mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

An LLM-LVLM Driven Agent for Iterative and Fine-Grained Image Editing

arXiv 2508.17435 ↗First posted 24 Aug 2025cs.CVcited by 7

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Despite the remarkable capabilities of text-to-image (T2I) generation models, real-world applications often demand fine-grained, iterative image editing that existing methods struggle to provide. Key challenges include granular instruction understanding, robust context preservation during modifications, and the lack of intelligent feedback mechanisms for iterative refinement. This paper introduces RefineEdit-Agent, a novel, training-free intelligent agent framework designed to address these limitations by enabling complex, iterative, and context-aware image editing. RefineEdit-Agent leverages the powerful planning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the advanced visual understanding and evaluation prowess of Vision-Language Large Models (LVLMs) within a closed-loop system. Our framework comprises an LVLM-driven instruction parser and scene understanding module, a multi-level LLM-driven editing planner for goal decomposition, tool selection, and sequence generation, an iterative image editing module, and a crucial LVLM-driven feedback and evaluation loop. To rigorously evaluate RefineEdit-Agent, we propose LongBench-T2I-Edit, a new benchmark featuring 500 initial images with complex, multi-turn editing instructions across nine visual dimensions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RefineEdit-Agent significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, achieving an average score of 3.67 on LongBench-T2I-Edit, compared to 2.29 for Direct Re-Prompting, 2.91 for InstructPix2Pix, 3.16 for GLIGEN-based Edit, and 3.39 for ControlNet-XL. Ablation studies, human evaluations, and analyses of iterative refinement, backbone choices, tool usage, and robustness to instruction complexity further validate the efficacy of our agentic design in delivering superior edit fidelity and context preservation.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 22 of its 27 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 2025.

Builds on

22 of 27 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Draw ALL Your Imagine: A Holistic Benchmark and Agent Framework for Complex Instruction-based Image Generation30 May

Other references · 21

  1. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,611
  2. 2023GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generationcited by 781
  3. 2024UltraEdit: Instruction-based Fine-Grained Image Editing at Scalecited by 268
  4. 2019MirrorGAN: Learning Text-to-image Generation by Redescriptioncited by 176
  5. 2025From LLM Reasoning to Autonomous AI Agents: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 149
  6. 2024Exploring Large Language Model based Intelligent Agents: Definitions, Methods, and Prospectscited by 132
  7. 2024Visual In-Context Learning for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 128
  8. 2019Image inpainting: A reviewcited by 89
  9. 2021Text to Image Generation with Semantic-Spatial Aware GANcited by 53
  10. 2024A Survey of Multimodal-Guided Image Editing with Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 52
  11. 2025Improving Medical Large Vision-Language Models with Abnormal-Aware Feedbackcited by 42
  12. 2021EventBERT: A Pre-Trained Model for Event Correlation Reasoningcited by 40
9 more
  1. 2023ControlNet-XS: Rethinking the Control of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models as Feedback-Control Systemscited by 30
  2. 2022Fine-Grained Distillation for Long Document Retrievalcited by 29
  3. 2023Style-Aware Contrastive Learning for Multi-Style Image Captioningcited by 21
  4. 2024A Multi-AI Agent System for Autonomous Optimization of Agentic AI Solutions via Iterative Refinement and LLM-Driven Feedback Loopscited by 13
  5. 2024ConceptAgent: LLM-Driven Precondition Grounding and Tree Search for Robust Task Planning and Executioncited by 8
  6. 2025Conversation Routines: A Prompt Engineering Framework for Task-Oriented Dialog Systemscited by 8
  7. 2025Text to Image Generation and Editing: A Surveycited by 8
  8. 2024Preserve or Modify? Context-Aware Evaluation for Balancing Preservation and Modification in Text-Guided Image Editingcited by 6
  9. 2025Agentic LLM Framework for Adaptive Decision Discoursecited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 5.

7 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Tooling
  2. 2026Making Image Editing Easier via Adaptive Task Reformulation with Agentic Executions
  3. 2026MSRAMIE: Multimodal Structured Reasoning Agent for Multi-instruction Image Editing
  4. 2025Lego-Edit: A General Image Editing Framework with Model-Level Bricks and MLLM Builder
  5. 2026ScaleEdit-12M: Scaling Open-Source Image Editing Data Generation via Multi-Agent Framework
  6. 2026ImageEdit-R1: Boosting Multi-Agent Image Editing via Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2025FireEdit: Fine-grained Instruction-based Image Editing via Region-aware Vision Language Model
  8. 2026Aurora: Unified Video Editing with a Tool-Using Agent