mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models

arXiv 2210.09276 ↗First posted 17 Oct 2022cs.CVcited by 1,172

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

Abstract (arXiv)

Text-conditioned image editing has recently attracted considerable interest. However, most methods are currently either limited to specific editing types (e.g., object overlay, style transfer), or apply to synthetically generated images, or require multiple input images of a common object. In this paper we demonstrate, for the very first time, the ability to apply complex (e.g., non-rigid) text-guided semantic edits to a single real image. For example, we can change the posture and composition of one or multiple objects inside an image, while preserving its original characteristics. Our method can make a standing dog sit down or jump, cause a bird to spread its wings, etc. -- each within its single high-resolution natural image provided by the user. Contrary to previous work, our proposed method requires only a single input image and a target text (the desired edit). It operates on real images, and does not require any additional inputs (such as image masks or additional views of the object). Our method, which we call "Imagic", leverages a pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model for this task. It produces a text embedding that aligns with both the input image and the target text, while fine-tuning the diffusion model to capture the image-specific appearance. We demonstrate the quality and versatility of our method on numerous inputs from various domains, showcasing a plethora of high quality complex semantic image edits, all within a single unified framework.

Key facts. Cited by 1,172 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 65 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Oct 2022.

Builds on

65 of 71 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation25 Aug
  2. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May
  3. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
  4. 2022Dual Diffusion Implicit Bridges for Image-to-Image Translation16 Mar
  5. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
  6. 2021More Control for Free! Image Synthesis with Semantic Diffusion Guidance10 Dec
  7. 2021Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images29 Nov
  8. 2021Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models10 Nov
  9. 2021DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation6 Oct

Other references · 56

  1. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  5. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  6. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  7. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  8. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  9. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
  10. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
  11. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  12. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
38 more
  1. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
  2. 2019Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGANcited by 3,580
  3. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  4. 2021CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioningcited by 2,388
  5. 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
  6. 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,903
  7. 2021Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinementcited by 1,506
  8. 2020Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Datacited by 1,184
  9. 2021Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,181
  10. 2021Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generationcited by 1,155
  11. 2019StarGAN v2: Diverse Image Synthesis for Multiple Domainscited by 1,095
  12. 2022MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformercited by 1,082
  13. 2021StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagerycited by 990
  14. 2022Denoising Diffusion Restoration Modelscited by 951
  15. 2020Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 727
  16. 2019Interpreting the Latent Space of GANs for Semantic Face Editingcited by 691
  17. 2019Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?cited by 675
  18. 2021Score-based Generative Modeling in Latent Spacecited by 634
  19. 2021ILVR: Conditioning Method for Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 634
  20. 2020GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controlscited by 612
  21. 2021Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulationcited by 542
  22. 2022Diffusion Models for Adversarial Purificationcited by 469
  23. 2021Grad-TTS: A Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Text-to-Speechcited by 445
  24. 2021Pivotal Tuning for Latent-based Editing of Real Imagescited by 427
  25. 2020Closed-Form Factorization of Latent Semantics in GANscited by 407
  26. 2019Image2StyleGAN++: How to Edit the Embedded Images?cited by 356
  27. 2020StyleFlow: Attribute-conditioned Exploration of StyleGAN-Generated Images using Conditional Continuous Normalizing Flowscited by 348
  28. 2022Text2LIVE: Text-Driven Layered Image and Video Editingcited by 312
  29. 2021ReStyle: A Residual-Based StyleGAN Encoder via Iterative Refinementcited by 248
  30. 2019On the "steerability" of generative adversarial networkscited by 247
  31. 2020Swapping Autoencoder for Deep Image Manipulationcited by 215
  32. 2021HyperStyle: StyleGAN Inversion with HyperNetworks for Real Image Editingcited by 208
  33. 2022Re-Imagen: Retrieval-Augmented Text-to-Image Generatorcited by 208
  34. 2021Diffusion Models for Implicit Image Segmentation Ensemblescited by 198
  35. 2020Semantic Photo Manipulation with a Generative Image Priorcited by 178
  36. 2019Style Transfer by Relaxed Optimal Transport and Self-Similaritycited by 167
  37. 2021UNIT-DDPM: UNpaired Image Translation with Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 133
  38. 2021Explaining in Style: Training a GAN to explain a classifier in StyleSpacecited by 122

50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 34; 2023: 341; 2024: 395; 2025: 265; 2026: 137.

1,172 papers.

