# BigColor: Colorization using a Generative Color Prior for Natural Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09685 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09685/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Colorful Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08511/) (2016)
- [PULSE: Self-Supervised Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration of Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03808/) (2020)
- [Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04061/) (2021)
- [Learning Representations for Automatic Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06668/) (2016)
- [Geometric GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02894/) (2017)
- [Exploiting Deep Generative Prior for Versatile Image Restoration and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13659/) (2020)
- [GAN Prior Embedded Network for Blind Face Restoration in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06070/) (2021)
- [Image Processing Using Multi-Code GAN Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07116/) (2019)
- [GLEAN: Generative Latent Bank for Large-Factor Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00739/) (2020)
- [Colorization Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04432/) (2021)
- [Instance-aware Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10825/) (2020)
- [Deep Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.00075/) (2016)
- [ChromaGAN: Adversarial Picture Colorization with Semantic Class Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09837/) (2019)
- [Towards Vivid and Diverse Image Colorization with Generative Color Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08826/) (2021)
- [GAN Inversion for Out-of-Range Images with Geometric Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08998/) (2021)
- [Time-Travel Rephotography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12261/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14469/) (2023)
- [DDColor: Towards Photo-Realistic Image Colorization via Dual Decoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11613/) (2022)
- [Control Color: Multimodal Diffusion-based Interactive Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10855/) (2024)
- [Diffusing Colors: Image Colorization with Text Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04145/) (2023)
- [Improved Diffusion-based Image Colorization via Piggybacked Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11105/) (2023)
- [Video Colorization with Pre-trained Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01732/) (2023)
- [Reversing Flow for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16961/) (2025)
- [Colorizing Monochromatic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12184/) (2024)
- [Automatic Controllable Colorization via Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05661/) (2024)
- [MultiColor: Image Colorization by Learning from Multiple Color Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04172/) (2024)
- [L-CAD: Language-based Colorization with Any-level Descriptions using Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15217/) (2023)
- [ChromaDistill: Colorizing Monochrome Radiance Fields with Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07668/) (2023)
- [Pre-Training LiDAR-Based 3D Object Detectors Through Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14592/) (2023)
- [Exemplar-based Video Colorization with Long-term Spatiotemporal Dependency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15081/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Model Compression for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17547/) (2024)
- [High-Resolution GAN Inversion for Degraded Images in Large Diverse Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03406/) (2023)
- [SVCNet: Scribble-based Video Colorization Network with Temporal Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11591/) (2023)
- [UGPNet: Universal Generative Prior for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00370/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Semantic-Aware Automatic Colorization with Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16678/) (2024)
- [Color3D: Controllable and Consistent 3D Colorization with Personalized Colorizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10152/) (2025)
- [Transforming Color: A Novel Image Colorization Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04799/) (2024)
- [Consistent Video Colorization via Palette Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19331/) (2025)
- [Language-based Image Colorization: A Benchmark and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14974/) (2025)
- [Uncolorable Examples: Preventing Unauthorized AI Colorization via Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08979/) (2025)
- [PRevivor: Reviving Ancient Chinese Paintings using Prior-Guided Color Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01274/) (2025)
- [Audio-Infused Automatic Image Colorization by Exploiting Audio Scene Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13270/) (2024)
- [ControlCol: Controllability in Automatic Speaker Video Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11711/) (2024)
- [Computer-aided Colorization State-of-the-science: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02288/) (2024)
- [Uni-Animator: Towards Unified Visual Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23191/) (2026)
- [Semantic Color Naturalness Breaker: Preventing Illegitimate Colorization via Content-Aware Color Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17610/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

For realistic and vivid colorization, generative priors have recently been exploited. However, such generative priors often fail for in-the-wild complex images due to their limited representation space. In this paper, we propose BigColor, a novel colorization approach that provides vivid colorization for diverse in-the-wild images with complex structures. While previous generative priors are trained to synthesize both image structures and colors, we learn a generative color prior to focus on color synthesis given the spatial structure of an image. In this way, we reduce the burden of synthesizing image structures from the generative prior and expand its representation space to cover diverse images. To this end, we propose a BigGAN-inspired encoder-generator network that uses a spatial feature map instead of a spatially-flattened BigGAN latent code, resulting in an enlarged representation space. Our method enables robust colorization for diverse inputs in a single forward pass, supports arbitrary input resolutions, and provides multi-modal colorization results. We demonstrate that BigColor significantly outperforms existing methods especially on in-the-wild images with complex structures.