ColorEdit: Training-free Image-Guided Color editing with diffusion model
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
Text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models, with their impressive generative capabilities, have been adopted for image editing tasks, demonstrating remarkable efficacy. However, due to attention leakage and collision between the cross-attention map of the object and the new color attribute from the text prompt, text-guided image editing methods may fail to change the color of an object, resulting in a misalignment between the resulting image and the text prompt. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth analysis on the process of text-guided image synthesizing and what semantic information different cross-attention blocks have learned. We observe that the visual representation of an object is determined in the up-block of the diffusion model in the early stage of the denoising process, and color adjustment can be achieved through value matrices alignment in the cross-attention layer. Based on our findings, we propose a straightforward, yet stable, and effective image-guided method to modify the color of an object without requiring any additional fine-tuning or training. Lastly, we present a benchmark dataset called COLORBENCH, the first benchmark to evaluate the performance of color change methods. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our method in object-level color editing and surpass the performance of popular text-guided image editing approaches in both synthesized and real images.
Key facts. Cited by 4 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 48 of its 56 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2024.
Builds on
48 of 56 references.
Closest ancestors · 16
Same direction, newest first
- 2024Towards Understanding Cross and Self-Attention in Stable Diffusion for Text-Guided Image Editing6 Mar
- 2023CycleNet: Rethinking Cycle Consistency in Text-Guided Diffusion for Image Manipulation19 Oct
- 2023StyleDiffusion: Controllable Disentangled Style Transfer via Diffusion Models15 Aug
- 2023TF-ICON: Diffusion-Based Training-Free Cross-Domain Image Composition24 Jul
- 2023LayerDiffusion: Layered Controlled Image Editing with Diffusion Models30 May
- 2023Localizing Object-level Shape Variations with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models20 Mar
- 2022Imagen Editor and EditBench: Advancing and Evaluating Text-Guided Image Inpainting13 Dec
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
- 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
- 2022DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance20 Oct
- 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
- 2022Blended Latent Diffusion6 Jun
4 more
- 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
- 2021DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation6 Oct
Other references · 32
- 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
- 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,160
- 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
- 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
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
- 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
- 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
- 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,893
20 more
- 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
- 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
- 2017Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalizationcited by 1,998
- 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 897
- 2021Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 773
- 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 722
- 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 721
- 2023Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translationcited by 503
- 2023AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customizationcited by 411
- 2023Diffusion Self-Guidance for Controllable Image Generationcited by 305
- 2022SmartBrush: Text and Shape Guided Object Inpainting with Diffusion Modelcited by 276
- 2023Inpaint Anything: Segment Anything Meets Image Inpaintingcited by 233
- 2023StyleDrop: Text-to-Image Generation in Any Stylecited by 197
- 2023Guiding Instruction-based Image Editing via Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 182
- 2023InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Taskscited by 162
- 2023Inst-Inpaint: Instructing to Remove Objects with Diffusion Modelscited by 66
- 2024Control Color: Multimodal Diffusion-based Interactive Image Colorizationcited by 33
- 2023KV Inversion: KV Embeddings Learning for Text-Conditioned Real Image Action Editingcited by 21
- 2023Null-text Guidance in Diffusion Models is Secretly a Cartoon-style Creatorcited by 12
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 3.
4 papers.
- 2025Color Me Correctly: Bridging Perceptual Color Spaces and Text Embeddings for Improved Diffusion Generationcited by 2
- 2026StreamEdit: Training-Free Video Editing via Few-Step Streaming Video Generationcited by 2
- 2026Paint-Anything: Unified Any-Color Control for Image Generation and Editingcited by 0
- 2026Learned Parametric Emotion Editing: Real-Time Affective Filtering for On-Device Social Media Videocited by 0
- 2026Learned Parametric Emotion Editing: Real-Time Affective Filtering for On-Device Social Media Video18 Sep 2026
- 2026Paint-Anything: Unified Any-Color Control for Image Generation and Editing17 Sep 2026
- 2026StreamEdit: Training-Free Video Editing via Few-Step Streaming Video Generation20 May 2026
- 2025Color Me Correctly: Bridging Perceptual Color Spaces and Text Embeddings for Improved Diffusion Generation12 Sep 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Training-Free Text-Guided Color Editing with Multi-Modal Diffusion Transformer
- 2023DiffColor: Toward High Fidelity Text-Guided Image Colorization with Diffusion Models
- 2023Diffusing Colors: Image Colorization with Text Guided Diffusion
- 2023Improved Diffusion-based Image Colorization via Piggybacked Models
- 2025Exploring Palette based Color Guidance in Diffusion Models
- 2026Recolour What Matters: Region-Aware Colour Editing via Token-Level Diffusion
- 2025Controllable-Continuous Color Editing in Diffusion Model via Color Mapping
- 2025Leveraging Semantic Attribute Binding for Free-Lunch Color Control in Diffusion Models