# One-Step Image Translation with Text-to-Image Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12036 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12036/

## Key facts

- Cited by 116 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 68 of its 79 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 68)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (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)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [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)
- [BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04687/) (2018)
- [ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16213/) (2023)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11585/) (2017)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 116)

- [One-Step Effective Diffusion Network for Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08177/) (2024)
- [SVDQuant: Absorbing Outliers by Low-Rank Components for 4-Bit Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05007/) (2024)
- [Difix3D+: Improving 3D Reconstructions with Single-Step Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01774/) (2025)
- [Robust Watermarking Using Generative Priors Against Image Editing: From Benchmarking to Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18775/) (2024)
- [Degradation-Guided One-Step Image Super-Resolution with Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17058/) (2024)
- [SCube: Instant Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction using VoxSplats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20030/) (2024)
- [DiT4SR: Taming Diffusion Transformer for Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23580/) (2025)
- [JarvisIR: Elevating Autonomous Driving Perception with Intelligent Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04158/) (2025)
- [StableCodec: Taming One-Step Diffusion for Extreme Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21977/) (2025)
- [Diff-Instruct++: Training One-step Text-to-image Generator Model to Align with Human Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18881/) (2024)
- [R3D2: Realistic 3D Asset Insertion via Diffusion for Autonomous Driving Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07826/) (2025)
- [PID: Physics-Informed Diffusion Model for Infrared Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09299/) (2024)
- [DiffV2IR: Visible-to-Infrared Diffusion Model via Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19012/) (2025)
- [SketchVideo: Sketch-based Video Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23284/) (2025)
- [WeatherEdit: Controllable Weather Editing with 4D Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20471/) (2025)
- [Leveraging BEV Paradigm for Ground-to-Aerial Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01812/) (2024)
- [Controllable Weather Synthesis and Removal with Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00704/) (2025)
- [VIMs: Virtual Immunohistochemistry Multiplex staining via Text-to-Stain Diffusion Trained on Uniplex Stains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19113/) (2024)
- [RGB-to-Polarization Estimation: A New Task and Benchmark Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13050/) (2025)
- [BokehDiff: Neural Lens Blur with One-Step Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18060/) (2025)
- [High-Precision Dichotomous Image Segmentation via Probing Diffusion Capacity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10105/) (2024)
- [Generative AI for Autonomous Driving: Frontiers and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08854/) (2025)
- [3D Smoke Scene Reconstruction Guided by Vision Priors from Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05687/) (2026)
- [YOLO-TS: Real-Time Traffic Sign Detection with Enhanced Accuracy Using Optimized Receptive Fields and Anchor-Free Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17144/) (2024)
- [A Critical Assessment of Modern Generative Models' Ability to Replicate Artistic Styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15856/) (2025)
- [Always Clear Depth: Robust Monocular Depth Estimation under Adverse Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12199/) (2025)
- [Hero-SR: One-Step Diffusion for Super-Resolution with Human Perception Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07152/) (2024)
- [Error Propagation Mechanisms and Compensation Strategies for Quantized Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12094/) (2025)
- [Driving with DINO: Vision Foundation Features as a Unified Bridge for Sim-to-Real Generation in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06159/) (2026)
- [Seeing Beyond Haze: Generative Nighttime Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08073/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we address two limitations of existing conditional diffusion models: their slow inference speed due to the iterative denoising process and their reliance on paired data for model fine-tuning. To tackle these issues, we introduce a general method for adapting a single-step diffusion model to new tasks and domains through adversarial learning objectives. Specifically, we consolidate various modules of the vanilla latent diffusion model into a single end-to-end generator network with small trainable weights, enhancing its ability to preserve the input image structure while reducing overfitting. We demonstrate that, for unpaired settings, our model CycleGAN-Turbo outperforms existing GAN-based and diffusion-based methods for various scene translation tasks, such as day-to-night conversion and adding/removing weather effects like fog, snow, and rain. We extend our method to paired settings, where our model pix2pix-Turbo is on par with recent works like Control-Net for Sketch2Photo and Edge2Image, but with a single-step inference. This work suggests that single-step diffusion models can serve as strong backbones for a range of GAN learning objectives. Our code and models are available at https://github.com/GaParmar/img2img-turbo.