I Tested The Best AI Image Editors Vs Human Professionals And Was Pleasantly Surprised
AI is getting good, but can it (really) replace humans when it comes to advanced image editing?
Everyone hates a butchered Photoshop job.
The over-sharpened headshots on LinkedIn. The person who thinks more saturation equals better photos. The person whose Instagram looks like it was edited by a drunk toddler with access to every filter.
I know AI is getting good. Really good. But I also know AI is famous for some of the most botched edit jobs I’ve seen. So I put AI to the text vs professional human Photoshop experts.
In my test I wanted to go beyond just the typical soft edits like adjusting saturation and exposure. Anyone can make a sunset look more orange.
I wanted to see if AI could handle the stuff that separates amateurs from pros.
So I decided to fake a vacation for a random girl in a free stock photo!
Travel photography involves every advanced editing challenge you can think of.
- Background removal and replacement
- Complex masking and compositing
- Color matching between different light sources
- Perspective correction
- Object removal
- Lighting adjustments
I found a stock photo of a girl standing in a random field.
Then I challenged both AI tools and human editors with the same ridiculous brief:
“Transport this girl to Dubai. Make her look like she’s posing in front of the a known landmark in a way that looks natural and completely realistic to the naked eye.”
I asked it to humans. I asked it to AI.
The results surprised me.
Only one delivered results that would fool her own mother.
TL;DR: I tested AI image editors against human professionals to see if they could convincingly fake a vacation photo — transporting a girl from a random field to Dubai landmarks. While AI tools like ChatGPT Plus, Midjourney, and Claid.ai produced decent results, they all had telltale flaws: botched hands, unnatural fringing, over-blurred backgrounds, and facial distortions. A $100 Fiverr Pro editor delivered work so seamless it could fool anyone — perfect lighting, flawless hair masking, and natural perspective. AI is impressive for basic edits, but when you need something that looks professionally perfect, humans still win by understanding real-world physics, not just pixels and patterns.
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What AI came up with
I fed the prompt into some of the best AI image editors I could get my hands on.
ChatGPT Plus
I immediatly noticed some details were off. Below her arm on the lefthand side of the image there is very clear AI fringing line. I could instantly tell it was fake so I told it to edit the image further and make it feel more realistic with like a photo.
This is what it came up with.
I felt this feeling slightly more natural, but the devil is in the details. It botched her hand a little with a very thick finger and her earing too.
It also changed her face to the point where someone who knows her would realize it is not her.
I then asked it to put the Burj Khalifa behind her with a slightly blurred background.
The fringing on this one came out a little better, but her facial texture got butchered. The background feels way over blurred to my eye.
Claid.AI
This is one of those tools that people swear by, and although I don’t think it is bad for certain applications, it just didn’t cut it for this job.
It botched the background to the degree that made me cringe.
I gave it a few goes, this is the best that it came up with from what I’ve seen.
At a $35/month price tag, I just don’t see the value for this sort of edits.
Pixelmator Pro
Altough not an AI image editor in the traditional sense, Pixelmator has a few Machine Learning tricks up it sleeve that I wanted to give a go.
I gave it a background image of Dubai and I used it’s ML bacground remover tool to remove the subject from the original image.
I also used its color and lighting ML Enhance feature to match the colors better.
This is what it came up with:
Although it had a little more human involvement I think this has so far given us the best results.
It did mess up a little with a few hairs and it did cut off a little of her arm and face, but I have to say the final image looked the most realistic to my eyes so far.
Pixelmator Pro has a one time fee of $49.95 and is available on MacOS only.
Midjourney
Next up we tried Midjourney and the results were interesting.
It got the lighting nearly perfect. It is a shame that it cut off her finger.
It also messed up her eye a little. Her earrings were also affected.
What professionals on Fiverr edited
I posted the brief on Fiverr to Eliza from Ukraine.
A Fiverr Pro with 4.9 stars and a $100 price tag that seemed reasonable for advanced compositing work.
When her edit came back, I had to do a double-take.
The lighting was seamless — she matched the Dubai daylight perfectly to the girl’s skin tone.
The hair work was absolutely brilliant. Every strand looked natural, like it was actually flowing in that Middle Eastern breeze.
The masking around her silhouette? Flawless.
The perspective and depth of field? Spot on.
I am very, very impressed.
She understood light sources, color temperature, and atmospheric perspective in ways that take years to master.
The composite looked so natural that if this girl in the photo posted it on Instagram, nobody would question whether she actually flew to Dubai for a photoshoot.
Look at how perfectly she did the lens blur.
Although the compositing on both images look very similar, the lighting for each is actually very different. She absolutely killed it.
Eliza set the bar impossibly high.
I could totally see this being on an Emirates ad asking me to extend my layover in Dubai. Really really impressive.
But I wanted to see what cheaper option would give me.
I found a guy from Argentina offering his Photoshop expertise at a much lower price point, and he also did a brilliant job. Take a look:
AI is getting scary good at image editing.
But it’s not there yet.
Not for the complex stuff that matters.
Sure, AI can remove backgrounds and adjust colors faster than any human. It can even handle basic compositing without breaking a sweat.
But the moment you need something that looks professionally perfect — something that could fool an actual human being — you still need a human being.
Eliza and Juanma’s work wasn’t just better than AI. It was in a completely different league.
She understood physics. Light behavior. How shadows fall. How hair moves in wind. How depth of field actually works in real cameras.
AI understands patterns and pixels.
There’s a difference.
