Towards Efficient Diffusion-Based Image Editing with Instant Attention Masks
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
Diffusion-based Image Editing (DIE) is an emerging research hot-spot, which often applies a semantic mask to control the target area for diffusion-based editing. However, most existing solutions obtain these masks via manual operations or off-line processing, greatly reducing their efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient image editing method for Text-to-Image (T2I) diffusion models, termed Instant Diffusion Editing(InstDiffEdit). In particular, InstDiffEdit aims to employ the cross-modal attention ability of existing diffusion models to achieve instant mask guidance during the diffusion steps. To reduce the noise of attention maps and realize the full automatics, we equip InstDiffEdit with a training-free refinement scheme to adaptively aggregate the attention distributions for the automatic yet accurate mask generation. Meanwhile, to supplement the existing evaluations of DIE, we propose a new benchmark called Editing-Mask to examine the mask accuracy and local editing ability of existing methods. To validate InstDiffEdit, we also conduct extensive experiments on ImageNet and Imagen, and compare it with a bunch of the SOTA methods. The experimental results show that InstDiffEdit not only outperforms the SOTA methods in both image quality and editing results, but also has a much faster inference speed, i.e., +5 to +6 times.
Key facts. Cited by 16 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 23 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2024.
Builds on
23 of 28 references.
Closest ancestors · 6
Same direction, newest first
- 2023Localizing Object-level Shape Variations with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models20 Mar
- 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers2 Nov
- 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
- 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May
- 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
- 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
Other references · 17
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
- 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
- 2022BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generationcited by 4,310
- 2019Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGANcited by 3,580
- 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
- 2021CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioningcited by 2,388
- 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,903
5 more
- 2021Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,181
- 2017AttnGAN: Fine-Grained Text to Image Generation with Attentional Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 664
- 2022Unifying Diffusion Models' Latent Space, with Applications to CycleDiffusion and Guidancecited by 67
- 2022FlexIT: Towards Flexible Semantic Image Translationcited by 28
- 2022ManiTrans: Entity-Level Text-Guided Image Manipulation via Token-wise Semantic Alignment and Generationcited by 13
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 4; 2025: 7; 2026: 5.
16 papers.
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- 2025IMAGHarmony: Controllable Image Editing with Consistent Object Quantity and Layoutcited by 28
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generationcited by 22
- 2025VINCIE: Unlocking In-context Image Editing from Videocited by 17
- 2024Addressing Text Embedding Leakage in Diffusion-based Image Editingcited by 7
- 2024ModelLock: Locking Your Model With a Spellcited by 6
- 2025AdaFlow: Efficient Long Video Editing via Adaptive Attention Slimming And Keyframe Selectioncited by 5
- 2024Click2Mask: Local Editing with Dynamic Mask Generationcited by 3
- 2025MUSE: Manipulating Unified Framework for Synthesizing Emotions in Images via Test-Time Optimizationcited by 3
- 2025Physics-informed DeepCT: Sinogram Wavelet Decomposition Meets Masked Diffusioncited by 1
- 2026Rethinking UMM Visual Generation: Masked Modeling for Efficient Image-Only Pre-trainingcited by 1
- 2026From Competition to Coopetition: Coopetitive Training-Free Image Editing Based on Text Guidancecited by 1
- 2025MFGDiffusion: Mask-Guided Smoke Synthesis for Enhanced Forest Fire Detectioncited by 0
4 more
- 2025DirectSwap: Paired, Mask-Free Video Head Swapping with Full-Reference Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026LAMS-Edit: Latent and Attention Mixing with Schedulers for Improved Content Preservation in Diffusion-Based Image and Style Editingcited by 0
- 2026Controllable Diffusion-Based Lesion Inpainting for Scalable Histopathology Data Augmentationcited by 0
- 2026H-Adapter: Pose-Robust Hairstyle Transfer via Attention-Derived, Source-Aligned Hair Maskscited by 0
- 2026H-Adapter: Pose-Robust Hairstyle Transfer via Attention-Derived, Source-Aligned Hair Masks24 Jun 2026
- 2026From Competition to Coopetition: Coopetitive Training-Free Image Editing Based on Text Guidance17 Apr 2026
- 2026Rethinking UMM Visual Generation: Masked Modeling for Efficient Image-Only Pre-training17 Mar 2026
