# Image-to-Image Translation with Diffusion Transformers and CLIP-Based Image Conditioning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.16001 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16001/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 23 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Pyramid Vision Transformer: A Versatile Backbone for Dense Prediction without Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12122/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11585/) (2017)
- [Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08318/) (2018)
- [Holistically-Nested Edge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06375/) (2015)
- [RATT: A Thought Structure for Coherent and Correct LLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02746/) (2024)
- [RAG-Instruct: Boosting LLMs with Diverse Retrieval-Augmented Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00353/) (2024)
- [A Decision-Language Model (DLM) for Dynamic Restless Multi-Armed Bandit Tasks in Public Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14807/) (2024)
- [BlendSQL: A Scalable Dialect for Unifying Hybrid Question Answering in Relational Algebra](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17882/) (2024)
- [Feature Selection as Deep Sequential Generative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03838/) (2024)
- [NEVLP: Noise-Robust Framework for Efficient Vision-Language Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09582/) (2024)
- [Deep Learning based Multi-Label Image Classification of Protest Activities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04212/) (2023)
- [DDUNet: Dual Dynamic U-Net for Highly-Efficient Cloud Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15385/) (2025)
- [UCloudNet: A Residual U-Net with Deep Supervision for Cloud Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06440/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [A Narrative Review on Large AI Models in Lung Cancer Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07236/) (2025)
- [Any2Any: Unified Arbitrary Modality Translation for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04114/) (2026)
- [Data-Efficient Symbolic Regression via Foundation Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19487/) (2025)
- [Multi-Modal Machine Learning Framework for Predicting Early Recurrence of Brain Tumors Using MRI and Clinical Biomarkers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01161/) (2025)
- [A Multimodal Deep Learning Framework for Early Diagnosis of Liver Cancer via Optimized BiLSTM-AM-VMD Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01164/) (2025)
- [Beyond Edge Maps: Wavelet-Domain Conditioning for Multi-Adapter Map-to-Satellite Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00083/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image-to-image translation aims to learn a mapping between a source and a target domain, enabling tasks such as style transfer, appearance transformation, and domain adaptation. In this work, we explore a diffusion-based framework for image-to-image translation by adapting Diffusion Transformers (DiT), which combine the denoising capabilities of diffusion models with the global modeling power of transformers. To guide the translation process, we condition the model on image embeddings extracted from a pre-trained CLIP encoder, allowing for fine-grained and structurally consistent translations without relying on text or class labels. We incorporate both a CLIP similarity loss to enforce semantic consistency and an LPIPS perceptual loss to enhance visual fidelity during training. We validate our approach on two benchmark datasets: face2comics, which translates real human faces to comic-style illustrations, and edges2shoes, which translates edge maps to realistic shoe images. Experimental results demonstrate that DiT, combined with CLIP-based conditioning and perceptual similarity objectives, achieves high-quality, semantically faithful translations, offering a promising alternative to GAN-based models for paired image-to-image translation tasks.