ReFlex: Text-Guided Editing of Real Images in Rectified Flow via Mid-Step Feature Extraction and Attention Adaptation
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
Rectified Flow text-to-image models surpass diffusion models in image quality and text alignment, but adapting ReFlow for real-image editing remains challenging. We propose a new real-image editing method for ReFlow by analyzing the intermediate representations of multimodal transformer blocks and identifying three key features. To extract these features from real images with sufficient structural preservation, we leverage mid-step latent, which is inverted only up to the mid-step. We then adapt attention during injection to improve editability and enhance alignment to the target text. Our method is training-free, requires no user-provided mask, and can be applied even without a source prompt. Extensive experiments on two benchmarks with nine baselines demonstrate its superior performance over prior methods, further validated by human evaluations confirming a strong user preference for our approach.
Key facts. Cited by 16 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 36 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2025.
Builds on
36 of 43 references.
Closest ancestors · 12
Same direction, newest first
- 2024FireFlow: Fast Inversion of Rectified Flow for Image Semantic Editing10 Dec
- 2024Taming Rectified Flow for Inversion and Editing7 Nov
- 2024Semantic Image Inversion and Editing using Rectified Stochastic Differential Equations14 Oct
- 2023Direct Inversion: Boosting Diffusion-based Editing with 3 Lines of Code2 Oct
- 2023InstructEdit: Improving Automatic Masks for Diffusion-based Image Editing With User Instructions29 May
- 2023An Edit Friendly DDPM Noise Space: Inversion and Manipulations12 Apr
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
- 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
- 2022DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance20 Oct
- 2022Blended Latent Diffusion6 Jun
- 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May
- 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec
Other references · 24
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
- 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
- 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,968
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
- 2022BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generationcited by 4,322
- 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,288
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
12 more
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
- 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,431
- 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,937
- 2024Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Taskscited by 929
- 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 906
- 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 727
- 2023Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translationcited by 505
- 2022Diffusion Models already have a Semantic Latent Spacecited by 328
- 2024FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Modelscited by 217
- 2022Splicing ViT Features for Semantic Appearance Transfercited by 209
- 2023Cross-Image Attention for Zero-Shot Appearance Transfercited by 136
- 2023Beyond First-Order Tweedie: Solving Inverse Problems using Latent Diffusioncited by 78
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 4; 2026: 12.
16 papers.
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- 2025ManipShield: A Unified Framework for Image Manipulation Detection, Localization and Explanationcited by 5
- 2026EditHF-1M: A Million-Scale Rich Human Preference Feedback for Image Editingcited by 4
- 2025Target-aware Image Editing via Cycle-consistent Constraintscited by 3
- 2026Diagnosing and Correcting Concept Omission in Multimodal Diffusion Transformerscited by 2
- 2025FlowSteer: Conditioning Flow Field for Consistent Image Restorationcited by 1
- 2026GIDE: Unlocking Diffusion LLMs for Precise Training-Free Image Editingcited by 1
- 2026Language-Free Generative Editing from One Visual Examplecited by 1
- 2026SAM-Flow: Source-Anchored Masked Flow for Training-Free Image Editingcited by 1
- 2025ASemConsist: Adaptive Semantic Feature Control for Training-Free Identity-Consistent Generationcited by 0
- 2026Orthogonal Negative Guidance in Attention Feature Space for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026Breaking the Lock-in: Diversifying Text-to-Image Generation via Representation Modulationcited by 0
- 2026Encoder-Decoder Manifold Alignment for Idempotent Generationcited by 0
4 more
- 2026ProgressNet: Sketching and Prompting with a Frozen Text-to-Image Model2 Oct 2026
