ByteDance Seed's image generation and editing model, built to refine one image across many rounds of edits, create transparent assets and render small text more clearly.
Seedream 5.5 changes what each edit asks for and is trained to leave the rest of the picture as it was, so every result can be the starting point for the next round. ByteDance shows it carrying one portrait through 100 consecutive edits.
Styling
Change outfits, glasses, accessories or props over many rounds while the face, pose and lighting carry over. Even late in a long chain, small items such as rings or frames can still be edited and sit naturally against the skin.
Still life
Add a branch, replace a vase or change one flower's material in a busy arrangement, and the overlaps between objects are worked out again each time. It holds up in photographic, collage and ink-painting styles alike.
Interiors
Move furniture, add a lamp or repaint a wall, and perspective, occlusion and shadows follow the new layout, including the parts that were hidden before. Use it to compare layout ideas, not as a measured plan.
Figures come from ByteDance Seed's own evaluation against Seedream 5.0 Pro on MagicArena, where expert raters scored results across e-commerce, marketing, film, games, office and fashion design tasks. GSB is a side-by-side preference score, not an accuracy rate; these are vendor results, not an independent benchmark.
| Area | Seedream 5.5 | Change from Seedream 5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-round edits | Keeps unedited areas round to round | Less color drift and detail loss |
| Transparency | Native RGBA, incl. semi-transparent | New in Seedream 5.5Seedream 5 Pro outputs opaque images |
| Small text | Dense Chinese and English text | Severe text errors: 0.4% vs 2.8%Minor text errors: 1.7% vs 2.6% |
| Realism | More natural skin, fabric and light | Preferred in both realism GSB testsImage-to-image realism: +55.62% GSB |
| Usable results | Higher in all six task areas | Film and office rates more than doubled |
Seedream 5.5 can output an image with an alpha channel, so stickers, characters, products and lettering come with a transparent or semi-transparent background and drop straight into other layouts, with no cutout step afterwards.
Reuse
Generate a character once on a transparent background, then place it on billboards, posters or packaging without cutting it out again. Feed the asset back as a reference and its look carries over while poses and groupings change.
Lettering
Give a reference image and the exact words, and its texture, color and stroke style carry over to your lettering, with everything outside the letters left transparent. The words stay readable, so the result works as a title or a sticker.
Fine edges
Wing tips, the gaps between feathers and the outline of each claw come out as part of the transparent asset, so a complex subject drops into a layout without hand-tracing. Check delicate edges at full size before you publish.
Say what to change, what to keep and which words to use. These habits matter most in a long chain of edits.
Name the change and what stays
"Make the jacket cream linen; keep the face, pose, background and framing." The list of what stays matters as much as the change.
One change per round
Edit the newest result each time instead of the original, so earlier fixes carry forward.
Quote the exact text and its order
Put every word in quotes, add "use only this text", and list the title, item names and prices in reading order.
Ask for transparency in words
Say "everything outside the subject transparent" and name parts that should stay see-through, such as glass or lace.
Rewriting the whole scene each round
Describing everything again invites changes you did not ask for.
Asking for a checkerboard background
A drawn checker pattern is part of the picture, not transparency. Check that the file really has an alpha channel.
Relying on "photorealistic" alone
Name the light source, the materials and the lens instead.
Long paragraphs nobody has checked
Every extra line is more to proofread; keep the text to what the design needs.
Example prompt: A coffee menu poster titled "Morning Roast" with these items in this order: "Latte 4.50", "Flat White 4.20", "Mocha 4.80"; use only this text.
Seedream 5.5 renders complex characters and dense small text more accurately, and cuts the oily highlights and blown-out light that make AI photos look artificial.
Labels, captions and annotations in Chinese keep their strokes at small sizes, which suits infographics, menus and packaging. Give the exact wording and proofread the result.
Headlines, subheads and several columns of body text can share one page, as in a newspaper or a reading guide. Long passages still need a check for missing or repeated words.
Faces keep natural texture and soft transitions from highlight to shadow, and fabrics read as wool, cotton or linen rather than plastic. Describe the light source and the materials to get there.
Glass, fur and flash-lit surfaces get bright highlights with detail left in them, instead of greasy shine or blown-out patches. Naming the lens, film look or flash helps.
Each model has its own page and runs in the same workbench on one credit balance.
ByteDanceInfographics, dense layouts, multilingual design
View model
ByteDanceMulti-image composition and reference fidelity
View model
OpenAIPrecision-first detail, premium visual fidelity
View model
GoogleConsistent characters, product placement, exact short text
View modelRemove the background, upscale, vectorize or denoise any result, all on the same credit balance.
Transparent PNG or WebP with clean hair and product edges, ready for a listing or a new composition.
2× / 4× / 8× with recovered texture instead of smeared pixels, so a 1K draft can become a print.
Logos, icons and flat illustrations become editable SVG that scales to any size.
Remove grain and compression artifacts from low-light photos and scans while keeping real detail.
Seedream 5.5 is an image generation and editing model from ByteDance Seed. It focuses on stable multi-round editing, native transparent (RGBA) assets, more natural texture and light, and clearer small text in Chinese and English. It is an image model and not part of the Seedance video family.
Yes. The Workbench on this page runs Seedream 5.5, so every image you make here comes from it.
ByteDance Seed released Seedream 5.5 on November 9, 2026 and is rolling it out in Jimeng, Doubao and Volcano Engine Ark. A Pro version of the 5.5 series has been announced for later and has not been released.
No, each image costs credits, and new accounts get 10 free credits when they sign up. The price depends on the resolution and the number of reference images, and the Generate button shows the exact cost before you start.
Not guaranteed. ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 keeps unedited areas at the pixel level and reduces the color shift and detail loss that build up over repeated edits; compare each round with the last one and step back if something drifts.
No. Seedream 5.5 creates the asset with an alpha channel as it generates, including semi-transparent areas such as glass. Background removal cuts the subject out of a photo you already have; for that, use the Oeneo AI Background Remover.
Only Chinese and English have been shown: ByteDance's examples and text tests cover those two, including dense small text, with no published results for other languages. In any language, give the exact wording and proofread before you publish. The model does not fact-check what the text says.
ByteDance's own evaluation puts Seedream 5.5 ahead of GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst and Nano Banana 2.1 on text structure and text-to-image realism. Those are specific measures in a vendor test, not a verdict on every task, so compare results on your own prompts.
No. Its transparent output is a flat image with an alpha channel. It does not produce layered PSD files, vector graphics or editable fonts; for vector files, run a finished image through the Oeneo AI Image Vectorizer.
Write a prompt or add up to 10 reference images, then refine the result one edit at a time.
