# Self-supervised Matting-specific Portrait Enhancement and Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.06601 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06601/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [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)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (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)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [COCO-Stuff: Thing and Stuff Classes in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03716/) (2016)
- [Interpreting the Latent Space of GANs for Semantic Face Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10786/) (2019)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)
- [Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02766/) (2021)
- [In-Domain GAN Inversion for Real Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00049/) (2020)
- [Image2StyleGAN++: How to Edit the Embedded Images?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11544/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Domain Adaptation with Residual Transfer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04433/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Discovery of Interpretable Directions in the GAN Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03754/) (2020)
- [High-Fidelity GAN Inversion for Image Attribute Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06590/) (2021)
- [GANalyze: Toward Visual Definitions of Cognitive Image Properties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.10112/) (2019)
- [Image Processing Using Multi-Code GAN Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07116/) (2019)
- [Real-Time High-Resolution Background Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07810/) (2020)
- [Deep Image Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03872/) (2017)
- [MODNet: Real-Time Trimap-Free Portrait Matting via Objective Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11961/) (2020)
- [Fader Networks: Manipulating Images by Sliding Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.00409/) (2017)
- [Background Matting: The World is Your Green Screen](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00626/) (2020)
- [Indices Matter: Learning to Index for Deep Image Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00672/) (2019)
- [Controlling generative models with continuous factors of variations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.10238/) (2020)
- [Natural Image Matting via Guided Contextual Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04069/) (2020)
- [Semantic Human Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01354/) (2018)
- [Information-Flow Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05055/) (2017)
- [You Only Look Yourself: Unsupervised and Untrained Single Image Dehazing Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16829/) (2020)
- [High-resolution Face Swapping via Latent Semantics Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15958/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [RIGID: Recurrent GAN Inversion and Editing of Real Face Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06097/) (2023)
- [DreamCinema: Cinematic Transfer with Free Camera and 3D Character](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12601/) (2024)
- [Efficient Portrait Matte Creation With Layer Diffusion and Connectivity Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16147/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We resolve the ill-posed alpha matting problem from a completely different perspective. Given an input portrait image, instead of estimating the corresponding alpha matte, we focus on the other end, to subtly enhance this input so that the alpha matte can be easily estimated by any existing matting models. This is accomplished by exploring the latent space of GAN models. It is demonstrated that interpretable directions can be found in the latent space and they correspond to semantic image transformations. We further explore this property in alpha matting. Particularly, we invert an input portrait into the latent code of StyleGAN, and our aim is to discover whether there is an enhanced version in the latent space which is more compatible with a reference matting model. We optimize multi-scale latent vectors in the latent spaces under four tailored losses, ensuring matting-specificity and subtle modifications on the portrait. We demonstrate that the proposed method can refine real portrait images for arbitrary matting models, boosting the performance of automatic alpha matting by a large margin. In addition, we leverage the generative property of StyleGAN, and propose to generate enhanced portrait data which can be treated as the pseudo GT. It addresses the problem of expensive alpha matte annotation, further augmenting the matting performance of existing models. Code is available at~urlhttps://github.com/cnnlstm/StyleGANMatting.