# Flare7K++: Mixing Synthetic and Real Datasets for Nighttime Flare Removal and Beyond

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04236 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04236/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Pyramid Scene Parsing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01105/) (2016)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02808/) (2021)
- [HINet: Half Instance Normalization Network for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06086/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Deep Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13501/) (2020)
- [Single Image Reflection Separation with Perceptual Losses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05376/) (2018)
- [LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03373/) (2022)
- [Map-Guided Curriculum Domain Adaptation and Uncertainty-Aware Evaluation for Semantic Nighttime Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14553/) (2020)
- [DANNet: A One-Stage Domain Adaptation Network for Unsupervised Nighttime Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10834/) (2021)
- [How to Train Neural Networks for Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12485/) (2020)
- [Flare7K: A Phenomenological Nighttime Flare Removal Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06570/) (2022)
- [Nighttime Dehazing with a Synthetic Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03864/) (2020)
- [Removing Diffraction Image Artifacts in Under-Display Camera via Dynamic Skip Connection Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09556/) (2021)
- [Nighttime Smartphone Reflective Flare Removal Using Optical Center Symmetry Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15046/) (2023)
- [Automatic Flare Spot Artifact Detection and Removal in Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04384/) (2021)
- [Generating Aligned Pseudo-Supervision from Non-Aligned Data for Image Restoration in Under-Display Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06019/) (2023)
- [Let's See Clearly: Contaminant Artifact Removal for Moving Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08852/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Enhancing Visibility in Nighttime Haze Images Using Guided APSF and Gradient Adaptive Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01738/) (2023)
- [JarvisIR: Elevating Autonomous Driving Perception with Intelligent Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04158/) (2025)
- [LightsOut: Diffusion-based Outpainting for Enhanced Lens Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15868/) (2025)
- [RealRestorer: Towards Generalizable Real-World Image Restoration with Large-Scale Image Editing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25502/) (2026)
- [Beyond Degradation Redundancy: Contrastive Prompt Learning for All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09973/) (2025)
- [Disentangle Nighttime Lens Flares: Self-supervised Generation-based Lens Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10714/) (2025)
- [FlareX: A Physics-Informed Dataset for Lens Flare Removal via 2D Synthesis and 3D Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09995/) (2025)
- [Harmonizing Light and Darkness: A Symphony of Prior-guided Data Synthesis and Adaptive Focus for Nighttime Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00313/) (2024)
- [MIPI 2024 Challenge on Nighttime Flare Removal: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19534/) (2024)
- [GN-FR:Generalizable Neural Radiance Fields for Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08200/) (2024)
- [RAW-Adapter: Adapting Pre-trained Visual Model to Camera RAW Images and A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17027/) (2025)
- [DFDNet: Dynamic Frequency-Guided De-Flare Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17489/) (2025)
- [DeflareMamba: Hierarchical Vision Mamba for Contextually Consistent Lens Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02113/) (2025)
- [Learning Latent Transmission and Glare Maps for Lens Veiling Glare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17353/) (2025)
- [Learning to Remove Lens Flare in Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09016/) (2025)
- [Toward Flare-Free Images: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14354/) (2023)
- [ISETHDR: A Physics-based Synthetic Radiance Dataset for High Dynamic Range Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12048/) (2024)
- [Addressing Camera Sensors Faults in Vision-Based Navigation: Simulation and Dataset Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02602/) (2025)
- [Simulating Refractive Distortions and Weather-Induced Artifacts for Resource-Constrained Autonomous Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05536/) (2025)
- [Difflare: Removing Image Lens Flare with Latent Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14746/) (2024)
- [A Real-Time DETR Approach to Bangladesh Road Object Detection for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15110/) (2024)
- [Physics-Informed Video Flare Synthesis and Removal Leveraging Motion Independence between Flare and Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11327/) (2025)
- [Onboard-Targeted Segmentation of Straylight in Space Camera Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20709/) (2026)
- [Deep Light Pollution Removal in Night Cityscape Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09145/) (2026)
- [Breaking Spatial Uniformity: Prior-Guided Mamba with Radial Serialization for Lens Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07650/) (2026)
- [Semi-LAR: Semi-supervised Contrastive Learning with Linear Attention for Removal of Nighttime Flares](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18156/) (2026)
- [DeLux: Cross-Modal Local Artifact Restoration in Video Using Neuromorphic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27576/) (2026)
- [Di2CycleSB: Towards High-Quality Unsupervised Nighttime Visibility Enhancement via Schr"odinger Bridge Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29043/) (2026)
- [Lens Flare Removal and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39527/) (2026)
- [LensBridge: Frequency-Guided Compound Degradation Adaptation for Lens Aberration Correction and Veiling Glare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00318/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial lights commonly leave strong lens flare artifacts on the images captured at night, degrading both the visual quality and performance of vision algorithms. Existing flare removal approaches mainly focus on removing daytime flares and fail in nighttime cases. Nighttime flare removal is challenging due to the unique luminance and spectrum of artificial lights, as well as the diverse patterns and image degradation of the flares. The scarcity of the nighttime flare removal dataset constraints the research on this crucial task. In this paper, we introduce Flare7K++, the first comprehensive nighttime flare removal dataset, consisting of 962 real-captured flare images (Flare-R) and 7,000 synthetic flares (Flare7K). Compared to Flare7K, Flare7K++ is particularly effective in eliminating complicated degradation around the light source, which is intractable by using synthetic flares alone. Besides, the previous flare removal pipeline relies on the manual threshold and blur kernel settings to extract light sources, which may fail when the light sources are tiny or not overexposed. To address this issue, we additionally provide the annotations of light sources in Flare7K++ and propose a new end-to-end pipeline to preserve the light source while removing lens flares. Our dataset and pipeline offer a valuable foundation and benchmark for future investigations into nighttime flare removal studies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Flare7K++ supplements the diversity of existing flare datasets and pushes the frontier of nighttime flare removal towards real-world scenarios.