# ChatGPT Image Editor: How to Use Each Tool and What It Redraws > ChatGPT's image editor is the panel behind the Edit button. Its tools, from Remove BG to Resize, send a prompt and redraw the whole image, not one spot. - URL: https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-image-editor - Published: 2026-10-30 - Updated: 2026-10-30 - Author: LaoZhang AI Team (https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/about) - Topic: AI Image Generation - Tags: ChatGPT, ChatGPT Images, Image Editing, Remove Background, Photo Editing --- ChatGPT can edit images on every plan, and the image editor is the panel that opens when you click **Edit** on a picture in a chat, whether ChatGPT made it or you uploaded it. It is not a pixel editor. Whatever you do there, typing in the **Describe edits** box or clicking **Markup**, **Comment**, **Remove BG** or **Resize**, goes to ChatGPT as a request, and ChatGPT generates a new image in reply. Parts you never touched can change, and each edit uses your image allowance like any other generation. So treat every click as a fresh request. Make one change at a time, say in words what has to stay the same, and compare the result with the version you started from before you make the next change. If you need both a new shape and a transparent background, use **Resize** first and **Remove BG** last, and download the transparent file right away. To edit an older version rather than the newest one, download it and upload it into a new chat. In a test on October 30, 2026, on a Plus account at chatgpt.com, **Remove BG** turned a square image into a 1536×1024 landscape and cropped a plant at the edge. **Resize** then rebuilt the scene from the newest image in the chat instead of the one open in the panel, and painted a gray-and-white checkerboard where the transparency had been. ## How to open the ChatGPT image editor and make your first edit The editor lives inside ChatGPT, on chatgpt.com and in the apps; there is nothing separate to install or sign up for. On the web, every image ChatGPT creates shows an **Edit** button in its lower-left corner. Clicking it opens the image in a panel on the right side of the chat, and the message box underneath changes its placeholder to **Describe edits**. To work on your own photo, upload it to the chat and describe the change in the same message. OpenAI's help page on images in ChatGPT says both routes work: pick an image ChatGPT made, or upload one, then say what should change. 1. Click **Edit** on the image in the chat. You can also open a picture from **Images** in the sidebar. 2. If the change belongs to one spot, mark it with **Markup** or drop a **Comment** pin there. This step is optional. 3. Type the change in **Describe edits** and send it. 4. Wait for the new image. It arrives as a new reply, and the version you started from stays higher up in the chat. As of October 30, 2026, the web toolbar on a Plus account sat at the bottom of the panel in this order: **Markup**, **Comment**, **Remove BG**, **Erase**, **Resize**. The panel header held the zoom level, **Download**, **Share**, a button to expand the panel and one to close it. OpenAI's help page still describes an older layout with **Select**, **Aspect ratio**, Undo, Redo, Cancel and Save. If that is what you see, **Select** marks an area and **Aspect ratio** regenerates the image in a new shape, which is the job **Resize** does in the newer toolbar. On a teen account linked to a parent, editing may be switched off: OpenAI lets the parent decide whether a linked teen account can create or edit images. ## What each ChatGPT editor tool sends, and when to use it Each tool is a different way of telling ChatGPT what you want. Every tool except **Erase** is documented as sending a request to ChatGPT, which answers with a new image. **Remove BG** and **Resize** differ from the rest: they post a fixed, prewritten request the moment you choose them, with no box to edit and no confirmation. The quoted wording below was taken on October 30, 2026 from the English text strings inside the ChatGPT desktop app, version 26.1023.51421, the same day the web buttons were tested; the buttons post it in your interface language. | Tool | What ChatGPT receives | Use it for | Watch for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Describe edits** (typing only) | Your words, with no area marked | Changes you can name: a color, an added object, a new style | ChatGPT decides which parts to redraw, so unmentioned details can shift | | **Markup** | Your drawing, text and shapes merged into one image, sent with what you type in **Add instructions…** | Pointing at a spot that is hard to describe in words | Say in your instructions what each mark means, so the marks aren't left to interpretation | | **Comment** | Numbered pins you place by clicking the image, each with its own note, sent together | Several small fixes in different places | All pins go into one regeneration, so check every area, not just the pinned ones | | **Remove BG** | "Remove the background from this image. Keep all foreground subjects unchanged and fully intact, with clean, smooth edges. Make the background transparent." | Cutouts of products, logos and stickers | The canvas size and framing can change; confirm the transparency in the downloaded file | | **Erase** | An area you brush over to erase it | Removing a small object or a blemish | What it sends to ChatGPT isn't documented, so check the area around your brush strokes as you would after any edit | | **Resize** | "Make the aspect ratio" followed by Square 1:1, Portrait 3:4, Landscape 4:3, Widescreen 16:9 or