# DynFaceRestore: Balancing Fidelity and Quality in Diffusion-Guided Blind Face Restoration with Dynamic Blur-Level Mapping and Guidance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13797 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13797/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 33 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11793/) (2022)
- [Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07728/) (2020)
- [Zero-Shot Image Restoration Using Denoising Diffusion Null-Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00490/) (2022)
- [WIDER FACE: A Face Detection Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06523/) (2015)
- [Towards Robust Blind Face Restoration with Codebook Lookup Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11253/) (2022)
- [Generative Diffusion Prior for Unified Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01247/) (2023)
- [GAN Prior Embedded Network for Blind Face Restoration in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06070/) (2021)
- [FSRNet: End-to-End Learning Face Super-Resolution with Facial Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10703/) (2017)
- [VQFR: Blind Face Restoration with Vector-Quantized Dictionary and Parallel Decoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06803/) (2022)
- [Parallel Diffusion Models of Operator and Image for Blind Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10656/) (2022)
- [Progressive Semantic-Aware Style Transformation for Blind Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.08709/) (2020)
- [DifFace: Blind Face Restoration with Diffused Error Contraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06512/) (2022)
- [RestoreFormer: High-Quality Blind Face Restoration from Undegraded Key-Value Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06374/) (2022)
- [Deep Semantic Face Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03345/) (2018)
- [DR2: Diffusion-based Robust Degradation Remover for Blind Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06885/) (2023)
- [PGDiff: Guiding Diffusion Models for Versatile Face Restoration via Partial Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10810/) (2023)
- [Fast Diffusion EM: a diffusion model for blind inverse problems with application to deconvolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00287/) (2023)
- [Dual Associated Encoder for Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07314/) (2023)
- [WaveFace: Authentic Face Restoration with Efficient Frequency Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12760/) (2024)
- [Survey on Deep Face Restoration: From Non-blind to Blind and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15490/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [HDRFace: Rethinking Face Restoration with High-Dimensional Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14821/) (2026)
- [WaveFreqAnchor: Wave-Structural Anchoring and Frequency Correction Diffusion for Training-Free Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06717/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Blind Face Restoration aims to recover high-fidelity, detail-rich facial images from unknown degraded inputs, presenting significant challenges in preserving both identity and detail. Pre-trained diffusion models have been increasingly used as image priors to generate fine details. Still, existing methods often use fixed diffusion sampling timesteps and a global guidance scale, assuming uniform degradation. This limitation and potentially imperfect degradation kernel estimation frequently lead to under- or over-diffusion, resulting in an imbalance between fidelity and quality. We propose DynFaceRestore, a novel blind face restoration approach that learns to map any blindly degraded input to Gaussian blurry images. By leveraging these blurry images and their respective Gaussian kernels, we dynamically select the starting timesteps for each blurry image and apply closed-form guidance during the diffusion sampling process to maintain fidelity. Additionally, we introduce a dynamic guidance scaling adjuster that modulates the guidance strength across local regions, enhancing detail generation in complex areas while preserving structural fidelity in contours. This strategy effectively balances the trade-off between fidelity and quality. DynFaceRestore achieves state-of-the-art performance in both quantitative and qualitative evaluations, demonstrating robustness and effectiveness in blind face restoration. Project page at https://nycu-acm.github.io/DynFaceRestore/