# Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Diffusion Prior

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15736 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15736/

## Key facts

- Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 61 of its 79 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Dec 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02921/) (2017)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07015/) (2023)
- [Recovering Realistic Texture in Image Super-resolution by Deep Spatial Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02815/) (2018)
- [PULSE: Self-Supervised Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration of Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03808/) (2020)
- [Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04061/) (2021)
- [WIDER FACE: A Face Detection Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06523/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Posterior-Mean Rectified Flow: Towards Minimum MSE Photo-Realistic Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00418/) (2024)
- [OSDFace: One-Step Diffusion Model for Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17163/) (2024)
- [Compressed Image Generation with Denoising Diffusion Codebook Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01189/) (2025)
- [The Second Challenge on Real-World Face Restoration at NTIRE 2026: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10532/) (2026)
- [Overcoming False Illusions in Real-World Face Restoration with Multi-Modal Guided Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04161/) (2024)
- [NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Real-World Face Restoration: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14600/) (2025)
- [Exposing AI-generated Videos: A Benchmark Dataset and a Local-and-Global Temporal Defect Based Detection Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04133/) (2024)
- [LRDif: Diffusion Models for Under-Display Camera Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00250/) (2024)
- [DiffusionReward: Enhancing Blind Face Restoration through Reward Feedback Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17910/) (2025)
- [DAM-VSR: Disentanglement of Appearance and Motion for Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01012/) (2025)
- [AuthFace: Towards Authentic Blind Face Restoration with Face-oriented Generative Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09864/) (2024)
- [SynMorph: Generating Synthetic Face Morphing Dataset with Mated Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05595/) (2024)
- [SVAD: From Single Image to 3D Avatar via Synthetic Data Generation with Video Diffusion and Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05475/) (2025)
- [Binary Diffusion Probabilistic Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13915/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Diffusion Knowledge for Generative Image Compression with Fractal Frequency-Aware Band Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11321/) (2025)
- [HonestFace: Towards Honest Face Restoration with One-Step Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18469/) (2025)
- [AS-FIBA: Adaptive Selective Frequency-Injection for Backdoor Attack on Deep Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06430/) (2024)
- [FRRffusion: Unveiling Authenticity with Diffusion-Based Face Retouching Reversal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07582/) (2024)
- [LAFR: Efficient Diffusion-based Blind Face Restoration via Latent Codebook Alignment Adapter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23462/) (2025)
- [Latent Posterior-Mean Rectified Flow for Higher-Fidelity Perceptual Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00447/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Blind Face Restoration through Online Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23339/) (2025)
- [CrossPortrait: Cross-Species Portrait Animation via Adversarial Motion Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17532/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Blind face restoration is an important task in computer vision and has gained significant attention due to its wide-range applications. Previous works mainly exploit facial priors to restore face images and have demonstrated high-quality results. However, generating faithful facial details remains a challenging problem due to the limited prior knowledge obtained from finite data. In this work, we delve into the potential of leveraging the pretrained Stable Diffusion for blind face restoration. We propose BFRffusion which is thoughtfully designed to effectively extract features from low-quality face images and could restore realistic and faithful facial details with the generative prior of the pretrained Stable Diffusion. In addition, we build a privacy-preserving face dataset called PFHQ with balanced attributes like race, gender, and age. This dataset can serve as a viable alternative for training blind face restoration networks, effectively addressing privacy and bias concerns usually associated with the real face datasets. Through an extensive series of experiments, we demonstrate that our BFRffusion achieves state-of-the-art performance on both synthetic and real-world public testing datasets for blind face restoration and our PFHQ dataset is an available resource for training blind face restoration networks. The codes, pretrained models, and dataset are released at https://github.com/chenxx89/BFRffusion.