither passed a desk-and-chair edit with the general preservation instruction. Meta Muse cost $0.01 per image in these tests; Codex's image tool had no separately reported per-image price.
Two AI agents independently reviewed 84 of the 90 images; one had seen some outputs before, so the blinding was partial. A repeat review disagreed on four of 25 control images. The decisions were calibrated after the model identities were revealed, applying the same allowance for a barely discernible window-catch change across models. The remaining six images—five Codex and one FLUX—have one review, so those two totals are provisional. These counts describe the generated scenes and prompts, not a general model ranking.
Inspect Codex, Flare, Sunburst, and Nano Banana results. Inspect Meta Muse and FLUX results by task. Inspect the remaining Codex results.
Meta Muse's three chairs matched the product's rear-view shape. Two FLUX chairs did too; the other changed the laptop on the existing white desk. On the shelf task, one FLUX edit recolored the separate white desk and another covered only 98.9% of the original frame. Its remaining shelf edit passed. Two of its linen results kept the leather creases.
Compare the chair edits. Compare the shelf edits. Inspect the fabric edits.
Flare and Sunburst are options from the same model family. Across 30 blind comparisons of their finish, neither consistently came out ahead. Their chair results differed: Sunburst's three edits passed under the common standard, while Flare's lost the laptop or added a leg.
Two FLUX requests for an aubergine sofa returned no image. A third succeeded in 46 seconds; the delivery failures are recorded separately from the image-quality scores. Ideogram, FLUX 3 Klein, Krea, and MAI were not tested on the five interior changes. Codex's image tool did not disclose an exact model ID for its calls.
Choosing a starting point
The red box is a practical starting point. Cropping keeps everything outside the crop unchanged, but check the pasted edge for shifts and doubled details.
For a chair or shelf edit like these, Meta Muse is a model to try first: it passed all three attempts on each, while Nano Banana passed two of three. Both passed all three linen edits. On the arch, Codex and Ideogram passed all three with either a red box or crop. Each of those comparisons has only three attempts per task.
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