Story 9:16 | A new format for a post, a slide or a story | The scene is redrawn at the new shape, not cropped or padded | | **Remove** (phone apps) | Your photo plus a black-and-white mask of your brush strokes, with "Remove the area marked in the second image from the first image" | Removing objects on a phone | Same as any edit: the rest of the image is regenerated too | Pick by the kind of change. If you can say it in one sentence, typing it is enough. If it lives in one spot, point at it with **Markup** or a **Comment** pin and still name the area in your words, because OpenAI's help page says that "highlights are not always precise, and edits may extend beyond the area you selected." Save **Remove BG** and **Resize** for when you want exactly what their fixed request says, and remember that neither one can be told what else to keep. ![ChatGPT editor tools grouped by what they send: typed requests, preset prompts from Remove BG and Resize, and brush tools](https://blog.laozhang.ai/posts/en/chatgpt-image-editor/img/editor-tools-what-they-send.webp) ## How to change one part of a ChatGPT image without changing the rest No tool in ChatGPT locks the pixels you want to keep, so the whole image is always open to change. What you can do is narrow the request and make it easy to spot drift. OpenAI's own advice is that "if you want the edit to apply to a specific area, include that area in your prompt," and the steps below build on that. 1. Start from the version you want to keep. If it isn't the newest image in the chat, follow the steps in the section on older versions below before you edit. 2. Point at the area with **Markup** or a **Comment** pin if it helps, and name the same area in your words. 3. Write the change, then list what must not change: the face, any text or logo, the product's shape, the background, the framing. 4. Send one change per request. Three changes in one message give the model three chances to redraw things you didn't mention. 5. Compare the new image with the one you started from: faces and expressions, text and labels, edges, the image size and how it is framed. 6. If something you wanted to keep has drifted, go back to the last good version and rephrase. A fix requested on top of a drifted image starts from the drifted version, so the drift stays in. A request written this way leaves less to guess: ```text Replace the gray sweater with a navy blazer. Keep the person's face, hair, expression and pose exactly as they are. Keep the background, lighting, camera angle and framing unchanged. ``` Text, brand colors and exact layouts show drift first. If letters come back misspelled or colors shift with each edit, [Why ChatGPT and Gemini Break Text, Colors, and Worksheet Layouts](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-gemini-image-text-color-layout-fix) covers what to change in the request and when to finish the work in another program. ## Why Remove BG and Resize changed the whole picture Both buttons are prewritten requests, and the model answers them by drawing a new image. "Keep all foreground subjects unchanged" is something **Remove BG** asks for, not something it can enforce, and **Resize** asks for a new picture at a new aspect ratio rather than cutting or extending the old one. A test on October 30, 2026 showed what that means in practice. It ran in Chrome at chatgpt.com on a personal Plus account with the interface set to Simplified Chinese, so the buttons posted the Chinese version of the wording quoted above. Each step ran once and used three image generations in total. The starting image was a square 1254×1254 photo-style picture ChatGPT had made: a blue mug on a wooden desk, a plant on the left, a sticky note on the right and a pen in the corner. Clicking **Remove BG** posted the request as a user message and started a new generation immediately. The result was a real transparent PNG, with 53.4% of its pixels fully transparent, but it was 1536×1024 instead of square, and the plant was cut off at the left edge. Next, the original desk photo was opened in the panel, and **Resize** > **Widescreen** was clicked. The button posted the 16:9 request and returned a 1672×941 image, but it was built from the background-removed version, the newest image in the chat, not from the original that was on screen. The objects were rearranged: the plant was whole again, the sticky note had moved and the pen was gone. None of its pixels were transparent. The gray-and-white checkerboard in the preview was painted into the image, so the transparency from the previous step was lost. Markup, Comment, Erase and the phone apps weren't part of this test; the descriptions of them come from OpenAI's help page and the text built into the ChatGPT app. One run per button is not a rule, and the next run may keep the square canvas. It is enough to show why each result needs checking before you build on it. ![October 30 test: a 1254×1254 square became 1536×1024 after Remove BG, then 1672×941 with a painted checkerboard after Resize](https://blog.laozhang.ai/posts/en/chatgpt-image-editor/img/remove-bg-resize-test.webp) ## Use Resize before Remove BG, then download the transparent file If you need a picture in a new shape and with a transparent background, click **Resize** first and **Remove BG** last. In the October 30 test, the edit that followed **Remove BG** came back with a painted checkerboard, so a transparent result only stays transparent while nothing else touches it. That order is the safer one, not a guaranteed one: in the same test, **Remove BG** on its own turned the square image into 1536×1024 and cropped the plant, so it