mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SpecRef: A Fast Training-free Baseline of Specific Reference-Condition Real Image Editing

arXiv 2401.03433 ↗First posted 7 Jan 2024cs.CVcited by 4

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

  1. 2023FEC: Three Finetuning-free Methods to Enhance Consistency for Real Image Editing26 Sep
  2. 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models31 Jan
  3. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
  4. 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
  5. 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
  6. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation25 Aug
  7. 2022Blended Latent Diffusion6 Jun
  8. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
  9. 2021DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation6 Oct

Other references · 21

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  4. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  5. 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
  6. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
  7. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
  8. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  9. 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
  10. 2021Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generationcited by 1,155
  11. 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 897
  12. 2020Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 727
9 more
  1. 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 722
  2. 2023InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuningcited by 343
  3. 2022VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language Guidancecited by 285
  4. 2020Improved StyleGAN Embedding: Where are the Good Latents?cited by 88
  5. 2023WaveDM: Wavelet-Based Diffusion Models for Image Restorationcited by 46
  6. 2023KV Inversion: KV Embeddings Learning for Text-Conditioned Real Image Action Editingcited by 21
  7. 2023Bootstrap Diffusion Model Curve Estimation for High Resolution Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 5
  8. 2023IFAST: Weakly Supervised Interpretable Face Anti-spoofing from Single-shot Binocular NIR Imagescited by 1
  9. 2023Seal2Real: Prompt Prior Learning on Diffusion Model for Unsupervised Document Seal Data Generation and Realisationcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 3.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025EditAR: Unified Conditional Generation with Autoregressive Models
  2. 2026Editing on the Generative Manifold: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of General Diffusion-Based Image Editing Trade-offs
  3. 2024Specify and Edit: Overcoming Ambiguity in Text-Based Image Editing
  4. 2022Direct Inversion: Optimization-Free Text-Driven Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models
  5. 2023AdapEdit: Spatio-Temporal Guided Adaptive Editing Algorithm for Text-Based Continuity-Sensitive Image Editing
  6. 2026UniRef-Image-Edit: Towards Scalable and Consistent Multi-Reference Image Editing
  7. 2023Custom-Edit: Text-Guided Image Editing with Customized Diffusion Models
  8. 2026SpecEdit: Training-Free Acceleration for Diffusion based Image Editing via Semantic Locking