# Photoswap: Personalized Subject Swapping in Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18286 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18286/

## Key facts

- Cited by 47 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (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)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04732/) (2018)
- [GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07093/) (2023)
- [Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14822/) (2021)
- [MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08465/) (2023)
- [CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13290/) (2021)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [Paint by Example: Exemplar-based Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13227/) (2022)
- [BLIP-Diffusion: Pre-trained Subject Representation for Controllable Text-to-Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14720/) (2023)
- [Training-Free Structured Diffusion Guidance for Compositional Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05032/) (2022)
- [VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08583/) (2022)
- [Stable Bias: Analyzing Societal Representations in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11408/) (2023)
- [Re-Imagen: Retrieval-Augmented Text-to-Image Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14491/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17525/) (2024)
- [VIEScore: Towards Explainable Metrics for Conditional Image Synthesis Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14867/) (2023)
- [Guiding Instruction-based Image Editing via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17102/) (2023)
- [ImagenHub: Standardizing the evaluation of conditional image generation models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01596/) (2023)
- [VideoSwap: Customized Video Subject Swapping with Interactive Semantic Point Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02087/) (2023)
- [IMPRINT: Generative Object Compositing by Learning Identity-Preserving Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10701/) (2024)
- [DreamMatcher: Appearance Matching Self-Attention for Semantically-Consistent Text-to-Image Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09812/) (2024)
- [FaceStudio: Put Your Face Everywhere in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02663/) (2023)
- [Drag Your Noise: Interactive Point-based Editing via Diffusion Semantic Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01050/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Video Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07111/) (2024)
- [ControlCom: Controllable Image Composition using Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10040/) (2023)
- [ConsistentID: Portrait Generation with Multimodal Fine-Grained Identity Preserving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16771/) (2024)
- [DreamEdit: Subject-driven Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12624/) (2023)
- [Generative Image Layer Decomposition with Visual Effects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17864/) (2024)
- [InstantSwap: Fast Customized Concept Swapping across Sharp Shape Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01197/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Personalized Content Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05538/) (2024)
- [Text-to-Image Models for Counterfactual Explanations: a Black-Box Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07944/) (2023)
- [Edit Away and My Face Will not Stay: Personal Biometric Defense against Malicious Generative Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16832/) (2024)
- [DreamCom: Finetuning Text-guided Inpainting Model for Image Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15508/) (2023)
- [DIVE: Taming DINO for Subject-Driven Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03347/) (2024)
- [MiniGPT-5: Interleaved Vision-and-Language Generation via Generative Vokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02239/) (2023)
- [ReFIR: Grounding Large Restoration Models with Retrieval Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05601/) (2024)
- [A Unified Agentic Framework for Evaluating Conditional Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07046/) (2025)
- [T-LoRA: Single Image Diffusion Model Customization Without Overfitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05964/) (2025)
- [PFStorer: Personalized Face Restoration and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08436/) (2024)
- [SwapAnything: Enabling Arbitrary Object Swapping in Personalized Visual Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05717/) (2024)
- [FAM Diffusion: Frequency and Attention Modulation for High-Resolution Image Generation with Stable Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18552/) (2024)
- [Eye-for-an-eye: Appearance Transfer with Semantic Correspondence in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07008/) (2024)
- [In-Context Brush: Zero-shot Customized Subject Insertion with Context-Aware Latent Space Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20271/) (2025)
- [Multi-party Collaborative Attention Control for Image Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01428/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In an era where images and visual content dominate our digital landscape, the ability to manipulate and personalize these images has become a necessity. Envision seamlessly substituting a tabby cat lounging on a sunlit window sill in a photograph with your own playful puppy, all while preserving the original charm and composition of the image. We present Photoswap, a novel approach that enables this immersive image editing experience through personalized subject swapping in existing images. Photoswap first learns the visual concept of the subject from reference images and then swaps it into the target image using pre-trained diffusion models in a training-free manner. We establish that a well-conceptualized visual subject can be seamlessly transferred to any image with appropriate self-attention and cross-attention manipulation, maintaining the pose of the swapped subject and the overall coherence of the image. Comprehensive experiments underscore the efficacy and controllability of Photoswap in personalized subject swapping. Furthermore, Photoswap significantly outperforms baseline methods in human ratings across subject swapping, background preservation, and overall quality, revealing its vast application potential, from entertainment to professional editing.