can undo the shape you just set with **Resize**. After **Remove BG**, check the size and framing as well as the transparency, and if the shape changed, go back to the resized version and try again rather than resizing the transparent one. Download the result as soon as it looks right, and then check the file rather than the preview: drop it onto a colored background in any editor or slide, and if gray and white squares are still there, the transparency is fake. [GPT Image Transparent Background: Fix a Baked-In Checkerboard](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/gpt-image-transparent-background-checkerboard) explains how to tell the two apart and what to do with a file that already has the squares painted in. ## How to edit an older version instead of the newest image Every edit adds a new image to the chat, so a long session leaves several versions stacked in the conversation. In the October 30 test, the **Resize** button used the newest one even though an older image was open in the panel. Until you have seen otherwise in your own chat, don't rely on the panel to choose the version. Open the version you want, click **Download** in the panel header, start a new chat, upload the file and make your edit there. That way the version you want is the only image in the chat. Re-uploading is also the fix for "This image is no longer available. Try uploading it again", which ChatGPT shows when it no longer has the original file of an image you are trying to edit. A plain "Could not edit this image. Try again" means the edit itself failed, so try again first. If errors keep coming back, [ChatGPT Image Generation Not Working? Match the Error to the Fix](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-image-generation-not-working) matches each message to its cause. ## ChatGPT image editor on iPhone and Android: Remove and Sketch The phone apps have a slightly different set of tools. OpenAI's help page says that on mobile you open the image full screen, tap **Edit** or add comments, and that the image controls there also include **Resize** and **Remove**. **Remove** shows "Brush over what you want to remove" and has a brush-size slider; with **Select**, you brush over an area, tap **Next** and then describe the change. **Sketch** is only on mobile: type **@** in the message box and choose **Sketch**. As of October 30, 2026, the web toolbar on a Plus account had no **Remove** brush, so on a computer **Erase** is the closest tool. ## When to leave the ChatGPT editor for another tool ChatGPT is the right place for changes you can describe and for which a redrawn result is acceptable. It is the wrong place when nothing except the target may change, such as cropping to an exact size, retouching a face that has to stay identical, or editing a document scan. In those cases a conventional photo editor or another AI tool will waste fewer generations, and [Best ChatGPT Alternatives for Editing Uploaded Images](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/image-to-image-ai-generator) compares the options for photos you upload. Two other limits send people elsewhere. Every click in the editor starts a new image, so edits draw on the same daily allowance as new images, and OpenAI doesn't publish those numbers for any plan. [ChatGPT Plus and Go Image Generation Limits: How Many per Day?](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-image-generation-upload-limits) collects the reported figures and what the limit notice looks like. If you need to edit many images or build editing into your own app, the API is the route, and [ChatGPT Images 2.5: How to Use It in ChatGPT and the API](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-images-2-5) covers the models and calls. ## ChatGPT image editor: other questions ### Is ChatGPT picture editing free? Yes. As of October 2026, OpenAI's help page says ChatGPT Images, including editing, is available on all tiers, Free included. Free accounts get a limited number of images and see a notice when they reach it. ### How many images can I edit with ChatGPT for free? OpenAI doesn't publish a number for any plan. Users reported 2 to 5 images a day on Free between March and August 2026, and each edit counts as one of them because it generates a new image. The details by plan are in [ChatGPT Plus and Go Image Generation Limits: How Many per Day?](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-image-generation-upload-limits). ### Are "ChatGPT image editor" websites made by OpenAI? No. ChatGPT's image editor exists only inside ChatGPT, on chatgpt.com and in the official apps. Websites that put "ChatGPT image editor" or "ChatGPT photo editor" in their name are independent services from other companies, with their own pricing, limits and privacy terms. ### Is it safe to edit my photos in ChatGPT? A photo you edit is stored with the conversation like any other upload, and every edited version is saved under **Images**. According to OpenAI's help page, deleting an image means deleting the conversation it is in. Whether your photos can be used for training and how to remove every copy are covered in [Does ChatGPT Save Your Photos? Where Uploads Go and How to Delete](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-image-sharing-safety-guide). ### Which model does the ChatGPT image editor use? As of October 2026, edits in ChatGPT run on ChatGPT Images 2.5, which OpenAI describes as bringing "more precise editing." What the model is called in the API and how to call it is covered in [ChatGPT Images 2.5: How to Use It in ChatGPT and the API](https://blog.laozhang.ai/en/posts/chatgpt-images-2-5).