# UltraFusion: Ultra High Dynamic Imaging using Exposure Fusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11515 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11515/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2025.

## 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)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [Video Enhancement with Task-Oriented Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09078/) (2017)
- [AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09481/) (2023)
- [GMFlow: Learning Optical Flow via Global Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13680/) (2021)
- [DragDiffusion: Harnessing Diffusion Models for Interactive Point-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14435/) (2023)
- [Scaling Up to Excellence: Practicing Model Scaling for Photo-Realistic Image Restoration In the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13627/) (2024)
- [SmartBrush: Text and Shape Guided Object Inpainting with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05034/) (2022)
- [DiffBIR: Towards Blind Image Restoration with Generative Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15070/) (2023)
- [Inpaint Anything: Segment Anything Meets Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06790/) (2023)
- [From Patches to Pictures (PaQ-2-PiQ): Mapping the Perceptual Space of Picture Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.10088/) (2019)
- [Restoring Vision in Adverse Weather Conditions with Patch-Based Denoising Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14626/) (2022)
- [BrushNet: A Plug-and-Play Image Inpainting Model with Decomposed Dual-Branch Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06976/) (2024)
- [Attention-guided Network for Ghost-free High Dynamic Range Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10293/) (2019)
- [MaskFlownet: Asymmetric Feature Matching with Learnable Occlusion Mask](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10955/) (2020)
- [Deep High Dynamic Range Imaging with Large Foreground Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08937/) (2017)
- [DeepFuse: A Deep Unsupervised Approach for Exposure Fusion with Extreme Exposure Image Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07384/) (2017)
- [Ghost-free High Dynamic Range Imaging with Context-aware Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05114/) (2022)
- [Task-Customized Mixture of Adapters for General Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12494/) (2024)
- [Diff-Plugin: Revitalizing Details for Diffusion-based Low-level Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00644/) (2024)
- [Image Fusion via Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02235/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking and Comparing Multi-exposure Image Fusion Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15156/) (2020)
- [Towards High-quality HDR Deghosting with Conditional Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00932/) (2023)
- [Alignment-free HDR Deghosting with Semantics Consistent Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18135/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [A Unified Solution to Video Fusion: From Multi-Frame Learning to Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19858/) (2025)
- [X2HDR: HDR Image Generation in a Perceptually Uniform Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04814/) (2026)
- [Towards Unified Semantic and Controllable Image Fusion: A Diffusion Transformer Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07170/) (2025)
- [DiffHDR: Re-Exposing LDR Videos with Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06161/) (2026)
- [S2R-HDR: A Large-Scale Rendered Dataset for HDR Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07667/) (2025)
- [F2HDR: Two-Stage HDR Video Reconstruction via Flow Adapter and Physical Motion Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14920/) (2026)
- [GMODiff: One-Step Gain Map Refinement with Diffusion Priors for HDR Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16357/) (2025)
- [MambaVF: State Space Model for Efficient Video Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06017/) (2026)
- [AsyncEvGS: Asynchronous Event-Assisted Gaussian Splatting for Handheld Motion-Blurred Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07192/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Few-Shot Image Fusion: Granular Ball Priors Enable General-Purpose Deep Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08937/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Novel View Synthesis in High Dynamic Range](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21853/) (2025)
- [Generative Multi-Focus Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21495/) (2025)
- [SpiralDiff: Spiral Diffusion with LoRA for RGB-to-RAW Conversion Across Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14885/) (2026)
- [High-Speed Full-Color HDR Imaging via Unwrapping Modulo-Encoded Spike Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14632/) (2026)
- [Single-Shot HDR Recovery via a Video Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11628/) (2026)
- [ExpoMotion: A Large-Scale Benchmark and A Householder Projection Network for Multi-Exposure Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03110/) (2026)
- [Coarse-to-fine Framework for Generative MEF via Implicit Neural Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17611/) (2026)
- [Dual-Output Multi-Exposure HDR Reconstruction via SDR Fusion and Gain Map Inverse Tone Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05626/) (2026)
- [Principal-timestep Restricted Init via Sparse Matrix-decomposition in Flow-matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15643/) (2026)
- [HaRP: High Dynamic Range Photosequencing through Dual Reversed Shutter Scanning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.28439/) (2026)
- [Neural Block-wise Auto-exposure for Single-Shot High Dynamic Range Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18733/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Capturing high dynamic range (HDR) scenes is one of the most important issues in camera design. Majority of cameras use exposure fusion, which fuses images captured by different exposure levels, to increase dynamic range. However, this approach can only handle images with limited exposure difference, normally 3-4 stops. When applying to very high dynamic range scenes where a large exposure difference is required, this approach often fails due to incorrect alignment or inconsistent lighting between inputs, or tone mapping artifacts. In this work, we propose model, the first exposure fusion technique that can merge inputs with 9 stops differences. The key idea is that we model exposure fusion as a guided inpainting problem, where the under-exposed image is used as a guidance to fill the missing information of over-exposed highlights in the over-exposed region. Using an under-exposed image as a soft guidance, instead of a hard constraint, our model is robust to potential alignment issue or lighting variations. Moreover, by utilizing the image prior of the generative model, our model also generates natural tone mapping, even for very high-dynamic range scenes. Our approach outperforms HDR-Transformer on latest HDR benchmarks. Moreover, to test its performance in ultra high dynamic range scenes, we capture a new real-world exposure fusion benchmark, UltraFusion dataset, with exposure differences up to 9 stops, and experiments show that UltraFusion can generate beautiful and high-quality fusion results under various scenarios. Code and data will be available at https://openimaginglab.github.io/UltraFusion.