4KAgent: Agentic Any Image to 4K Super-Resolution
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Abstract (arXiv)
We present 4KAgent, a unified agentic super-resolution generalist system designed to universally upscale any image to 4K resolution (and even higher, if applied iteratively). Our system can transform images from extremely low resolutions with severe degradations, for example, highly distorted inputs at 256x256, into crystal-clear, photorealistic 4K outputs. 4KAgent comprises three core components: (1) Profiling, a module that customizes the 4KAgent pipeline based on bespoke use cases; (2) A Perception Agent, which leverages vision-language models alongside image quality assessment experts to analyze the input image and make a tailored restoration plan; and (3) A Restoration Agent, which executes the plan, following a recursive execution-reflection paradigm, guided by a quality-driven mixture-of-expert policy to select the optimal output for each step. Additionally, 4KAgent embeds a specialized face restoration pipeline, significantly enhancing facial details in portrait and selfie photos. We rigorously evaluate our 4KAgent across 11 distinct task categories encompassing a total of 26 diverse benchmarks, setting new state-of-the-art on a broad spectrum of imaging domains. Our evaluations cover natural images, portrait photos, AI-generated content, satellite imagery, fluorescence microscopy, and medical imaging like fundoscopy, ultrasound, and X-ray, demonstrating superior performance in terms of both perceptual (e.g., NIQE, MUSIQ) and fidelity (e.g., PSNR) metrics. By establishing a novel agentic paradigm for low-level vision tasks, we aim to catalyze broader interest and innovation within vision-centric autonomous agents across diverse research communities. We will release all the code, models, and results at: https://4kagent.github.io.
Key facts. Cited by 36 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2025.
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 4; 2026: 32.
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- 2026Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Toolingcited by 19
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- 2026TIR-Agent: Training an Explorative and Efficient Agent for Image Restorationcited by 5
- 2025Vision-Language Model Guided Image Restorationcited by 4
- 2026PhotoAgent: Exploratory Visual Aesthetic Planning with Large Vision Modelscited by 4
- 2026GlyphBanana: Advancing Precise Text Rendering Through Agentic Workflowscited by 4
- 2026FusionAgent: A Multimodal Agent with Dynamic Model Selection for Human Recognitioncited by 4
- 2026OPERA: An Agent for Image Restoration with End-to-End Joint Planning-Execution Optimizationcited by 4
- 2026Self-Evolving Agentic Image Restoration via Deliberate Planning and Intuitive Executioncited by 4
- 2026PaAgent: Portrait-Aware Image Restoration Agent via Subjective-Objective Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
24 more
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- 2026DiTTo: Scalable Order-aware All-in-One Image Restoration Agentcited by 2
- 2026EruDiff: Refactoring Knowledge in Diffusion Models for Advanced Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 1
- 2026Banana100: Breaking NR-IQA Metrics by 100 Iterative Image Replications with Nano Banana Procited by 1
- 2026PixVerve: Advancing Native UHR Image Generation to 100MP with a Large-Scale High-Quality Datasetcited by 1
- 2026Coloring the Noise: Adversarial Sobolev Alignment for Faithful Image Super Resolutioncited by 1
- 2026DepthAgent: Towards Better Universal Depth Estimation via Sample-wise Expert Selectioncited by 1
- 20264KLSDB: A Large-Scale Dataset for 4K Image Restoration and Generationcited by 1
- 2026RAPID: A Reproducible Multi-Agent Pipeline for Interpretable Disaster Damage Assessment from Satellite and Street-View Imagerycited by 1
- 2026SkillIR: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic Image Restorationcited by 1
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- 2026VQ-Jarvis: Retrieval-Augmented Video Restoration Agent with Sharp Vision and Fast Thoughtcited by 0
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- 2026HarnessIR: Harnessing Multimodal Foundation Models for Universal Real-World Image Restorationcited by 0
- 2026Look Before You Restore: Learning to Predict Before Acting for Agentic Image Restorationcited by 0
- 2026Look Before You Restore: Learning to Predict Before Acting for Agentic Image Restoration14 Oct 2026
