mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Agentic Retoucher for Text-To-Image Generation

arXiv 2601.02046 ↗First posted 5 Jan 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 7

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models such as SDXL and FLUX have achieved impressive photorealism, yet small-scale distortions remain pervasive in limbs, face, text and so on. Existing refinement approaches either perform costly iterative re-generation or rely on vision-language models (VLMs) with weak spatial grounding, leading to semantic drift and unreliable local edits. To close this gap, we propose Agentic Retoucher, a hierarchical decision-driven framework that reformulates post-generation correction as a human-like perception-reasoning-action loop. Specifically, we design (1) a perception agent that learns contextual saliency for fine-grained distortion localization under text-image consistency cues, (2) a reasoning agent that performs human-aligned inferential diagnosis via progressive preference alignment, and (3) an action agent that adaptively plans localized inpainting guided by user preference. This design integrates perceptual evidence, linguistic reasoning, and controllable correction into a unified, self-corrective decision process. To enable fine-grained supervision and quantitative evaluation, we further construct GenBlemish-27K, a dataset of 6K T2I images with 27K annotated artifact regions across 12 categories. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Agentic Retoucher consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in perceptual quality, distortion localization and human preference alignment, establishing a new paradigm for self-corrective and perceptually reliable T2I generation.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 53 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Jan 2026.

Builds on

53 of 71 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025LaTo: Landmark-tokenized Diffusion Transformer for Fine-grained Human Face Editing30 Sep
  2. 2025PromptEnhancer: A Simple Approach to Enhance Text-to-Image Models via Chain-of-Thought Prompt Rewriting4 Sep
  3. 2025From Reflection to Perfection: Scaling Inference-Time Optimization for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Reflection Tuning22 Apr
  4. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
  5. 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
  6. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May

Other references · 47

  1. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  3. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,084
  4. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
  5. 2013Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Spacecited by 4,346
  6. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  7. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
  8. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  9. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  10. 2021SimCSE: Simple Contrastive Learning of Sentence Embeddingscited by 2,168
  11. 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,419
  12. 2023Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 939
35 more
  1. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
  2. 2018AutoAugment: Learning Augmentation Policies from Datacited by 728
  3. 2024Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for Allcited by 637
  4. 2025GLM-4.5V and GLM-4.1V-Thinking: Towards Versatile Multimodal Reasoning with Scalable Reinforcement Learningcited by 439
  5. 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 417
  6. 2023Ghost in the Minecraft: Generally Capable Agents for Open-World Environments via Large Language Models with Text-based Knowledge and Memorycited by 288
  7. 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 200
  8. 2022Scaling Up Models and Data with textttt5x and textttseqiocited by 187
  9. 2016What do different evaluation metrics tell us about saliency models?cited by 184
  10. 2016Predicting Human Eye Fixations via an LSTM-based Saliency Attentive Modelcited by 91
  11. 2025SANA-Video: Efficient Video Generation with Block Linear Diffusion Transformercited by 91
  12. 2024What Matters in Building Vision-Language-Action Models for Generalist Robotscited by 88
  13. 2024What's in the Image? A Deep-Dive into the Vision of Vision Language Modelscited by 66
  14. 2016A Deep Multi-Level Network for Saliency Predictioncited by 54
  15. 2021TranSalNet: Towards perceptually relevant visual saliency predictioncited by 44
  16. 2025Visual Agentic AI for Spatial Reasoning with a Dynamic APIcited by 42
  17. 2024RestoreAgent: Autonomous Image Restoration Agent via Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 41
  18. 2024An Intelligent Agentic System for Complex Image Restoration Problemscited by 41
  19. 2024A-Bench: Are LMMs Masters at Evaluating AI-generated Images?cited by 39
  20. 2025JarvisArt: Liberating Human Artistic Creativity via an Intelligent Photo Retouching Agentcited by 39
  21. 2024FineVQ: Fine-Grained User Generated Content Video Quality Assessmentcited by 28
  22. 2024MegaFusion: Extend Diffusion Models towards Higher-resolution Image Generation without Further Tuningcited by 25
  23. 2019How is Gaze Influenced by Image Transformations? Dataset and Modelcited by 24
  24. 2025RePrompt: Reasoning-Augmented Reprompting for Text-to-Image Generation via Reinforcement Learningcited by 22
  25. 2025Omni-RGPT: Unifying Image and Video Region-level Understanding via Token Markscited by 17
  26. 2024SynArtifact: Classifying and Alleviating Artifacts in Synthetic Images via Vision-Language Modelcited by 15
  27. 2025A Unified Agentic Framework for Evaluating Conditional Image Generationcited by 15
  28. 2024Detecting Human Artifacts from Text-to-Image Modelscited by 12
  29. 2024Is this Generated Person Existed in Real-world? Fine-grained Detecting and Calibrating Abnormal Human-bodycited by 12
  30. 2025MoA-VR: A Mixture-of-Agents System Towards All-in-One Video Restorationcited by 12
  31. 2024F-Bench: Rethinking Human Preference Evaluation Metrics for Benchmarking Face Generation, Customization, and Restorationcited by 10
  32. 2025One-Step Diffusion Transformer for Controllable Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 7
  33. 2025Fine-Grained Alignment and Noise Refinement for Compositional Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4
  34. 2025Robust ID-Specific Face Restoration via Alignment Learningcited by 3
  35. 2025Towards Explainable Partial-AIGC Image Quality Assessmentcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.

7 papers.

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Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025CRAFT: Continuous Reasoning and Agentic Feedback Tuning for Multimodal Text-to-Image Generation
  2. 2025PerTouch: VLM-Driven Agent for Personalized and Semantic Image Retouching
  3. 2026GenAgent: Scaling Text-to-Image Generation via Agentic Multimodal Reasoning
  4. 2025ImAgent: A Unified Multimodal Agent Framework for Test-Time Scalable Image Generation
  5. 2025PhotoArtAgent: Intelligent Photo Retouching with Language Model-Based Artist Agents
  6. 2026Iterative Refinement Improves Compositional Image Generation
  7. 2024DiffusionAgent: Navigating Expert Models for Agentic Image Generation
  8. 2025AgentComp: From Agentic Reasoning to Compositional Mastery in Text-to-Image Models