AI Summary – Safe & Flagged Tools

AI Summary - Safe & Flagged Tools

The safe AI tools outlined below are approved for use in images submitted into our competitions.

Flagged tools are not permitted in our competitions.

Affinity Photo – As of December 16, 2025

✅ Competition-Safe Tools

  • Full featured Post Processing Application
  • No AI tools
  • Preserves 
  • Ideal for our competitions

Aiarty – As of December 16, 2025

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

  • AI-assisted Colour & Tone
  • AI Image Enhancer / Super Resolution
  • AI Image Matting / Background Removal
  • Denoise /DeBlur / Aritfact Removal

Note – Aiarty’s features use AI models trained on datasets to enhance and upscale media locally; they generate new detail from the model’s learned knowledge but do not fetch synthetic elements from a cloud dataset while you edit.

Foto – As of December 15, 202

✅ Competition-Safe Tools

  • Denoise
  • Sharpen & Deblur
  • Upscale & Face Recovery
  • Adjust lighting
  • Remove objects

GIMP – As of December 15, 2025

✅ Competition-Safe Tools

  • AI Object Removal
  • Smart Selection
  • Image Upscaling

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

  • Canonical’s Open VINO plugin for GIMP 3.0 introduces AI synthetic element from Stable Diffusion

Lightroom – As of Nov 1, 2025

✅ SAFE TOOLS (No Content Credentials added)

  • Basic adjustments (e.g. exposure, highlights, shadows, blacks adjustment) 
  • Brush adjustments
  • Chromatic aberration removal
  • Enhance details
  • Graduated filters
  • Lens blur
  • Noise reduction
  • Post-crop vignetting 
  • Sharpening
  • Generative Remove (without selecting Use Generative AI)

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS (Content Credentials added) 

  • Generative Remove (selecting Use Generative AI)
  • Distraction Removal 

Luminar Neo – As of Nov. 1, 2025

✅ SAFE TOOLS (No AI-generative features)

Basic Enhancement Features:

  • All standard adjustments (brightness, contrast, hue/saturation, cropping)
  • Traditional filters and layer operations
  • Enhanced color correction tools
  • Brilliance AI tool
  • Intelligent depth masking capabilities

AI-Powered Safe Tools:

  • Crop AI (automatic photo composition) 
  • Noise AI (noise reduction)
  • Supersharp AI (refines blurred images)
  • Sky AI (redefine blown out or flat skies)
  • Twilight Enhancer AI (work with blue and gold hour image)
  • Atmosphere AI (adding fog, mist, haze, etc…)
  • Water Enhancer AI (refine and enhance water)
  • Relight AI (total control of light in image)
  • Magic Light AI (adjust multiple light sources)
  • Portrait Bokeh AI (simulate wide open aperture – i.e. 2.0)
  • Face AI (adjust – eyes, nose & mouth)
  • Skin AI (enhance skin tones)
  • Body AI (adjust torso and abdomen

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS 

AI-Generative Features:

  • GenErase – Removes unwanted objects and fills in the area with AI-generated content to blend seamlessly 
  • GenSwap – Lets you replace or insert new objects via text prompts and generates corresponding pixels to match the scene 
  • GenExpand – Extends the image dimension with new elements not captured by the photographer

ON1 Photo Raw – As of Nov 1, 2025

✅ Competition-Safe Tools

Basic Enhancement Features:

  • All standard adjustments (brightness, contrast, hue/saturation, cropping)
  • Traditional filters and layer operations
  • Enhanced color correction tools
  • AI Brilliance tool
  • Intelligent depth masking capabilities

AI-Powered Safe Tools:

  • Perfect Eraser (Local mode only – removes dust spots and power lines using existing image data)
  • Generative Crop (Local modes – intelligently crops and straightens using original image content)

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

Cloud-Based AI Generative Features:

  • Generative Eraser with Stability AI – Creates new content to fill removed areas (Distractions – wires, people & vehicles)
  • Generative Crop with Stability AI – Extends image boundaries with generated content

Photoshop – Version 27.1 (Dec. 1, 2025)

✅ SAFE TOOLS (No Content Credentials added)

  • All basic adjustments (brightness, contrast, hue/saturation, cropping)
  • Traditional filters and layer operations
  • Spot Healing Brush Tool (content-aware)
  • Clone Stamp Tool
  • Denoise 
  • Adjust Colour 
  • Sky Replacement (replacement sky must be captured by photographer) 
  • Blend 
  • Traditional content-aware
  • Remove Tool (when set to “Generative AI off”) (Perfect Eraser)
  • Find Distractions (with No AI or Automatic)
  • Harmonize – blends objects/people into images
  • Topaz Gigapixel – enlarges an image focusing on preserving existing image without adding synthetic elements.

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS (Content Credentials added) 

  • Generative Image Firefly (models 1, 3 &5) – text-to-image create (firefly.adobe.com)
  • Generative Fill (three AI model options):

Adobe Firefly Image Models (1, 3 & 5)

Google Gemini Nano Banana

Black Forest Lab FLUX.1 Kontext

Allow adding, removal or replacing content with text prompt

  • Generative Expand – expands the borders with the Crop tool
  • Generative Upscale – Firefly & Topaz Labs Bloom 
  • Remove Tool (when set to “Auto” or “Generative AI on”)
  • Remove Background – removes and replaces backgrounds
  • Find Distractions (when set to “Auto” or “Generative AI on”)

Pickmoney – As of December 16, 2025

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

The major concern with this application is that does strip metadata from imported and exported images.

Therefore, this application does not support the editing history required by our authentication process.

Therefore, this application is not arroved for image submissions into CAPA competitions.

Snapseed – As of December 16, 2025

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

The major concern with this application is that does strip metadata from imported and exported images.

Therefore, this application does not support the editing history required by our authentication process.

Therefore, this application is not approved for image submissions into CAPA competitions.

Topaz Labs – As of December 15, 2025

✅ Competition-Safe Tools

  • AI Sharpen
  • AI Denoise
  • AI Detail Enhancement
  • Gigapixel AI

❌ FLAGGED TOOLS

  • AI Bloom – AI-generated – upscaling & creatively enhancing an image