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  1. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  2. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
  3. 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 1,168
  4. 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 960
  5. 2022Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generationcited by 958
  6. 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoiserscited by 921
  7. 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 897
  8. 2023Diffusion Model Alignment Using Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 767
  9. 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 722
  10. 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 696
  11. 2023ModelScope Text-to-Video Technical Reportcited by 651
  12. 2023Muse: Text-To-Image Generation via Masked Generative Transformerscited by 640
38 more
  1. 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 615
  2. 2023MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generationcited by 529
  3. 2023Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translationcited by 503
  4. 2022Safe Latent Diffusion: Mitigating Inappropriate Degeneration in Diffusion Modelscited by 501
  5. 2022Paint by Example: Exemplar-based Image Editing with Diffusion Modelscited by 489
  6. 2024Evaluating Text-to-Visual Generation with Image-to-Text Generationcited by 465
  7. 2022MagicVideo: Efficient Video Generation With Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 463
  8. 2023FateZero: Fusing Attentions for Zero-shot Text-based Video Editingcited by 462
  9. 2023VideoComposer: Compositional Video Synthesis with Motion Controllabilitycited by 461
  10. 2023AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customizationcited by 411
  11. 2023InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generationcited by 387
  12. 2023DeepCache: Accelerating Diffusion Models for Freecited by 346
  13. 2023I2VGen-XL: High-Quality Image-to-Video Synthesis via Cascaded Diffusion Modelscited by 343
  14. 2023SVDiff: Compact Parameter Space for Diffusion Fine-Tuningcited by 338
  15. 2023PhotoMaker: Customizing Realistic Human Photos via Stacked ID Embeddingcited by 324
  16. 2023Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Taskscited by 321
  17. 2023Pix2Video: Video Editing using Image Diffusioncited by 318
  18. 2023Video-P2P: Video Editing with Cross-attention Controlcited by 312
  19. 2023Ablating Concepts in Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 312
  20. 2023Training-Free Layout Control with Cross-Attention Guidancecited by 312
  21. 2023Diffusion Self-Guidance for Controllable Image Generationcited by 305
  22. 2023TEXTure: Text-Guided Texturing of 3D Shapescited by 303
  23. 2023A Tale of Two Features: Stable Diffusion Complements DINO for Zero-Shot Semantic Correspondencecited by 297
  24. 2023DragDiffusion: Harnessing Diffusion Models for Interactive Point-based Image Editingcited by 293
  25. 2022Inversion-Based Style Transfer with Diffusion Modelscited by 290
  26. 2023The Stable Signature: Rooting Watermarks in Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 289
  27. 2022SDFusion: Multimodal 3D Shape Completion, Reconstruction, and Generationcited by 287
  28. 2022SmartBrush: Text and Shape Guided Object Inpainting with Diffusion Modelcited by 276
  29. 2024UltraEdit: Instruction-based Fine-Grained Image Editing at Scalecited by 266
  30. 2023Text-to-image Diffusion Models in Generative AI: A Surveycited by 264
  31. 2022EDICT: Exact Diffusion Inversion via Coupled Transformationscited by 256
  32. 2023Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylizationcited by 251
  33. 2023An Edit Friendly DDPM Noise Space: Inversion and Manipulationscited by 243
  34. 2023P+: Extended Textual Conditioning in Text-to-Image Generationcited by 242
  35. 2023DreamBooth3D: Subject-Driven Text-to-3D Generationcited by 235
  36. 2024AnyEdit: Mastering Unified High-Quality Image Editing for Any Ideacited by 235
  37. 2023Text2Tex: Text-driven Texture Synthesis via Diffusion Modelscited by 234
  38. 2024EMO: Emote Portrait Alive -- Generating Expressive Portrait Videos with Audio2Video Diffusion Model under Weak Conditionscited by 233

50 most cited of 1,172 All 1,172 (JSON)

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  1. 2023Towards Real-time Text-driven Image Manipulation with Unconditional Diffusion Models
  2. 2023PAIR-Diffusion: A Comprehensive Multimodal Object-Level Image Editor
  3. 2022DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance
  4. 2024RealCompo: Balancing Realism and Compositionality Improves Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
  5. 2023Textual and Visual Prompt Fusion for Image Editing via Step-Wise Alignment
  6. 2024A Survey of Multimodal-Guided Image Editing with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
  7. 2022LDEdit: Towards Generalized Text Guided Image Manipulation via Latent Diffusion Models
  8. 2025ReFlex: Text-Guided Editing of Real Images in Rectified Flow via Mid-Step Feature Extraction and Attention Adaptation