Run Z-Image Turbo locally: txt2img, upscale and inpaint with crispz-studio (free, open source)

July 17, 2026 3:03 PM

Z-Image Turbo generates a 1024px image in 8 steps on a consumer GPU. This tutorial

sets up crispz-studio, a free local UI dedicated to it: generation, ESRGAN + refine

upscaling, inpaint/outpaint, LoRAs and Civitai checkpoints, without ComfyUI.

Repo: https://github.com/mikecastrodemaria/crispz-studio

What you need

- Windows or Linux, Python 3.10+, an NVIDIA GPU with 12 GB VRAM or more

(BF16 all-in-VRAM wants ~16 GB; CPU offload covers smaller cards).

- ~15 GB of disk for the base model (downloaded once from Hugging Face).

Install

1. git clone https://github.com/mikecastrodemaria/crispz-studio

2. Run install.bat (Windows) or install.sh (Linux). It creates the venv and

installs torch + diffusers.

3. Launch with run.bat / run.sh, open http://127.0.0.1:7860.

First launch downloads Tongyi-MAI/Z-Image-Turbo. After that everything runs offline.

First image

Type a prompt, pick an aspect ratio, click Generate. The defaults are already

tuned for Turbo: 8 steps, CFG 0, euler, sgm_uniform. On an RTX 5090 a 1024px

image takes about 2 seconds; a 12 GB card stays comfortable.

Two settings worth knowing on day one:

- Performance presets switch between Turbo (8 steps) and Base-style checkpoints

(~28 steps, CFG 4). Picking a model auto-syncs the right preset.

- Upscale after generate chains every render through ESRGAN + a Z-Image refine

pass. One checkbox, no manual step.

Use Civitai checkpoints and LoRAs

Drop any Z-Image .safetensors from Civitai into checkpoints/, click Refresh, and

pick it in the model dropdown. The app loads it as a transformer override and keeps

the official VAE + text encoder, so a 12 GB single file is enough. FP8 and INT4

builds are filtered out with an explanation (diffusers cannot load them); take the

BF16/FP16 build.

LoRAs go into loras/, with 1 to 10 slots and per-slot weight. The Asset Browser

tab fetches previews, trigger words and example images from Civitai by SHA256

lookup, straight from the UI.

Images save with A1111-scheme metadata (switchable in Advanced), so Civitai

reads the generation parameters when you upload your renders.

Upscale and detail

The Upscale tab runs Real-ESRGAN then refines with Z-Image img2img. Useful starting

values: factor 2.0, denoise 0.30, refine 12 steps. Above ~1664px the refine

auto-tiles, which keeps 4K outputs inside a 32 GB card and even a 12 GB card

working. "Refine first" runs the diffusion at native resolution before ESRGAN when

you want speed over fine detail.

Inpaint, outpaint, reframe

One tab, three modes: Brush (repaint a mask), Expand sides (~30% per

border), Reframe (change aspect ratio, Contain or Cover). Leave the prompt

empty and the local captioner describes the image for coherent fills; the optional

Harmonize pass removes the pasted-zone look.

Going further

- X/Y/Z grids: compare checkpoints, samplers, steps or LoRA weights in one

annotated contact sheet.

- Job queue: snapshot settings into jobs and run overnight batches.

- CLI: every mode is scriptable --txt2img --upscale, server mode included).

Issues and feature requests: https://github.com/mikecastrodemaria/crispz-studio/issues