- 2026Controllable Diffusion-Based Lesion Inpainting for Scalable Histopathology Data Augmentation13 Jan 2026
- 2026LAMS-Edit: Latent and Attention Mixing with Schedulers for Improved Content Preservation in Diffusion-Based Image and Style Editing6 Jan 2026
- 2025DirectSwap: Paired, Mask-Free Video Head Swapping with Full-Reference Evaluation10 Dec 2025
- 2025MUSE: Manipulating Unified Framework for Synthesizing Emotions in Images via Test-Time Optimization26 Nov 2025
- 2025MFGDiffusion: Mask-Guided Smoke Synthesis for Enhanced Forest Fire Detection15 Jul 2025
- 2025VINCIE: Unlocking In-context Image Editing from Video12 Jun 2025
- 2025IMAGHarmony: Controllable Image Editing with Consistent Object Quantity and Layout2 Jun 2025
- 2025AdaFlow: Efficient Long Video Editing via Adaptive Attention Slimming And Keyframe Selection8 Feb 2025
- 2025Physics-informed DeepCT: Sinogram Wavelet Decomposition Meets Masked Diffusion17 Jan 2025
4 more
- 2024Addressing Text Embedding Leakage in Diffusion-based Image Editing6 Dec 2024
- 2024Click2Mask: Local Editing with Dynamic Mask Generation12 Sep 2024
- 2024ModelLock: Locking Your Model With a Spell25 May 2024
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generation29 Mar 2024
- 2025IMAGHarmony: Controllable Image Editing with Consistent Object Quantity and Layoutcited by 28
- 2024Addressing Text Embedding Leakage in Diffusion-based Image Editingcited by 7
- 2025MUSE: Manipulating Unified Framework for Synthesizing Emotions in Images via Test-Time Optimizationcited by 3
- 2025Physics-informed DeepCT: Sinogram Wavelet Decomposition Meets Masked Diffusioncited by 1
- 2026LAMS-Edit: Latent and Attention Mixing with Schedulers for Improved Content Preservation in Diffusion-Based Image and Style Editingcited by 0
- 2026LAMS-Edit: Latent and Attention Mixing with Schedulers for Improved Content Preservation in Diffusion-Based Image and Style Editing6 Jan 2026
- 2025MUSE: Manipulating Unified Framework for Synthesizing Emotions in Images via Test-Time Optimization26 Nov 2025
- 2025IMAGHarmony: Controllable Image Editing with Consistent Object Quantity and Layout2 Jun 2025
- 2025Physics-informed DeepCT: Sinogram Wavelet Decomposition Meets Masked Diffusion17 Jan 2025
- 2024Addressing Text Embedding Leakage in Diffusion-based Image Editing6 Dec 2024
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generationcited by 22
- 2025VINCIE: Unlocking In-context Image Editing from Videocited by 17
- 2024ModelLock: Locking Your Model With a Spellcited by 6
- 2025AdaFlow: Efficient Long Video Editing via Adaptive Attention Slimming And Keyframe Selectioncited by 5
- 2024Click2Mask: Local Editing with Dynamic Mask Generationcited by 3
- 2026Rethinking UMM Visual Generation: Masked Modeling for Efficient Image-Only Pre-trainingcited by 1
- 2026From Competition to Coopetition: Coopetitive Training-Free Image Editing Based on Text Guidancecited by 1
- 2025MFGDiffusion: Mask-Guided Smoke Synthesis for Enhanced Forest Fire Detectioncited by 0
- 2025DirectSwap: Paired, Mask-Free Video Head Swapping with Full-Reference Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026Controllable Diffusion-Based Lesion Inpainting for Scalable Histopathology Data Augmentationcited by 0
- 2026H-Adapter: Pose-Robust Hairstyle Transfer via Attention-Derived, Source-Aligned Hair Maskscited by 0
- 2026H-Adapter: Pose-Robust Hairstyle Transfer via Attention-Derived, Source-Aligned Hair Masks24 Jun 2026
- 2026From Competition to Coopetition: Coopetitive Training-Free Image Editing Based on Text Guidance17 Apr 2026
- 2026Rethinking UMM Visual Generation: Masked Modeling for Efficient Image-Only Pre-training17 Mar 2026
- 2026Controllable Diffusion-Based Lesion Inpainting for Scalable Histopathology Data Augmentation13 Jan 2026
- 2025DirectSwap: Paired, Mask-Free Video Head Swapping with Full-Reference Evaluation10 Dec 2025
- 2025MFGDiffusion: Mask-Guided Smoke Synthesis for Enhanced Forest Fire Detection15 Jul 2025
- 2025VINCIE: Unlocking In-context Image Editing from Video12 Jun 2025
- 2025AdaFlow: Efficient Long Video Editing via Adaptive Attention Slimming And Keyframe Selection8 Feb 2025
- 2024Click2Mask: Local Editing with Dynamic Mask Generation12 Sep 2024
- 2024ModelLock: Locking Your Model With a Spell25 May 2024
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generation29 Mar 2024
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2022DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance
- 2024Enhancing Text-to-Image Editing via Hybrid Mask-Informed Fusion
- 2024DiffEditor: Boosting Accuracy and Flexibility on Diffusion-based Image Editing
- 2025Exploring Multimodal Diffusion Transformers for Enhanced Prompt-based Image Editing
- 2022Blended Latent Diffusion
- 2023MAG-Edit: Localized Image Editing in Complex Scenarios via Mask-Based Attention-Adjusted Guidance
- 2025MADI: Masking-Augmented Diffusion with Inference-Time Scaling for Visual Editing
- 2025AttentionDrag: Exploiting Latent Correlation Knowledge in Pre-trained Diffusion Models for Image Editing