mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Diffusion Restoration Adapter for Real-World Image Restoration

arXiv 2502.20679 ↗First posted 28 Feb 2025cs.CVcited by 3

On the map: Diffusion models → Inverse problems and image restoration

Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have demonstrated their powerful image generation capabilities, effectively fitting highly complex image distributions. These models can serve as strong priors for image restoration. Existing methods often utilize techniques like ControlNet to sample high quality images with low quality images from these priors. However, ControlNet typically involves copying a large part of the original network, resulting in a significantly large number of parameters as the prior scales up. In this paper, we propose a relatively lightweight Adapter that leverages the powerful generative capabilities of pretrained priors to achieve photo-realistic image restoration. The Adapters can be adapt to both denoising UNet and DiT, and performs excellent.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 51 of its 61 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2025.

Builds on

51 of 61 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolution27 Nov
  2. 2023DiffBIR: Towards Blind Image Restoration with Generative Diffusion Prior29 Aug
  3. 2023Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylization28 Aug
  4. 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolution11 May
  5. 2022Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models27 Jan

Other references · 46

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  3. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,084
  4. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  5. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  6. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  7. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  8. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
  9. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  10. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  11. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  12. 2022LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text modelscited by 4,131
34 more
  1. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  2. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,067
  3. 2019Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGANcited by 3,580
  4. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 2,994
  5. 2023InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Taskscited by 2,534
  6. 2022DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Stepscited by 1,961
  7. 2021SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformercited by 1,869
  8. 2021Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restorationcited by 1,618
  9. 2021MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformercited by 1,058
  10. 2022Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Imagescited by 974
  11. 2021Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Datacited by 961
  12. 2022DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 924
  13. 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 854
  14. 2019Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?cited by 675
  15. 2020GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controlscited by 612
  16. 2017The Perception-Distortion Tradeoffcited by 582
  17. 2021Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolutioncited by 524
  18. 2022MANIQA: Multi-dimension Attention Network for No-Reference Image Quality Assessmentcited by 514
  19. 2020Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Deep Denoiser Priorcited by 467
  20. 2023UniPC: A Unified Predictor-Corrector Framework for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Modelscited by 441
  21. 2017Learning Deep CNN Denoiser Prior for Image Restorationcited by 407
  22. 2020InterFaceGAN: Interpreting the Disentangled Face Representation Learned by GANscited by 393
  23. 2020PULSE: Self-Supervised Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration of Generative Modelscited by 358
  24. 2020StyleFlow: Attribute-conditioned Exploration of StyleGAN-Generated Images using Conditional Continuous Normalizing Flowscited by 348
  25. 2021Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Priorcited by 347
  26. 2024Hunyuan-DiT: A Powerful Multi-Resolution Diffusion Transformer with Fine-Grained Chinese Understandingcited by 294
  27. 2024Scaling Up to Excellence: Practicing Model Scaling for Photo-Realistic Image Restoration In the Wildcited by 281
  28. 2020StyleRig: Rigging StyleGAN for 3D Control over Portrait Imagescited by 267
  29. 2022Towards Robust Blind Face Restoration with Codebook Lookup Transformercited by 230
  30. 2020Exploiting Deep Generative Prior for Versatile Image Restoration and Manipulationcited by 225
  31. 2021GAN Prior Embedded Network for Blind Face Restoration in the Wildcited by 197
  32. 2019Image Processing Using Multi-Code GAN Priorcited by 185
  33. 2020Semantic Photo Manipulation with a Generative Image Priorcited by 178
  34. 2020PIPAL: a Large-Scale Image Quality Assessment Dataset for Perceptual Image Restorationcited by 177

Built on by

Cited by year

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3.

3 papers.

  1. 2025BIR-Adapter: A parameter-efficient diffusion adapter for blind image restorationcited by 2
  2. 2025Simulating Refractive Distortions and Weather-Induced Artifacts for Resource-Constrained Autonomous Perceptioncited by 1
  3. 2025LAFR: Efficient Diffusion-based Blind Face Restoration via Latent Codebook Alignment Adaptercited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Diffusion Posterior Proximal Sampling for Image Restoration
  2. 2023Generative Diffusion Prior for Unified Image Restoration and Enhancement
  3. 2024Decoupled Data Consistency with Diffusion Purification for Image Restoration
  4. 2024Taming Diffusion Models for Image Restoration: A Review
  5. 2023A Unified Conditional Framework for Diffusion-based Image Restoration
  6. 2023Restoration based Generative Models
  7. 2024Remix-DiT: Mixing Diffusion Transformers for Multi-Expert Denoising
  8. 2023Restoration by Generation with Constrained Priors