mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

VSF: Simple, Efficient, and Effective Negative Guidance in Few-Step Image Generation Models By Value Sign Flip

arXiv 2508.10931 ↗First posted 11 Aug 2025cs.CV cs.GRcited by 4

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion foundations and sampling

Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Value Sign Flip (VSF), a simple and efficient method for incorporating negative prompt guidance in few-step diffusion and flow-matching image generation models. Unlike existing approaches such as classifier-free guidance (CFG), NASA, and NAG, VSF dynamically suppresses undesired content by flipping the sign of attention values from negative prompts. Our method requires only small computational overhead and integrates effectively with MMDiT-style architectures such as Stable Diffusion 3.5 Turbo, as well as cross-attention-based models like Wan. We validate VSF on challenging datasets with complex prompt pairs and demonstrate superior performance in both static image and video generation tasks. Experimental results show that VSF significantly improves negative prompt adherence compared to prior methods in few-step models, and even CFG in non-few-step models, while maintaining competitive image quality. Code and ComfyUI node are available in https://github.com/weathon/VSF/tree/main.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 35 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Aug 2025.

Builds on

35 of 54 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Feedback Guidance of Diffusion Models6 Jun
  2. 2025Normalized Attention Guidance: Universal Negative Guidance for Diffusion Models27 May
  3. 2024Dynamic Negative Guidance of Diffusion Models18 Oct
  4. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis5 Mar
  5. 2024SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation21 Feb
  6. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance26 Jul

Other references · 29

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  2. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,599
  3. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  4. 2022BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generationcited by 4,322
  5. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,708
  6. 2023FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioningcited by 2,598
  7. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,080
  8. 2023ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,045
  9. 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 1,006
  10. 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 890
  11. 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 812
  12. 2023Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 702
17 more
  1. 2022When and why vision-language models behave like bags-of-words, and what to do about it?cited by 610
  2. 2022Safe Latent Diffusion: Mitigating Inappropriate Degeneration in Diffusion Modelscited by 513
  3. 2024From Slow Bidirectional to Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion Modelscited by 433
  4. 2023Diffusion Self-Guidance for Controllable Image Generationcited by 305
  5. 2023BoxDiff: Text-to-Image Synthesis with Training-Free Box-Constrained Diffusioncited by 282
  6. 2024VisionReward: Fine-Grained Multi-Dimensional Human Preference Learning for Image and Video Generationcited by 156
  7. 2025ShareGPT-4o-Image: Aligning Multimodal Models with GPT-4o-Level Image Generationcited by 97
  8. 2025Vision-Language Models Do Not Understand Negationcited by 72
  9. 2025TIIF-Bench: How Does Your T2I Model Follow Your Instructions?cited by 69
  10. 2023ITI-GEN: Inclusive Text-to-Image Generationcited by 64
  11. 2024Understanding the Impact of Negative Prompts: When and How Do They Take Effect?cited by 51
  12. 2024Learn "No" to Say "Yes" Better: Improving Vision-Language Models via Negationscited by 46
  13. 2025Know "No" Better: A Data-Driven Approach for Enhancing Negation Awareness in CLIPcited by 28
  14. 2025LAPIS: A novel dataset for personalized image aesthetic assessmentcited by 16
  15. 2025TransPixeler: Advancing Text-to-Video Generation with Transparencycited by 12
  16. 2024FairQueue: Rethinking Prompt Learning for Fair Text-to-Image Generationcited by 7
  17. 2024GraPE: A Generate-Plan-Edit Framework for Compositional T2I Synthesiscited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 3.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Supercharged One-step Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Negative Prompts
  2. 2025Diffusion Models with Adaptive Negative Sampling Without External Resources
  3. 2025Dynamic VLM-Guided Negative Prompting for Diffusion Models
  4. 2024Improving image synthesis with diffusion-negative sampling
  5. 2025ImageReFL: Balancing Quality and Diversity in Human-Aligned Diffusion Models
  6. 2025Diffusion-NPO: Negative Preference Optimization for Better Preference Aligned Generation of Diffusion Models
  7. 2024Compress Guidance in Conditional Diffusion Sampling
  8. 2025Self-NPO: Data-Free Diffusion Model Enhancement via Truncated Diffusion Fine-Tuning