# Eliminating Oversaturation and Artifacts of High Guidance Scales in Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02416 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02416/

## Key facts

- Cited by 114 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 45 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [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)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10789/) (2022)
- [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06991/) (2019)
- [DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01095/) (2022)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 114)

- [Golden Noise for Diffusion Models: A Learning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09502/) (2024)
- [CFG-Zero*: Improved Classifier-Free Guidance for Flow Matching Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18886/) (2025)
- [Waver: Wave Your Way to Lifelike Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15761/) (2025)
- [Stochastic Self-Guidance for Training-Free Enhancement of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12880/) (2025)
- [Taming Video Models for 3D and 4D Generation via Zero-Shot Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15130/) (2025)
- [Taming Preference Mode Collapse via Directional Decoupling Alignment in Diffusion Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24146/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Mixture Flow Matching Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05304/) (2025)
- [Rectified-CFG++ for Flow Based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07631/) (2025)
- [Stage-wise Dynamics of Classifier-Free Guidance in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22007/) (2025)
- [Token Perturbation Guidance for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10036/) (2025)
- [Guidance in the Frequency Domain Enables High-Fidelity Sampling at Low CFG Scales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19713/) (2025)
- [Self-Refining Video Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18577/) (2026)
- [Learn to Guide Your Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00815/) (2025)
- [Normalized Attention Guidance: Universal Negative Guidance for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21179/) (2025)
- [Bernini: Latent Semantic Planning for Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22344/) (2026)
- [Entropy Rectifying Guidance for Diffusion and Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13987/) (2025)
- [Navigating with Annealing Guidance Scale in Diffusion Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24108/) (2025)
- [It's Never Too Late: Noise Optimization for Collapse Recovery in Trained Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00090/) (2025)
- [Inference-Time Alignment Control for Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learning Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21016/) (2025)
- [Angle Domain Guidance: Latent Diffusion Requires Rotation Rather Than Extrapolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11039/) (2025)
- [DreamID-V:Bridging the Image-to-Video Gap for High-Fidelity Face Swapping via Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01425/) (2026)
- [ALIVE: Animate Your World with Lifelike Audio-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08682/) (2026)
- [CFG-Ctrl: Control-Based Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03281/) (2026)
- [Asymmetric Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12964/) (2026)
- [Massive Activations are the Key to Local Detail Synthesis in Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11538/) (2025)
- [Efficient Distillation of Classifier-Free Guidance using Adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07274/) (2025)
- [Increasing the Utility of Synthetic Images through Chamfer Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10631/) (2025)
- [The Intricate Dance of Prompt Complexity, Quality, Diversity, and Consistency in T2I Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19557/) (2025)
- [Boogu-Image-0.1: Boosting Open Agentic Multimodal Generation via Understanding under a Minimal Budget](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13125/) (2026)
- [Alchemist: Turning Public Text-to-Image Data into Generative Gold](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19297/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Classifier-free guidance (CFG) is crucial for improving both generation quality and alignment between the input condition and final output in diffusion models. While a high guidance scale is generally required to enhance these aspects, it also causes oversaturation and unrealistic artifacts. In this paper, we revisit the CFG update rule and introduce modifications to address this issue. We first decompose the update term in CFG into parallel and orthogonal components with respect to the conditional model prediction and observe that the parallel component primarily causes oversaturation, while the orthogonal component enhances image quality. Accordingly, we propose down-weighting the parallel component to achieve high-quality generations without oversaturation. Additionally, we draw a connection between CFG and gradient ascent and introduce a new rescaling and momentum method for the CFG update rule based on this insight. Our approach, termed adaptive projected guidance (APG), retains the quality-boosting advantages of CFG while enabling the use of higher guidance scales without oversaturation. APG is easy to implement and introduces practically no additional computational overhead to the sampling process. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that APG is compatible with various conditional diffusion models and samplers, leading to improved FID, recall, and saturation scores while maintaining precision comparable to CFG, making our method a superior plug-and-play alternative to standard classifier-free guidance.