# HiFlow: Training-free High-Resolution Image Generation with Flow-Aligned Guidance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06232 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06232/

## Key facts

- Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 55 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 55)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.00092/) (2014)
- [Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10833/) (2021)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13290/) (2021)
- [MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08113/) (2023)
- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)
- [Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11093/) (2023)
- [PixArt-Sigma: Weak-to-Strong Training of Diffusion Transformer for 4K Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04692/) (2024)
- [Playground v2.5: Three Insights towards Enhancing Aesthetic Quality in Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17245/) (2024)
- [Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09732/) (2025)
- [FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08629/) (2024)
- [FreeU: Free Lunch in Diffusion U-Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11497/) (2023)
- [SVDQuant: Absorbing Outliers by Low-Rank Components for 4-Bit Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05007/) (2024)
- [Lumina-T2X: Transforming Text into Any Modality, Resolution, and Duration via Flow-based Large Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05945/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [UltraHR-100K: Enhancing UHR Image Synthesis with A Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20661/) (2025)
- [DyPE: Dynamic Position Extrapolation for Ultra High Resolution Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20766/) (2025)
- [UltraImage: Rethinking Resolution Extrapolation in Image Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04504/) (2025)
- [L2P: Unlocking Latent Potential for Pixel Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12013/) (2026)
- [FreeSwim: Revisiting Sliding-Window Attention Mechanisms for Training-Free Ultra-High-Resolution Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14712/) (2025)
- [UltraImageGen: Efficient Ultra-High-Resolution Image Generation with Hierarchical Local Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16325/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Weighted h-Transform Sampling for Coarse-Guided Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12057/) (2026)
- [ViBe: Ultra-High-Resolution Video Synthesis Born from Pure Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23326/) (2026)
- [SEGA: Spectral-Energy Guided Attention for Resolution Extrapolation in Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22668/) (2026)
- [ResDiT: Evoking the Intrinsic Resolution Scalability in Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01426/) (2025)
- [Look-Ahead and Look-Back Flows: Training-Free Image Generation with Trajectory Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09449/) (2026)
- [AdaGRPO: A Capability-Aware Adaptive Enhancement for Flow-based GRPO](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06828/) (2026)
- [TIDE: Text-Informed Dynamic Extrapolation with Step-Aware Temperature Control for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08928/) (2026)
- [PixVerve: Advancing Native UHR Image Generation to 100MP with a Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20147/) (2026)
- [EDITBRIDGE: Towards Faithful and Efficient Ultra-High-Resolution Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18063/) (2026)
- [FLAT: FLow-Aligned Training of Unrolled Networks for MRI Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03020/) (2025)
- [InpaintDPO: Mitigating Spatial Relationship Hallucinations in Foreground-conditioned Inpainting via Diverse Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15644/) (2025)
- [ExtraVAR: Stage-Aware RoPE Remapping for Resolution Extrapolation in Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10045/) (2026)
- [RaPD: Resolution-Agnostic Pixel Diffusion via Semantics-Enriched Implicit Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15908/) (2026)
- [HierEdit: Region-Aware Hierarchical Diffusion for Efficient High-Resolution Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17294/) (2026)
- [HRDiT: Training-Free High-Resolution Image Generation with Off-the-Shelf Diffusion Transformer Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07003/) (2026)
- [AReA: Adaptive Receptive-Field Attention for Efficient High-Resolution Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17227/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-image (T2I) diffusion/flow models have drawn considerable attention recently due to their remarkable ability to deliver flexible visual creations. Still, high-resolution image synthesis presents formidable challenges due to the scarcity and complexity of high-resolution content. Recent approaches have investigated training-free strategies to enable high-resolution image synthesis with pre-trained models. However, these techniques often struggle with generating high-quality visuals and tend to exhibit artifacts or low-fidelity details, as they typically rely solely on the endpoint of the low-resolution sampling trajectory while neglecting intermediate states that are critical for preserving structure and synthesizing finer detail. To this end, we present HiFlow, a training-free and model-agnostic framework to unlock the resolution potential of pre-trained flow models. Specifically, HiFlow establishes a virtual reference flow within the high-resolution space that effectively captures the characteristics of low-resolution flow information, offering guidance for high-resolution generation through three key aspects: initialization alignment for low-frequency consistency, direction alignment for structure preservation, and acceleration alignment for detail fidelity. By leveraging such flow-aligned guidance, HiFlow substantially elevates the quality of high-resolution image synthesis of T2I models and demonstrates versatility across their personalized variants. Extensive experiments validate HiFlow's capability in achieving superior high-resolution image quality over state-of-the-art methods.