- 2026HarnessIR: Harnessing Multimodal Foundation Models for Universal Real-World Image Restoration7 Oct 2026
- 2026EORestore-Agent: Fidelity-Guided Agentic Restoration of Remote Sensing Images with Composite Degradations5 Oct 2026
- 2026Agentic Relative Camera Pose Estimation via Learned Ranking and Verification30 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillIR: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic Image Restoration18 Sep 2026
- 2026MagnifiQ: Patch-aware Text Guided Progressive Upscaling for High-Resolution Image Restoration14 Aug 2026
- 2026VLM- and LLM-Driven Multi-Agent System for PET Image Denoising13 Aug 2026
- 2026Self-Evolving Agentic Image Restoration via Deliberate Planning and Intuitive Execution27 Jun 2026
- 2026RAPID: A Reproducible Multi-Agent Pipeline for Interpretable Disaster Damage Assessment from Satellite and Street-View Imagery20 Jun 2026
- 2026Detect in Any Scene: An Agentic Framework for Object Detection with Experience-Aware Reasoning29 May 2026
- 2026DiTTo: Scalable Order-aware All-in-One Image Restoration Agent29 May 2026
- 20264KLSDB: A Large-Scale Dataset for 4K Image Restoration and Generation23 May 2026
24 more
- 2026DepthAgent: Towards Better Universal Depth Estimation via Sample-wise Expert Selection22 May 2026
- 2026Coloring the Noise: Adversarial Sobolev Alignment for Faithful Image Super Resolution22 May 2026
- 2026EvoIR-Agent: Self-Evolving Image Restoration Agentic System via Experience-Driven Learning21 May 2026
- 2026OPERA: An Agent for Image Restoration with End-to-End Joint Planning-Execution Optimization21 May 2026
- 2026PixVerve: Advancing Native UHR Image Generation to 100MP with a Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset19 May 2026
- 2026OP4KSR: One-Step Patch-Free 4K Super-Resolution with Periodic Artifact Suppression13 May 2026
- 2026SmartPhotoCrafter: Unified Reasoning, Generation and Optimization for Automatic Photographic Image Editing21 Apr 2026
- 2026Q-DeepSight: Incentivizing Thinking with Images for Image Quality Assessment and Refinement18 Apr 2026
- 2026Banana100: Breaking NR-IQA Metrics by 100 Iterative Image Replications with Nano Banana Pro3 Apr 2026
- 2026TIR-Agent: Training an Explorative and Efficient Agent for Image Restoration29 Mar 2026
- 2026FusionAgent: A Multimodal Agent with Dynamic Model Selection for Human Recognition27 Mar 2026
- 2026VQ-Jarvis: Retrieval-Augmented Video Restoration Agent with Sharp Vision and Fast Thought24 Mar 2026
- 2026EruDiff: Refactoring Knowledge in Diffusion Models for Advanced Text-to-Image Synthesis21 Mar 2026
- 2026Synergistic Perception and Generative Recomposition: A Multi-Agent Orchestration for Expert-Level Building Inspection20 Mar 2026
- 2026PaAgent: Portrait-Aware Image Restoration Agent via Subjective-Objective Reinforcement Learning17 Mar 2026
- 2026SparkVSR: Interactive Video Super-Resolution via Sparse Keyframe Propagation17 Mar 2026
- 2026GlyphBanana: Advancing Precise Text Rendering Through Agentic Workflows12 Mar 2026
- 2026Learning Domain-Aware Task Prompt Representations for Multi-Domain All-in-One Image Restoration2 Mar 2026
- 2026PhotoAgent: Exploratory Visual Aesthetic Planning with Large Vision Models26 Feb 2026
- 2026Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Tooling9 Feb 2026
- 2025Vision-Language Model Guided Image Restoration19 Dec 2025
- 2025Q-Router: Agentic Video Quality Assessment with Expert Model Routing and Artifact Localization9 Oct 2025
- 2025UniShield: An Adaptive Multi-Agent Framework for Unified Forgery Image Detection and Localization3 Oct 2025
- 2025Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Banding Artifacts on Compressed Videos12 Aug 2025
- 2026Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Toolingcited by 19
- 2026TIR-Agent: Training an Explorative and Efficient Agent for Image Restorationcited by 5
- 2026GlyphBanana: Advancing Precise Text Rendering Through Agentic Workflowscited by 4
- 2026FusionAgent: A Multimodal Agent with Dynamic Model Selection for Human Recognitioncited by 4
- 2026Self-Evolving Agentic Image Restoration via Deliberate Planning and Intuitive Executioncited by 4
- 2025Q-Router: Agentic Video Quality Assessment with Expert Model Routing and Artifact Localizationcited by 2
- 2026Banana100: Breaking NR-IQA Metrics by 100 Iterative Image Replications with Nano Banana Procited by 1
- 2026SkillIR: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic Image Restorationcited by 1
- 2026EORestore-Agent: Fidelity-Guided Agentic Restoration of Remote Sensing Images with Composite Degradationscited by 0
