SpecRef: A Fast Training-free Baseline of Specific Reference-Condition Real Image Editing
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
Text-conditional image editing based on large diffusion generative model has attracted the attention of both the industry and the research community. Most existing methods are non-reference editing, with the user only able to provide a source image and text prompt. However, it restricts user's control over the characteristics of editing outcome. To increase user freedom, we propose a new task called Specific Reference Condition Real Image Editing, which allows user to provide a reference image to further control the outcome, such as replacing an object with a particular one. To accomplish this, we propose a fast baseline method named SpecRef. Specifically, we design a Specific Reference Attention Controller to incorporate features from the reference image, and adopt a mask mechanism to prevent interference between editing and non-editing regions. We evaluate SpecRef on typical editing tasks and show that it can achieve satisfactory performance. The source code is available on https://github.com/jingjiqinggong/specp2p.
Key facts. Cited by 4 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 30 of its 34 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Jan 2024.
Builds on
30 of 34 references.
Closest ancestors · 9
Same direction, newest first
- 2023FEC: Three Finetuning-free Methods to Enhance Consistency for Real Image Editing26 Sep
- 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models31 Jan
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
- 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
- 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
- 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation25 Aug
- 2022Blended Latent Diffusion6 Jun
- 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
- 2021DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation6 Oct
Other references · 21
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
- 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
- 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
- 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
- 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
- 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
- 2021Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generationcited by 1,155
- 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 897
- 2020Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 727
9 more
- 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 722
- 2023InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuningcited by 343
- 2022VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language Guidancecited by 285
- 2020Improved StyleGAN Embedding: Where are the Good Latents?cited by 88
- 2023WaveDM: Wavelet-Based Diffusion Models for Image Restorationcited by 46
- 2023KV Inversion: KV Embeddings Learning for Text-Conditioned Real Image Action Editingcited by 21
- 2023Bootstrap Diffusion Model Curve Estimation for High Resolution Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 5
- 2023IFAST: Weakly Supervised Interpretable Face Anti-spoofing from Single-shot Binocular NIR Imagescited by 1
- 2023Seal2Real: Prompt Prior Learning on Diffusion Model for Unsupervised Document Seal Data Generation and Realisationcited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 3.
4 papers.
- 2025Edit Transfer: Learning Image Editing via Vision In-Context Relationscited by 23
- 2026MagicFight: Personalized Martial Arts Combat Video Generationcited by 4
- 2026EditTransfer++: Toward Faithful and Efficient Visual-Prompt-Guided Image Editingcited by 1
- 2026When Recovery Matters: The Blind Spot of Surrogate Privacy in MLLM Editingcited by 0
- 2026When Recovery Matters: The Blind Spot of Surrogate Privacy in MLLM Editing5 Jun 2026
- 2026EditTransfer++: Toward Faithful and Efficient Visual-Prompt-Guided Image Editing8 May 2026
- 2026MagicFight: Personalized Martial Arts Combat Video Generation5 Jan 2026
- 2025Edit Transfer: Learning Image Editing via Vision In-Context Relations17 Mar 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025EditAR: Unified Conditional Generation with Autoregressive Models
- 2026Editing on the Generative Manifold: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of General Diffusion-Based Image Editing Trade-offs
- 2024Specify and Edit: Overcoming Ambiguity in Text-Based Image Editing
- 2022Direct Inversion: Optimization-Free Text-Driven Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models
- 2023AdapEdit: Spatio-Temporal Guided Adaptive Editing Algorithm for Text-Based Continuity-Sensitive Image Editing
- 2026UniRef-Image-Edit: Towards Scalable and Consistent Multi-Reference Image Editing
- 2023Custom-Edit: Text-Guided Image Editing with Customized Diffusion Models
- 2026SpecEdit: Training-Free Acceleration for Diffusion based Image Editing via Semantic Locking