mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

LIME: Localized Image Editing via Attention Regularization in Diffusion Models

arXiv 2312.09256 ↗First posted 14 Dec 2023cs.CVcited by 27

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models (DMs) have gained prominence due to their ability to generate high-quality varied images with recent advancements in text-to-image generation. The research focus is now shifting towards the controllability of DMs. A significant challenge within this domain is localized editing, where specific areas of an image are modified without affecting the rest of the content. This paper introduces LIME for localized image editing in diffusion models. LIME does not require user-specified regions of interest (RoI) or additional text input, but rather employs features from pre-trained methods and a straightforward clustering method to obtain precise editing mask. Then, by leveraging cross-attention maps, it refines these segments for finding regions to obtain localized edits. Finally, we propose a novel cross-attention regularization technique that penalizes unrelated cross-attention scores in the RoI during the denoising steps, ensuring localized edits. Our approach, without re-training, fine-tuning and additional user inputs, consistently improves the performance of existing methods in various editing benchmarks. The project page can be found at https://enisimsar.github.io/LIME/.

Key facts. Cited by 27 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 55 of its 62 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Dec 2023.

Builds on

55 of 62 references.

Closest ancestors · 22

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023CONFORM: Contrast is All You Need For High-Fidelity Text-to-Image Diffusion Models11 Dec
  2. 2023EditVal: Benchmarking Diffusion Based Text-Guided Image Editing Methods3 Oct
  3. 2023Direct Inversion: Boosting Diffusion-based Editing with 3 Lines of Code2 Oct
  4. 2023Dynamic Prompt Learning: Addressing Cross-Attention Leakage for Text-Based Image Editing27 Sep
  5. 2023Watch Your Steps: Local Image and Scene Editing by Text Instructions17 Aug
  6. 2023A-STAR: Test-time Attention Segregation and Retention for Text-to-image Synthesis26 Jun
  7. 2023Emergent Correspondence from Image Diffusion6 Jun
  8. 2023Localizing Object-level Shape Variations with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models20 Mar
  9. 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models31 Jan
  10. 2022Uncovering the Disentanglement Capability in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models16 Dec
  11. 2022SINE: SINgle Image Editing with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models8 Dec
  12. 2022Paint by Example: Exemplar-based Image Editing with Diffusion Models23 Nov
10 more
  1. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
  2. 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
  3. 2022DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance20 Oct
  4. 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
  5. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation25 Aug
  6. 2022Blended Latent Diffusion6 Jun
  7. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May
  8. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
  9. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
  10. 2021Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images29 Nov

Other references · 33

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  5. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,498
  6. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  7. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
  8. 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
  9. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
  10. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
  11. 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,229
  12. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
21 more
  1. 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
  2. 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,903
  3. 2022RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 1,419
  4. 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 615
  5. 2016StackGAN: Text to Photo-realistic Image Synthesis with Stacked Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 575
  6. 2022Open-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation with Mask-adapted CLIPcited by 560
  7. 2023Segment Everything Everywhere All at Oncecited by 546
  8. 2023Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translationcited by 503
  9. 2023ELITE: Encoding Visual Concepts into Textual Embeddings for Customized Text-to-Image Generationcited by 414
  10. 2023Open-Vocabulary Panoptic Segmentation with Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 371
  11. 2023Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Taskscited by 321
  12. 2022Text2LIVE: Text-Driven Layered Image and Video Editingcited by 312
  13. 2022VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language Guidancecited by 285
  14. 2018DeepFakes: a New Threat to Face Recognition? Assessment and Detectioncited by 208
  15. 2016Learning Deep Representations of Fine-grained Visual Descriptionscited by 182
  16. 2023Guiding Instruction-based Image Editing via Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 182
  17. 2023HIVE: Harnessing Human Feedback for Instructional Visual Editingcited by 172
  18. 2023InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Taskscited by 162
  19. 2023LD-ZNet: A Latent Diffusion Approach for Text-Based Image Segmentationcited by 29
  20. 2020Open-Edit: Open-Domain Image Manipulation with Open-Vocabulary Instructionscited by 25
  21. 2023MDP: A Generalized Framework for Text-Guided Image Editing by Manipulating the Diffusion Pathcited by 18

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 7; 2025: 7; 2026: 13.

