# ACE++: Instruction-Based Image Creation and Editing via Context-Aware Content Filling

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02487 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02487/

## Key facts

- Cited by 95 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10012/) (2023)
- [InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07519/) (2024)
- [AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09481/) (2023)
- [OmniGen: Unified Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11340/) (2024)
- [OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15098/) (2024)
- [Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10089/) (2023)
- [Hunyuan-DiT: A Powerful Multi-Resolution Diffusion Transformer with Fine-Grained Chinese Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08748/) (2024)
- [BrushNet: A Plug-and-Play Image Inpainting Model with Decomposed Dual-Branch Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06976/) (2024)
- [StyleDrop: Text-to-Image Generation in Any Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00983/) (2023)
- [A Task is Worth One Word: Learning with Task Prompts for High-Quality Versatile Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03594/) (2023)
- [Make-Your-Video: Customized Video Generation Using Textual and Structural Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00943/) (2023)
- [UniReal: Universal Image Generation and Editing via Learning Real-world Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07774/) (2024)
- [ACE: All-round Creator and Editor Following Instructions via Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00086/) (2024)
- [ERNIE-ViLG: Unified Generative Pre-training for Bidirectional Vision-Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.15283/) (2021)
- [SCEdit: Efficient and Controllable Image Diffusion Generation via Skip Connection Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11392/) (2023)
- [StyleBooth: Image Style Editing with Multimodal Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12154/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 95)

- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [VACE: All-in-One Video Creation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07598/) (2025)
- [Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17761/) (2025)
- [OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18871/) (2025)
- [In-Context Edit: Enabling Instructional Image Editing with In-Context Generation in Large Scale Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20690/) (2025)
- [Insert Anything: Image Insertion via In-Context Editing in DiT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15009/) (2025)
- [Pico-Banana-400K: A Large-Scale Dataset for Text-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19808/) (2025)
- [OminiControl2: Efficient Conditioning for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08280/) (2025)
- [VisualCloze: A Universal Image Generation Framework via Visual In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07960/) (2025)
- [Does FLUX Already Know How to Perform Physically Plausible Image Composition?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21278/) (2025)
- [LoRA-Edit: Controllable First-Frame-Guided Video Editing via Mask-Aware LoRA Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10082/) (2025)
- [X2Edit: Revisiting Arbitrary-Instruction Image Editing through Self-Constructed Data and Task-Aware Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07607/) (2025)
- [ReasonEdit: Towards Reasoning-Enhanced Image Editing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22625/) (2025)
- [ICE-Bench: A Unified and Comprehensive Benchmark for Image Creating and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14482/) (2025)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15772/) (2025)
- [UniVG: A Generalist Diffusion Model for Unified Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12652/) (2025)
- [LayerCraft: Enhancing Text-to-Image Generation with CoT Reasoning and Layered Object Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00010/) (2025)
- [InstantCharacter: Personalize Any Characters with a Scalable Diffusion Transformer Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12395/) (2025)
- [ComfyMind: Toward General-Purpose Generation via Tree-Based Planning and Reactive Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17908/) (2025)
- [Cut2Next: Generating Next Shot via In-Context Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08244/) (2025)
- [Query-Kontext: An Unified Multimodal Model for Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26641/) (2025)
- [Lumina-OmniLV: A Unified Multimodal Framework for General Low-Level Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04903/) (2025)
- [OmniTry: Virtual Try-On Anything without Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13632/) (2025)
- [X2I: Seamless Integration of Multimodal Understanding into Diffusion Transformer via Attention Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06134/) (2025)
- [MUSAR: Exploring Multi-Subject Customization from Single-Subject Dataset via Attention Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02823/) (2025)
- [HBridge: H-Shape Bridging of Heterogeneous Experts for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20520/) (2025)
- [Image Editing As Programs with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04158/) (2025)
- [IC-Custom: Diverse Image Customization via In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01926/) (2025)
- [PairEdit: Learning Semantic Variations for Exemplar-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07992/) (2025)
- [MultiHuman-Testbench: Benchmarking Image Generation for Multiple Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20879/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We report ACE++, an instruction-based diffusion framework that tackles various image generation and editing tasks. Inspired by the input format for the inpainting task proposed by FLUX.1-Fill-dev, we improve the Long-context Condition Unit (LCU) introduced in ACE and extend this input paradigm to any editing and generation tasks. To take full advantage of image generative priors, we develop a two-stage training scheme to minimize the efforts of finetuning powerful text-to-image diffusion models like FLUX.1-dev. In the first stage, we pre-train the model using task data with the 0-ref tasks from the text-to-image model. There are many models in the community based on the post-training of text-to-image foundational models that meet this training paradigm of the first stage. For example, FLUX.1-Fill-dev deals primarily with painting tasks and can be used as an initialization to accelerate the training process. In the second stage, we finetune the above model to support the general instructions using all tasks defined in ACE. To promote the widespread application of ACE++ in different scenarios, we provide a comprehensive set of models that cover both full finetuning and lightweight finetuning, while considering general applicability and applicability in vertical scenarios. The qualitative analysis showcases the superiority of ACE++ in terms of generating image quality and prompt following ability. Code and models will be available on the project page: https://ali-vilab. github.io/ACE_plus_page/.