# Generative Refocusing: Flexible Defocus Control from a Single Image

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16923 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16923/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 75 of its 106 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [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)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12396/) (2022)
- [Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11793/) (2022)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07728/) (2020)
- [Simple Baselines for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04676/) (2022)
- [MotionCtrl: A Unified and Flexible Motion Controller for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03641/) (2023)
- [MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08113/) (2023)
- [Noise2Noise: Learning Image Restoration without Clean Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04189/) (2018)
- [MANIQA: Multi-dimension Attention Network for No-Reference Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08958/) (2022)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02101/) (2024)
- [Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02073/) (2024)
- [ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12348/) (2023)
- [Noise2Void - Learning Denoising from Single Noisy Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10980/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Models for Plug-and-Play Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08995/) (2023)
- [OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15098/) (2024)
- [DiffIR: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09472/) (2023)
- [Robust Dynamic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02239/) (2023)
- [Image Restoration with Mean-Reverting Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11699/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [The First Controllable Bokeh Rendering Challenge at NTIRE 2026](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05510/) (2026)
- [AnyBokeh: Physics-Guided Any-to-Any Bokeh Editing with Optical Fingerprint Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31959/) (2026)
- [Zero-Shot Depth from Defocus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26658/) (2026)
- [Do Image Editors Follow Depth-Dependent Blur and Aperture Response? A Rendered-Ground-Truth Pilot Audit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09344/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Depth-of-field control is essential in photography, but achieving perfect focus often requires multiple attempts or specialized equipment. Single-image refocusing is still difficult. It involves recovering sharp content and creating realistic bokeh. Current methods have significant drawbacks. They require all-in-focus inputs, rely on synthetic data from simulators, and have limited control over the aperture. We introduce Generative Refocusing, a two-step process that uses DeblurNet to recover all-in-focus images from diverse inputs and BokehNet to create controllable bokeh. This method combines synthetic and real bokeh images to achieve precise control while preserving authentic optical characteristics. Our experiments show we achieve top performance in defocus deblurring, bokeh synthesis, and refocusing benchmarks. Additionally, our Generative Refocusing allows custom aperture shapes. Project page: https://generative-refocusing.github.io/