OpenAI: gpt-image-2.6-flare

GPT Image 2.6 Flare is the speed-oriented tier of OpenAI's GPT Image series, built for everyday image generation and editing. It accepts text and image input to produce images, takes up to 16 reference images for editing, and supports prompts up to 20,000 characters. Output can be rendered at 1K, 2K, or 4K resolution with a long edge up to 3840 pixels, and native transparent background generation is available. Revision 2 improves editing consistency, detail preservation, and responsiveness to sketches and image annotations, and it accepts marked-up images via the API so edit regions can be specified precisely. The model offers six quality settings — auto, low, medium, high, xhigh, and max — and chains outputs as reference images across multi-turn editing sessions, which helps keep scenes consistent over multiple revision rounds. It applies only instructed changes while preserving subject, composition, and background, and supports natural lighting, rich textures, and complex layouts. This makes it a good fit for iterative design work, character creation with brand consistency, image fusion from multiple references, and screen or layout mockups. Speed is a central strength: latency is reported up to 50% lower than GPT Image 2, with generation reported up to 7x faster for 1024x1080 images, and roughly 6 seconds at low quality. It is well suited to interactive and high-volume work. Known limitations include noticeable noise artifacts in some areas, and GPT Image 2 is reported to handle dense multilingual text and extreme aspect ratios better.