- 2026Constrained Edit Fields for Training-Free Flow Editing27 Sep 2026
- 2026CAT-Flow: Curvature-Adaptive sTeps for Flow Matching1 Sep 2026
- 2026h-Flow: Flexible Flow-based Image Editing via Doob's h-Transform12 Jul 2026
- 2026Encoder-Decoder Manifold Alignment for Idempotent Generation21 Jun 2026
- 2026Breaking the Lock-in: Diversifying Text-to-Image Generation via Representation Modulation5 Jun 2026
- 2026SAM-Flow: Source-Anchored Masked Flow for Training-Free Image Editing4 Jun 2026
- 2026Orthogonal Negative Guidance in Attention Feature Space for Text-to-Image Generation28 May 2026
- 2026Diagnosing and Correcting Concept Omission in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers14 May 2026
- 2026Language-Free Generative Editing from One Visual Example26 Mar 2026
- 2026GIDE: Unlocking Diffusion LLMs for Precise Training-Free Image Editing22 Mar 2026
- 2026EditHF-1M: A Million-Scale Rich Human Preference Feedback for Image Editing16 Mar 2026
4 more
- 2025ASemConsist: Adaptive Semantic Feature Control for Training-Free Identity-Consistent Generation29 Dec 2025
- 2025FlowSteer: Conditioning Flow Field for Consistent Image Restoration9 Dec 2025
- 2025ManipShield: A Unified Framework for Image Manipulation Detection, Localization and Explanation18 Nov 2025
- 2025Target-aware Image Editing via Cycle-consistent Constraints23 Oct 2025
- 2026Diagnosing and Correcting Concept Omission in Multimodal Diffusion Transformerscited by 2
- 2026Language-Free Generative Editing from One Visual Examplecited by 1
- 2026SAM-Flow: Source-Anchored Masked Flow for Training-Free Image Editingcited by 1
- 2025ASemConsist: Adaptive Semantic Feature Control for Training-Free Identity-Consistent Generationcited by 0
- 2026CAT-Flow: Curvature-Adaptive sTeps for Flow Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Constrained Edit Fields for Training-Free Flow Editingcited by 0
- 2026Constrained Edit Fields for Training-Free Flow Editing27 Sep 2026
- 2026CAT-Flow: Curvature-Adaptive sTeps for Flow Matching1 Sep 2026
- 2026SAM-Flow: Source-Anchored Masked Flow for Training-Free Image Editing4 Jun 2026
- 2026Diagnosing and Correcting Concept Omission in Multimodal Diffusion Transformers14 May 2026
- 2026Language-Free Generative Editing from One Visual Example26 Mar 2026
- 2025ASemConsist: Adaptive Semantic Feature Control for Training-Free Identity-Consistent Generation29 Dec 2025
- 2025ManipShield: A Unified Framework for Image Manipulation Detection, Localization and Explanationcited by 5
- 2025Target-aware Image Editing via Cycle-consistent Constraintscited by 3
- 2025FlowSteer: Conditioning Flow Field for Consistent Image Restorationcited by 1
- 2026GIDE: Unlocking Diffusion LLMs for Precise Training-Free Image Editingcited by 1
- 2026Orthogonal Negative Guidance in Attention Feature Space for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026Breaking the Lock-in: Diversifying Text-to-Image Generation via Representation Modulationcited by 0
- 2026Encoder-Decoder Manifold Alignment for Idempotent Generationcited by 0
- 2026h-Flow: Flexible Flow-based Image Editing via Doob's h-Transformcited by 0
- 2026ProgressNet: Sketching and Prompting with a Frozen Text-to-Image Modelcited by 0
- 2026ProgressNet: Sketching and Prompting with a Frozen Text-to-Image Model2 Oct 2026
- 2026h-Flow: Flexible Flow-based Image Editing via Doob's h-Transform12 Jul 2026
- 2026Encoder-Decoder Manifold Alignment for Idempotent Generation21 Jun 2026
- 2026Breaking the Lock-in: Diversifying Text-to-Image Generation via Representation Modulation5 Jun 2026
- 2026Orthogonal Negative Guidance in Attention Feature Space for Text-to-Image Generation28 May 2026
- 2026GIDE: Unlocking Diffusion LLMs for Precise Training-Free Image Editing22 Mar 2026
- 2025FlowSteer: Conditioning Flow Field for Consistent Image Restoration9 Dec 2025
- 2025ManipShield: A Unified Framework for Image Manipulation Detection, Localization and Explanation18 Nov 2025
- 2025Target-aware Image Editing via Cycle-consistent Constraints23 Oct 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2024Task-Oriented Diffusion Inversion for High-Fidelity Text-based Editing
- 2022Direct Inversion: Optimization-Free Text-Driven Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models
- 2023BARET : Balanced Attention based Real image Editing driven by Target-text Inversion
- 2025Tuning-Free Image Editing with Fidelity and Editability via Unified Latent Diffusion Model
- 2023StyleDiffusion: Prompt-Embedding Inversion for Text-Based Editing
- 2026AdaEdit: Adaptive Temporal and Channel Modulation for Flow-Based Image Editing
- 2023Textual and Visual Prompt Fusion for Image Editing via Step-Wise Alignment
- 2025LORE: Latent Optimization for Precise Semantic Control in Rectified Flow-based Image Editing