# TimeMachine: Fine-Grained Facial Age Editing with Identity Preservation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11284 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11284/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02546/) (2020)
- [Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02766/) (2021)
- [InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07519/) (2024)
- [PhotoMaker: Customizing Realistic Human Photos via Stacked ID Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04461/) (2023)
- [General Facial Representation Learning in a Visual-Linguistic Manner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03109/) (2021)
- [PuLID: Pure and Lightning ID Customization via Contrastive Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16022/) (2024)
- [Only a Matter of Style: Age Transformation Using a Style-Based Regression Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02754/) (2021)
- [Lifespan Age Transformation Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09764/) (2020)
- [Attribute-aware Face Aging with Wavelet-based Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06647/) (2018)
- [Face Aging via Diffusion-based Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11321/) (2023)
- [High Resolution Face Age Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04410/) (2020)
- [Custom Structure Preservation in Face Aging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11025/) (2022)
- [Disentangled Lifespan Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02874/) (2021)
- [Learning Continuous Face Age Progression: A Pyramid of GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07528/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [DiverAge: Reliable Pluralistic Face Aging with Cross-Age Identity Relation Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04881/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the advancement of generative models, facial image editing has made significant progress. However, achieving fine-grained age editing while preserving personal identity remains a challenging task. In this paper, we propose TimeMachine, a novel diffusion-based framework that achieves accurate age editing while keeping identity features unchanged. To enable fine-grained age editing, we inject high-precision age information into the multi-cross attention module, which explicitly separates age-related and identity-related features. This design facilitates more accurate disentanglement of age attributes, thereby allowing precise and controllable manipulation of facial aging. Furthermore, we propose an Age Classifier Guidance (ACG) module that predicts age directly in the latent space, instead of performing denoising image reconstruction during training. By employing a lightweight module to incorporate age constraints, this design enhances age editing accuracy by modest increasing training cost. Additionally, to address the lack of large-scale, high-quality facial age datasets, we construct a HFFA dataset (High-quality Fine-grained Facial-Age dataset) which contains one million high-resolution images labeled with identity and facial attributes. Experimental results demonstrate that TimeMachine achieves state-of-the-art performance in fine-grained age editing while preserving identity consistency.