# SketchAssist: A Practical Assistant for Semantic Edits and Precise Local Redrawing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14140 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14140/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12191/) (2024)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [Qwen3-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21631/) (2025)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17761/) (2025)
- [OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15098/) (2024)
- [Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10089/) (2023)
- [Text2LIVE: Text-Driven Layered Image and Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02491/) (2022)
- [VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08583/) (2022)
- [AnyEdit: Mastering Unified High-Quality Image Editing for Any Idea](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15738/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sketch editing requires jointly handling high-level semantic changes and precise local redrawing, a combination that is particularly challenging for sparse, style-sensitive line art. Unlike natural images, sketches rely on minimal visual cues, making it difficult for existing methods to reconcile global semantic modifications with fine-grained structural control while preserving overall coherence. We present SketchAssist, an interactive sketch assistant that unifies instruction-guided editing with line-guided region redrawing, enabling efficient and controllable sketch manipulation while preserving overall composition. To support this task, we introduce a controllable data generation pipeline that constructs structured edit sequences with precise attribute variations and maintains structural alignment across multi-step modifications, while expanding stylistic diversity via style-preserving transformations. Building on this data, SketchAssist adopts a unified framework based on DiT, using a multi-channel input representation to encode sketches, masks, and guidance signals within a single interface. To further handle different editing modes, we integrate a Task-guided Mixture-of-Experts (T-MoE) into LoRA layers, enabling adaptive control over semantic and structural guidance. Extensive experiments demonstrate state-of-the-art performance on both tasks, achieving strong instruction adherence and improved structural and style consistency compared to recent methods. Together, our method provide a practical and controllable solution for sketch editing.