# Unsupervised Low-light Image Enhancement with Lookup Tables and Diffusion Priors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18899 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18899/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 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 43 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2024.

## 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 43)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05609/) (2020)
- [Deblurring via Stochastic Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02475/) (2021)
- [Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06705/) (2023)
- [Learning to Enhance Low-Light Image via Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00860/) (2021)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement with Normalizing Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05923/) (2021)
- [StableVideo: Text-driven Consistency-aware Diffusion Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09592/) (2023)
- [Learning Image-adaptive 3D Lookup Tables for High Performance Photo Enhancement in Real-time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14468/) (2020)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement with Wavelet-based Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00306/) (2023)
- [Diff-Retinex: Rethinking Low-light Image Enhancement with A Generative Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13164/) (2023)
- [Iterative Prompt Learning for Unsupervised Backlit Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17569/) (2023)
- [R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14501/) (2021)
- [Implicit Neural Representation for Cooperative Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11722/) (2023)
- [Global Structure-Aware Diffusion Process for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17577/) (2023)
- [AdaInt: Learning Adaptive Intervals for 3D Lookup Tables on Real-time Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13983/) (2022)
- [Real-time Image Enhancer via Learnable Spatial-aware 3D Lookup Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08697/) (2021)
- [Low-light Image Enhancement via Breaking Down the Darkness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15557/) (2021)
- [Mobile Computational Photography: A Tour](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09000/) (2021)
- [PPR10K: A Large-Scale Portrait Photo Retouching Dataset with Human-Region Mask and Group-Level Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09180/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Harmonization via Collaborative Dual Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06671/) (2021)
- [SepLUT: Separable Image-adaptive Lookup Tables for Real-time Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08351/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [JarvisIR: Elevating Autonomous Driving Perception with Intelligent Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04158/) (2025)
- [Learnable Infinite Taylor Gaussian for Dynamic View Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04282/) (2024)
- [Pan-LUT: Efficient Pan-sharpening via Learnable Look-Up Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23793/) (2025)
- [Efficient Dataset Distillation through Low-Rank Space Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07998/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Low-light image enhancement (LIE) aims at precisely and efficiently recovering an image degraded in poor illumination environments. Recent advanced LIE techniques are using deep neural networks, which require lots of low-normal light image pairs, network parameters, and computational resources. As a result, their practicality is limited. In this work, we devise a novel unsupervised LIE framework based on diffusion priors and lookup tables (DPLUT) to achieve efficient low-light image recovery. The proposed approach comprises two critical components: a light adjustment lookup table (LLUT) and a noise suppression lookup table (NLUT). LLUT is optimized with a set of unsupervised losses. It aims at predicting pixel-wise curve parameters for the dynamic range adjustment of a specific image. NLUT is designed to remove the amplified noise after the light brightens. As diffusion models are sensitive to noise, diffusion priors are introduced to achieve high-performance noise suppression. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of visual quality and efficiency.