# FlowAlign: Trajectory-Regularized, Inversion-Free Flow-based Image Editing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23145 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23145/

## Key facts

- Cited by 32 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 30 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 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, 30 of 30)

- [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)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Normalizing Flows for Probabilistic Modeling and Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02762/) (2019)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [The Perception-Distortion Tradeoff](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06077/) (2017)
- [Instruct-NeRF2NeRF: Editing 3D Scenes with Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12789/) (2023)
- [Video-P2P: Video Editing with Cross-attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04761/) (2023)
- [UltraEdit: Instruction-based Fine-Grained Image Editing at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05282/) (2024)
- [FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08629/) (2024)
- [Dual Diffusion Implicit Bridges for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08382/) (2022)
- [Semantic Image Inversion and Editing using Rectified Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10792/) (2024)
- [Direct Inversion: Boosting Diffusion-based Editing with 3 Lines of Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01506/) (2023)
- [Delta Denoising Score](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07090/) (2023)
- [The 2019 DAVIS Challenge on VOS: Unsupervised Multi-Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00737/) (2019)
- [VMC: Video Motion Customization using Temporal Attention Adaption for Text-to-Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00845/) (2023)
- [Posterior Distillation Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13831/) (2023)
- [DreamMotion: Space-Time Self-Similar Score Distillation for Zero-Shot Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12002/) (2024)
- [DreamSampler: Unifying Diffusion Sampling and Score Distillation for Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11415/) (2024)
- [Spectral Motion Alignment for Video Motion Transfer using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15249/) (2024)
- [Lecture Notes on Control System Theory and Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01367/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Follow-Your-Shape: Shape-Aware Image Editing via Trajectory-Guided Region Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08134/) (2025)
- [FIA-Edit: Frequency-Interactive Attention for Efficient and High-Fidelity Inversion-Free Text-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12151/) (2025)
- [Exploring Cross-Modal Flows for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14543/) (2025)
- [Versatile Editing of Video Content, Actions, and Dynamics without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17989/) (2026)
- [Target-aware Image Editing via Cycle-consistent Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20212/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Weighted h-Transform Sampling for Coarse-Guided Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12057/) (2026)
- [SteerFlow: Steering Rectified Flows for Faithful Inversion-Based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01715/) (2026)
- [ElasticTTT: Prior-Preserving Test-Time Tuning for Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21529/) (2026)
- [SNR-Edit: Structure-Aware Noise Rectification for Inversion-Free Flow-Based Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19180/) (2026)
- [Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via a Self-Supervised Semantic Bridge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16664/) (2026)
- [StreamEdit: Training-Free Video Editing via Few-Step Streaming Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21466/) (2026)
- [Training-free image inversion for one-step diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01380/) (2026)
- [FlowSteer: Conditioning Flow Field for Consistent Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08125/) (2025)
- [FlowAnchor: Stabilizing the Editing Signal for Inversion-Free Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22586/) (2026)
- [DirectEdit: Step-Level Accurate Inversion for Flow-Based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02417/) (2026)
- [Semantic Granularity Navigation in Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21190/) (2026)
- [SAM-Flow: Source-Anchored Masked Flow for Training-Free Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06228/) (2026)
- [DirectAudioEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Guided Audio Editing via Diffusion Prediction Contrast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07356/) (2026)
- [Bridging the Manifold Gap: Riemannian Residual Line Search for One-Step Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24844/) (2026)
- [FusionEdit: Semantic Fusion and Attention Modulation for Training-Free Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08725/) (2026)
- [Score-Guided Proximal Projection: A Unified Geometric Framework for Rectified Flow Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05761/) (2026)
- [SyncEdit: Rethinking Lip Synchronization as Editing with Audio-Driven Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09084/) (2026)
- [LimeCross: Context-Conditioned Layered Image Editing with Structural Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10319/) (2026)
- [Wavelet-Guided Semantic Signal Compensation for Inversion-Free Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02421/) (2026)
- [h-Flow: Flexible Flow-based Image Editing via Doob's h-Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10800/) (2026)
- [Consistent Feature Transport for Image Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17833/) (2026)
- [RIDGE: Re-Noising with Internal Dynamic Guidance for Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03059/) (2026)
- [Diffusion Image Editing via Asynchronous Token Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09322/) (2026)
- [Multi-History-Step SDE Inversion for Image Editing with Superior Regional Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06602/) (2026)
- [Constrained Edit Fields for Training-Free Flow Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33735/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent inversion-free, flow-based image editing methods such as FlowEdit leverages a pre-trained noise-to-image flow model such as Stable Diffusion 3, enabling text-driven manipulation by solving an ordinary differential equation (ODE). While the lack of exact latent inversion is a core advantage of these methods, it often results in unstable editing trajectories and poor source consistency. To address this limitation, we propose em FlowAlign, a novel inversion-free flow-based framework for consistent image editing with optimal control-based trajectory control. Specifically, FlowAlign introduces source similarity at the terminal point as a regularization term to promote smoother and more consistent trajectories during the editing process. Notably, our terminal point regularization is shown to explicitly balance semantic alignment with the edit prompt and structural consistency with the source image along the trajectory. Furthermore, FlowAlign naturally supports reverse editing by simply reversing the ODE trajectory, highliting the reversible and consistent nature of the transformation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FlowAlign outperforms existing methods in both source preservation and editing controllability.