Krea has launched Krea 3, a new AI image editing model that the San Francisco company says is fast and controllable enough for real production work.
Speed is the main pitch. Krea says Krea 3 delivers high-quality 2K edits in under eight seconds end to end. By its figures, that’s 10x faster than GPT Image 2 and 4x faster than Nano Banana Pro. On CPI-Bench, a benchmark for real-world image editing, Krea says the top Krea 3 Ultra model scores 4.81 out of 5. That would put it second only to GPT Image 2.5 and ahead of GPT Image 2, Seedream 5 Pro, Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro. These are Krea’s own figures and we haven’t tested them.
For photographers, the more interesting part is control. Krea 3 can edit just a selected region and leave the rest of the image untouched. Bounding boxes set exactly where new elements go. Each edit can draw on up to six reference images, including style references. Krea also says it’s the first editing model that can be fine-tuned with LoRA training on a specific product, person or style, so results stay consistent across a set.
Output is native 2K, with support up to 4K for print and large-screen use. Krea is clearly targeting volume work: e-commerce teams turning snapshots into studio-style packshots, placing products in lifestyle scenes or generating colourways, and marketing teams adapting a single ad into a series. Pixelcut, one of the companies already using it, says the lighting on product shots looked like it had been set up by a professional photographer.
That’s exactly why this matters to working photographers. Product and packshot work is where AI editing is already competing with studio time, and a model that keeps a product consistent across a set of images is a big step in that direction. We’d like to see how it handles fine detail and small text on real products before drawing conclusions.
Krea says more than 35 million people use its platform, including teams at one in three Fortune 500 companies, and it has raised more than $80m from investors including a16z and Bain Capital Ventures.
Krea 3 key features
- Edit speed: under 8 seconds at 2K (Krea figure)
- Resolution: native 2K, up to 4K
- Regional editing and bounding-box placement
- Up to six reference images per edit, including style references
- LoRA training on a specific product, person or style
- CPI-Bench score: 4.81/5 (Krea 3 Ultra, Krea figure)
Krea 3 price and availability
Krea 3 is available now on krea.ai, through the Krea API and via partners including fal, Replicate, Together AI and OpenRouter. It costs $0.03 per image at 1K and $0.06 per image at 2K. More details are on the Krea 3 page.
