# ChordEdit: One-Step Low-Energy Transport for Image Editing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.19083 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19083/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (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)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08465/) (2023)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03027/) (2023)
- [Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02279/) (2023)
- [InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06380/) (2023)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [EDICT: Exact Diffusion Inversion via Coupled Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12446/) (2022)
- [An Edit Friendly DDPM Noise Space: Inversion and Manipulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06140/) (2023)
- [FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08629/) (2024)
- [Negative-prompt Inversion: Fast Image Inversion for Editing with Text-guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16807/) (2023)
- [Inversion-Free Image Editing with Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04965/) (2023)
- [Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05414/) (2023)
- [Effective Real Image Editing with Accelerated Iterative Diffusion Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04907/) (2023)
- [TurboEdit: Text-Based Image Editing Using Few-Step Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00735/) (2024)
- [SwiftBrush v2: Make Your One-step Diffusion Model Better Than Its Teacher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14176/) (2024)
- [SwiftEdit: Lightning Fast Text-Guided Image Editing via One-Step Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04301/) (2024)
- [Source Prompt Disentangled Inversion for Boosting Image Editability with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11105/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [COMBINER: Composed Image Retrieval Guided by Attribute-based Neighbor Relations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04604/) (2026)
- [WhereEdit: Mask-aware Local Latent Editing for One-Step Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20883/) (2026)
- [TransSplat: Unbalanced Semantic Transport for Language-Driven 3DGS Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19571/) (2026)
- [CoCo-SAM3: Harnessing Concept Conflict in Open-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19648/) (2026)
- [Modality-Decoupled Online Recursive Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20273/) (2026)
- [IMAGINE: Adaptive Schema-Imagery Enhanced Composition for Composed Video Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08144/) (2026)
- [Rethinking One-Step Image Editing through ChordEdit: Reproduction, Simplification, and New Insights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14042/) (2026)
- [Bridging the Manifold Gap: Riemannian Residual Line Search for One-Step Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24844/) (2026)
- [Neutral-Reference Prompting for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15615/) (2026)
- [VEDAL: Variational Error-Driven Asynchronous Learning for 3D Gaussian Splatting Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02346/) (2026)
- [ChordVideo: One-Step, Training-Free, Temporally Consistent Video Editing via Low-Energy Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00769/) (2026)
- [TurboClear: One-Step Object-Effect Removal via Region-Calibrated Distribution Matching and Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01288/) (2026)
- [Diffusion Image Editing via Asynchronous Token Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09322/) (2026)
- [SwiftExplorer: Training-free Diffusion Model Alignment with Swift Diversity Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06651/) (2026)
- [Refinement Is Inherently Editable: Training-Free Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Generative Refinement Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20633/) (2026)
- [Beyond Temporal Smoothing: Spatial Energy Budgets Stabilize One-Step Diffusion Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32841/) (2026)
- [Constrained Edit Fields for Training-Free Flow Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33735/) (2026)
- [VDOT++: Unified Few-Step Video Generation via Unbalanced Optimal Transport Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03221/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The advent of one-step text-to-image (T2I) models offers unprecedented synthesis speed. However, their application to text-guided image editing remains severely hampered, as forcing existing training-free editors into a single inference step fails. This failure manifests as severe object distortion and a critical loss of consistency in non-edited regions, resulting from the high-energy, erratic trajectories produced by naive vector arithmetic on the models' structured fields. To address this problem, we introduce ChordEdit, a model agnostic, training-free, and inversion-free method that facilitates high-fidelity one-step editing. We recast editing as a transport problem between the source and target distributions defined by the source and target text prompts. Leveraging dynamic optimal transport theory, we derive a principled, low-energy control strategy. This strategy yields a smoothed, variance-reduced editing field that is inherently stable, facilitating the field to be traversed in a single, large integration step. A theoretically grounded and experimentally validated approach allows ChordEdit to deliver fast, lightweight and precise edits, finally achieving true real-time editing on these challenging models.