- 2026HarnessIR: Harnessing Multimodal Foundation Models for Universal Real-World Image Restorationcited by 0
- 2026Look Before You Restore: Learning to Predict Before Acting for Agentic Image Restorationcited by 0
- 2026Look Before You Restore: Learning to Predict Before Acting for Agentic Image Restoration14 Oct 2026
- 2026HarnessIR: Harnessing Multimodal Foundation Models for Universal Real-World Image Restoration7 Oct 2026
- 2026EORestore-Agent: Fidelity-Guided Agentic Restoration of Remote Sensing Images with Composite Degradations5 Oct 2026
- 2026SkillIR: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic Image Restoration18 Sep 2026
- 2026Self-Evolving Agentic Image Restoration via Deliberate Planning and Intuitive Execution27 Jun 2026
- 2026Banana100: Breaking NR-IQA Metrics by 100 Iterative Image Replications with Nano Banana Pro3 Apr 2026
- 2026TIR-Agent: Training an Explorative and Efficient Agent for Image Restoration29 Mar 2026
- 2026FusionAgent: A Multimodal Agent with Dynamic Model Selection for Human Recognition27 Mar 2026
- 2026GlyphBanana: Advancing Precise Text Rendering Through Agentic Workflows12 Mar 2026
- 2026Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Tooling9 Feb 2026
- 2025Q-Router: Agentic Video Quality Assessment with Expert Model Routing and Artifact Localization9 Oct 2025
- 2025Vision-Language Model Guided Image Restorationcited by 4
- 2026PaAgent: Portrait-Aware Image Restoration Agent via Subjective-Objective Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
- 2026DiTTo: Scalable Order-aware All-in-One Image Restoration Agentcited by 2
- 2026EvoIR-Agent: Self-Evolving Image Restoration Agentic System via Experience-Driven Learningcited by 0
- 2026DiTTo: Scalable Order-aware All-in-One Image Restoration Agent29 May 2026
- 2026EvoIR-Agent: Self-Evolving Image Restoration Agentic System via Experience-Driven Learning21 May 2026
- 2026PaAgent: Portrait-Aware Image Restoration Agent via Subjective-Objective Reinforcement Learning17 Mar 2026
- 2025Vision-Language Model Guided Image Restoration19 Dec 2025
- 2025UniShield: An Adaptive Multi-Agent Framework for Unified Forgery Image Detection and Localizationcited by 9
- 2026Learning Domain-Aware Task Prompt Representations for Multi-Domain All-in-One Image Restorationcited by 7
- 2026SparkVSR: Interactive Video Super-Resolution via Sparse Keyframe Propagationcited by 5
- 2026PhotoAgent: Exploratory Visual Aesthetic Planning with Large Vision Modelscited by 4
- 2026OPERA: An Agent for Image Restoration with End-to-End Joint Planning-Execution Optimizationcited by 4
- 2026OP4KSR: One-Step Patch-Free 4K Super-Resolution with Periodic Artifact Suppressioncited by 2
- 2026PixVerve: Advancing Native UHR Image Generation to 100MP with a Large-Scale High-Quality Datasetcited by 1
- 2026Coloring the Noise: Adversarial Sobolev Alignment for Faithful Image Super Resolutioncited by 1
- 2026DepthAgent: Towards Better Universal Depth Estimation via Sample-wise Expert Selectioncited by 1
- 20264KLSDB: A Large-Scale Dataset for 4K Image Restoration and Generationcited by 1
- 2026RAPID: A Reproducible Multi-Agent Pipeline for Interpretable Disaster Damage Assessment from Satellite and Street-View Imagerycited by 1
- 2025Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Banding Artifacts on Compressed Videoscited by 0
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- 2026VLM- and LLM-Driven Multi-Agent System for PET Image Denoising13 Aug 2026
- 2026RAPID: A Reproducible Multi-Agent Pipeline for Interpretable Disaster Damage Assessment from Satellite and Street-View Imagery20 Jun 2026
- 20264KLSDB: A Large-Scale Dataset for 4K Image Restoration and Generation23 May 2026
- 2026DepthAgent: Towards Better Universal Depth Estimation via Sample-wise Expert Selection22 May 2026
- 2026Coloring the Noise: Adversarial Sobolev Alignment for Faithful Image Super Resolution22 May 2026
- 2026OPERA: An Agent for Image Restoration with End-to-End Joint Planning-Execution Optimization21 May 2026
- 2026PixVerve: Advancing Native UHR Image Generation to 100MP with a Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset19 May 2026
- 2026OP4KSR: One-Step Patch-Free 4K Super-Resolution with Periodic Artifact Suppression13 May 2026
- 2026SmartPhotoCrafter: Unified Reasoning, Generation and Optimization for Automatic Photographic Image Editing21 Apr 2026
- 2026Synergistic Perception and Generative Recomposition: A Multi-Agent Orchestration for Expert-Level Building Inspection20 Mar 2026
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