The ink you have · The idea you are weighing · A preview in seconds
Tattoo Cover Up Generator
Turn the tattoo you regret into a cover-up direction you can believe in: upload the old ink, see the strongest candidates on your own arm, and walk into the consultation ready to choose instead of ready to explain.
A faded band, then a peony over it
Our own run on this site's engines. Drag the divider and look for the band: the point of the demo is that you cannot find it, and that the new piece needed considerably more room than the old one occupied. Every output is AI-generated; what your ink allows is a question for your artist.
Drag to compare before and after
What a cover-up preview is for
It takes a photo of the tattoo you want gone and renders a proposed new piece over it — dense enough to absorb the old shape, extended past its edges, shaded to your photo's own light.
Cover-up searches come with a mood the rest of the tattoo world does not have. Nobody browsing here is excited; they are stuck with a name, a faded tribal band, or a piece from an artist they now know was bad, and they have been putting off the conversation. The pair on this page is our own run and it shows the real constraint honestly: an aged tribal band with edges blown out and black faded to blue-green, covered by layered blackwork.
Where this stops being reliable: it renders a plausible cover-up, not a guaranteed one. Whether your ink can actually be covered depends on how deep it sits, how the skin healed, and what your artist can lift first.
Creative engine
How the preview runs
Photograph the existing tattoo, describe the piece you are weighing, generate.
Darker, and usually bigger
Any preview that covers old ink with something small or pale is lying to you. The useful ones look heavier than you hoped — that is not the tool being pessimistic, it is the only way ink actually covers ink.
Three candidates, one arm
Floral, geometric, blackout — run all three on the same photo and the choice narrows itself in a couple of minutes. Walking into the studio with three references beats walking in with a feeling.
Three steps to a candidate worth showing
Photograph the problem properly and the proposals get far more useful.
Shoot the old tattoo flat and lit
Even daylight, the limb square to the camera, the whole piece in frame with several centimetres of clear skin around it. That surrounding skin is where the new design has to go, so leave it in the shot.
Name a style, not a picture
"Dense blackwork florals", "heavy geometric mandala", "dark botanical with stippled shading" — styles carry the weight information a specific subject does not. Add "must fully cover the existing tattoo" and say what the old piece is.
Push until it stops showing through
If the old outline is still visible in the render, ask for more solid black and a larger footprint and run it again. The version that finally works is the honest answer to how big this has to be.
Who is looking at covering ink
Three situations, one awkward tattoo each.
The name
A relationship ended and the lettering did not. Script is one of the easier things to bury because it is thin and linear — see which shapes eat it cleanly before you resign yourself to a full blackout.
The nineties piece
A tribal band or barbed wire, faded to blue-green, bought at nineteen. These need serious weight and usually a larger footprint, so preview a few dense candidates to see which style can bury the band without losing its shape.
The bad execution
Wobbly lines, patchy fill, an artist you should not have trusted. Sometimes the answer is a rework rather than a cover — and comparing a preview against what the design looks like as clean linework tells you quickly which conversation to have.
Cover-up FAQ
What people ask before booking a cover-up consultation.
Not any tattoo with any design. Dense black, heavy saturation and scar tissue all restrict what will sit on top, and a few sessions of laser lightening first is a normal part of the plan rather than an admission of defeat. A preview shows you the ceiling of what is plausible; only an artist looking at the actual skin can confirm it.
Because that is how covering ink works. New pigment goes over old, so the fresh design has to be darker in the overlap and needs clear skin around it to read as a shape at all. If a preview comes back the same size as the original, it has not solved the problem — it has drawn next to it.
It renders them, and you should be sceptical of the result. Colour over old ink shifts unpredictably depending on what is underneath — a red that looks right in a render can go muddy on skin that already has green in it. Use colour previews to discuss direction with an artist, not to set expectations.
Yes. Add their drawing next to your photo and ask for that design placed over the existing tattoo. This is the most useful thing on this page: it turns their sketch on paper into a picture of your own arm, which is the version you can actually judge.
Bring them as direction, not as a brief. Artists who specialise in cover-ups work from what the old ink allows, and a render that ignores that will get politely rewritten. Saying "this weight, this density, roughly this footprint" is far more useful than handing over a picture and asking for it exactly.
It travels over HTTPS for the edit and stays in your own history until you delete it. It is never used to advertise. Every output is AI-generated.
Kavel pricing — you pay per generation, never per seat
Credits are shared across everything Kavel runs. You see the cost before each run, and a failed job is never charged.
Free
What's included
- 15 credits before you sign up
- +40 when you create an account
- +100 a week from daily check-ins
- = 488 a month — 97 images or 12 videos
- No card, no account
- Free engine every day
- Photo editing
Starter
What's included
- 3,150 credits per month
- Up to 630 images or 78 videos
- Every model unlocked
- Clean downloads, no watermark
- Cost shown before you generate
Creator
What's included
- 7,200 credits per month
- Up to 1,440 images or 180 videos
- No shared queue
- Every model unlocked
- Clean downloads, no watermark
Studio
What's included
- 13,200 credits per month
- Up to 2,640 images or 330 videos
- Built for 4K runs
- No shared queue
- Every model unlocked
Pay safely and securely with
Payments are processed by Stripe over an encrypted checkout. Your card details are handled by Stripe and are never stored by Kavel.
The rest of the tattoo bench
Hide it, erase it, or preview the replacement.
Find out what can sit on top of it
Upload the piece you regret, weigh three candidates on your own arm, and walk into the consultation with something to point at — or see it erased instead.