# GLEAN: Generative Latent Bank for Image Super-Resolution and Beyond

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.14812 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14812/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 78 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [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)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04802/) (2016)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02758/) (2018)
- [ESRGAN: Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00219/) (2018)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.00092/) (2014)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [Colorful Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08511/) (2016)
- [Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10833/) (2021)
- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)
- [In-Domain GAN Inversion for Real Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00049/) (2020)
- [Accelerating the Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00367/) (2016)
- [Recovering Realistic Texture in Image Super-resolution by Deep Spatial Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02815/) (2018)
- [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)
- [SinGAN: Learning a Generative Model from a Single Natural Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01164/) (2019)
- [Learning Texture Transformer Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04139/) (2020)
- [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)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Arbitrary-steps Image Super-resolution via Diffusion Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09013/) (2024)
- [PGDiff: Guiding Diffusion Models for Versatile Face Restoration via Partial Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10810/) (2023)
- [GoodDrag: Towards Good Practices for Drag Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07206/) (2024)
- [DiffI2I: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13767/) (2023)
- [Dual Associated Encoder for Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07314/) (2023)
- [GAN Prior based Null-Space Learning for Consistent Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13524/) (2022)
- [Towards Authentic Face Restoration with Iterative Diffusion Models and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08996/) (2023)
- [Survey on Deep Face Restoration: From Non-blind to Blind and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15490/) (2023)
- [Efficient Image Super-Resolution with Feature Interaction Weighted Hybrid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14181/) (2022)
- [Geometric Distortion Guided Transformer for Omnidirectional Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10869/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Prior Interpolation for Flexibility Real-World Face Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16552/) (2024)
- [AuthFace: Towards Authentic Blind Face Restoration with Face-oriented Generative Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09864/) (2024)
- [SeeClear: Semantic Distillation Enhances Pixel Condensation for Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05799/) (2024)
- [LLV-FSR: Exploiting Large Language-Vision Prior for Face Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09293/) (2024)
- [Feature-domain Adaptive Contrastive Distillation for Efficient Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15951/) (2022)
- [Computer-aided Colorization State-of-the-science: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02288/) (2024)
- [LiteVSR: Lightweight Adaptation of Frozen Diffusion Transformers for Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09250/) (2026)
- [Backward SDEs-based Diffusion for Physics-Constrained Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15702/) (2026)
- [From Pixel Generation to Topological Inference: Structural Dual Super-Resolution for Trustworthy Cross-Physical-Domain Trabecular Morphology Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34716/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We show that pre-trained Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) such as StyleGAN and BigGAN can be used as a latent bank to improve the performance of image super-resolution. While most existing perceptual-oriented approaches attempt to generate realistic outputs through learning with adversarial loss, our method, Generative LatEnt bANk (GLEAN), goes beyond existing practices by directly leveraging rich and diverse priors encapsulated in a pre-trained GAN. But unlike prevalent GAN inversion methods that require expensive image-specific optimization at runtime, our approach only needs a single forward pass for restoration. GLEAN can be easily incorporated in a simple encoder-bank-decoder architecture with multi-resolution skip connections. Employing priors from different generative models allows GLEAN to be applied to diverse categories (eg~human faces, cats, buildings, and cars). We further present a lightweight version of GLEAN, named LightGLEAN, which retains only the critical components in GLEAN. Notably, LightGLEAN consists of only 21% of parameters and 35% of FLOPs while achieving comparable image quality. We extend our method to different tasks including image colorization and blind image restoration, and extensive experiments show that our proposed models perform favorably in comparison to existing methods. Codes and models are available at https://github.com/open-mmlab/mmediting.