HandCraft: Anatomically Correct Restoration of Malformed Hands in Diffusion Generated Images
On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics
Abstract (arXiv)
Generative text-to-image models, such as Stable Diffusion, have demonstrated a remarkable ability to generate diverse, high-quality images. However, they are surprisingly inept when it comes to rendering human hands, which are often anatomically incorrect or reside in the "uncanny valley". In this paper, we propose a method HandCraft for restoring such malformed hands. This is achieved by automatically constructing masks and depth images for hands as conditioning signals using a parametric model, allowing a diffusion-based image editor to fix the hand's anatomy and adjust its pose while seamlessly integrating the changes into the original image, preserving pose, color, and style. Our plug-and-play hand restoration solution is compatible with existing pretrained diffusion models, and the restoration process facilitates adoption by eschewing any fine-tuning or training requirements for the diffusion models. We also contribute MalHand datasets that contain generated images with a wide variety of malformed hands in several styles for hand detector training and hand restoration benchmarking, and demonstrate through qualitative and quantitative evaluation that HandCraft not only restores anatomical correctness but also maintains the integrity of the overall image.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 15 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2024.
Builds on
15 of 28 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024HanDiffuser: Text-to-Image Generation With Realistic Hand Appearances4 Mar
- 2023HandRefiner: Refining Malformed Hands in Generated Images by Diffusion-based Conditional Inpainting29 Nov
Other references · 13
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
- 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,503
- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
- 2022Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applicationscited by 1,114
- 2024WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulatorscited by 881
- 2018Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translationcited by 795
- 2019MediaPipe: A Framework for Building Perception Pipelinescited by 583
- 2018Generative Image Inpainting with Contextual Attentioncited by 580
- 2021Design Guidelines for Prompt Engineering Text-to-Image Generative Modelscited by 218
- 2023In-Context Learning Unlocked for Diffusion Modelscited by 104
1 more
- 2022HaGRID - HAnd Gesture Recognition Image Datasetcited by 43
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 2; 2026: 1.
5 papers.
- 2024Detecting Human Artifacts from Text-to-Image Modelscited by 12
- 2025Mask2IV: Interaction-Centric Video Generation via Mask Trajectoriescited by 10
- 2024FoundHand: Large-Scale Domain-Specific Learning for Controllable Hand Image Generationcited by 8
- 2026DIAMOND: Directed Inference for Artifact Mitigation in Flow Matching Modelscited by 1
- 20253D Hand Mesh-Guided AI-Generated Malformed Hand Refinement with Hand Pose Transformation via Diffusion Modelcited by 0
- 2026DIAMOND: Directed Inference for Artifact Mitigation in Flow Matching Models31 Jan 2026
- 2025Mask2IV: Interaction-Centric Video Generation via Mask Trajectories3 Oct 2025
- 20253D Hand Mesh-Guided AI-Generated Malformed Hand Refinement with Hand Pose Transformation via Diffusion Model15 Jun 2025
- 2024FoundHand: Large-Scale Domain-Specific Learning for Controllable Hand Image Generation3 Dec 2024
- 2024Detecting Human Artifacts from Text-to-Image Models21 Nov 2024
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2024RHanDS: Refining Malformed Hands for Generated Images with Decoupled Structure and Style Guidance
- 2023Detecting and Restoring Non-Standard Hands in Stable Diffusion Generated Images
- 2025HanDrawer: Leveraging Spatial Information to Render Realistic Hands Using a Conditional Diffusion Model in Single Stage
- 2024Giving a Hand to Diffusion Models: a Two-Stage Approach to Improving Conditional Human Image Generation
- 2026SesaHand: Enhancing 3D Hand Reconstruction via Controllable Generation with Semantic and Structural Alignment
- 2024HHMR: Holistic Hand Mesh Recovery by Enhancing the Multimodal Controllability of Graph Diffusion Models
- 2023DiffHand: End-to-End Hand Mesh Reconstruction via Diffusion Models
- 2024Hand1000: Generating Realistic Hands from Text with Only 1,000 Images