27 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024Self-Rectifying Diffusion Sampling with Perturbed-Attention Guidancecited by 108
  2. 2024Continuous, Subject-Specific Attribute Control in T2I Models by Identifying Semantic Directionscited by 39
  3. 2025Stochastic Self-Guidance for Training-Free Enhancement of Diffusion Modelscited by 35
  4. 2025Qwen-Image-Layered: Towards Inherent Editability via Layer Decompositioncited by 29
  5. 2025SuperEdit: Rectifying and Facilitating Supervision for Instruction-Based Image Editingcited by 18
  6. 2024SwapAnything: Enabling Arbitrary Object Swapping in Personalized Visual Editingcited by 13
  7. 2024InstructBrush: Learning Attention-based Instruction Optimization for Image Editingcited by 10
  8. 2025ConText-CIR: Learning from Concepts in Text for Composed Image Retrievalcited by 7
  9. 2024FunEditor: Achieving Complex Image Edits via Function Aggregation with Diffusion Modelscited by 2
  10. 2026WorldEdit: Towards Open-World Image Editing with a Knowledge-Informed Benchmarkcited by 2
  11. 2024CA-Edit: Causality-Aware Condition Adapter for High-Fidelity Local Facial Attribute Editingcited by 1
  12. 2024UIP2P: Unsupervised Instruction-based Image Editing via Edit Reversibility Constraintcited by 1
15 more
  1. 2025CPO: Condition Preference Optimization for Controllable Image Generationcited by 1
  2. 2026Shifting the Breaking Point of Flow Matching for Multi-Instance Editingcited by 1
  3. 2026Does Synthetic Layered Design Data Benefit Layered Design Decomposition?cited by 1
  4. 2026Overpainting: Localized Context-aware Diffusion Image Editingcited by 1
  5. 2025SafeCtrl: Region-Based Safety Control for Text-to-Image Diffusion via Detect-Then-Suppresscited by 0
  6. 2025Chain-of-Image Generation: Toward Monitorable and Controllable Image Generationcited by 0
  7. 2026LAMS-Edit: Latent and Attention Mixing with Schedulers for Improved Content Preservation in Diffusion-Based Image and Style Editingcited by 0
  8. 2026Localized Latent Editing for Dose-Response Modeling in Botulinum Toxin Injection Planningcited by 0
  9. 2026FlowBypass: Rectified Flow Trajectory Bypass for Training-Free Image Editingcited by 0
  10. 2026MIRAGE: Benchmarking and Aligning Multi-Instance Image Editingcited by 0
  11. 2026Toward 360-Degree Indoor Panorama Editing via Tuning-Free Diffusion Model with Refocusing Cross-Attentioncited by 0
  12. 2026Editing Everything Everywhere All at Oncecited by 0
  13. 2026Owner3D: Ownership-Guided Style Writing for Training-Free Localized 3D Stylizationcited by 0
  14. 2026SR-Edit: Region-Aware Image Editing via Self-Refinementcited by 0
  15. 2026Attention-Scoped Guidance: Training-Free Spatial Control for Image Editingcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey
  2. 2025X-Edit: Detecting and Localizing Edits in Images Altered by Text-Guided Diffusion Models
  3. 2024LocInv: Localization-aware Inversion for Text-Guided Image Editing
  4. 2025PartEdit: Fine-Grained Image Editing using Pre-Trained Diffusion Models
  5. 2025AttentionDrag: Exploiting Latent Correlation Knowledge in Pre-trained Diffusion Models for Image Editing
  6. 2023Diffusion Brush: A Latent Diffusion Model-based Editing Tool for AI-generated Images
  7. 2024LoMOE: Localized Multi-Object Editing via Multi-Diffusion
  8. 2023MAG-Edit: Localized Image Editing in Complex Scenarios via Mask-Based Attention-Adjusted Guidance