# Delta Denoising Score

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07090 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07090/

## Key facts

- Cited by 121 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17249/) (2021)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [COCO-Stuff: Thing and Stuff Classes in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03716/) (2016)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02711/) (2021)
- [Latent-NeRF for Shape-Guided Generation of 3D Shapes and Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07600/) (2022)
- [Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03027/) (2023)
- [Blended Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02779/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 121)

- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [GRM: Large Gaussian Reconstruction Model for Efficient 3D Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14621/) (2024)
- [Diff-Instruct: A Universal Approach for Transferring Knowledge From Pre-trained Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18455/) (2023)
- [FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08629/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17525/) (2024)
- [Text-to-3D with Classifier Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19415/) (2023)
- [State of the Art on Diffusion Models for Visual Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07204/) (2023)
- [Noise-Free Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17590/) (2023)
- [V3D: Video Diffusion Models are Effective 3D Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06738/) (2024)
- [Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05414/) (2023)
- [Dynamic Prompt Learning: Addressing Cross-Attention Leakage for Text-Based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15664/) (2023)
- [One-Step Diffusion Distillation through Score Implicit Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16794/) (2024)
- [The Chosen One: Consistent Characters in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10093/) (2023)
- [RoomDreamer: Text-Driven 3D Indoor Scene Synthesis with Coherent Geometry and Texture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11337/) (2023)
- [HeadSculpt: Crafting 3D Head Avatars with Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03038/) (2023)
- [LANCE: Stress-testing Visual Models by Generating Language-guided Counterfactual Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19164/) (2023)
- [Posterior Distillation Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13831/) (2023)
- [Text-to-Image Rectified Flow as Plug-and-Play Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03293/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Score Distillation as a Bridge Between Image Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09417/) (2024)
- [MAS: Multi-view Ancestral Sampling for 3D motion generation using 2D diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14729/) (2023)
- [Taming Mode Collapse in Score Distillation for Text-to-3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00909/) (2023)
- [HeadStudio: Text to Animatable Head Avatars with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06149/) (2024)
- [Text-to-Vector Generation with Neural Path Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10317/) (2024)
- [Regularization by Texts for Latent Diffusion Inverse Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15658/) (2023)
- [FlowAlign: Trajectory-Regularized, Inversion-Free Flow-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23145/) (2025)
- [DreamMotion: Space-Time Self-Similar Score Distillation for Zero-Shot Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12002/) (2024)
- [ColorPeel: Color Prompt Learning with Diffusion Models via Color and Shape Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07197/) (2024)
- [Compressed Image Generation with Denoising Diffusion Codebook Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01189/) (2025)
- [Score Distillation Sampling with Learned Manifold Corrective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05293/) (2024)
- [SyncTweedies: A General Generative Framework Based on Synchronized Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14370/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Delta Denoising Score (DDS), a novel scoring function for text-based image editing that guides minimal modifications of an input image towards the content described in a target prompt. DDS leverages the rich generative prior of text-to-image diffusion models and can be used as a loss term in an optimization problem to steer an image towards a desired direction dictated by a text. DDS utilizes the Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) mechanism for the purpose of image editing. We show that using only SDS often produces non-detailed and blurry outputs due to noisy gradients. To address this issue, DDS uses a prompt that matches the input image to identify and remove undesired erroneous directions of SDS. Our key premise is that SDS should be zero when calculated on pairs of matched prompts and images, meaning that if the score is non-zero, its gradients can be attributed to the erroneous component of SDS. Our analysis demonstrates the competence of DDS for text based image-to-image translation. We further show that DDS can be used to train an effective zero-shot image translation model. Experimental results indicate that DDS outperforms existing methods in terms of stability and quality, highlighting its potential for real-world applications in text-based image editing.