mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Instruction-based Image Editing with Planning, Reasoning, and Generation

arXiv 2602.22624 ↗First posted 26 Feb 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 4

On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Editing images via instruction provides a natural way to generate interactive content, but it is a big challenge due to the higher requirement of scene understanding and generation. Prior work utilizes a chain of large language models, object segmentation models, and editing models for this task. However, the understanding models provide only a single modality ability, restricting the editing quality. We aim to bridge understanding and generation via a new multi-modality model that provides the intelligent abilities to instruction-based image editing models for more complex cases. To achieve this goal, we individually separate the instruction editing task with the multi-modality chain of thought prompts, i.e., Chain-of-Thought (CoT) planning, editing region reasoning, and editing. For Chain-of-Thought planning, the large language model could reason the appropriate sub-prompts considering the instruction provided and the ability of the editing network. For editing region reasoning, we train an instruction-based editing region generation network with a multi-modal large language model. Finally, a hint-guided instruction-based editing network is proposed for editing image generations based on the sizeable text-to-image diffusion model to accept the hints for generation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method has competitive editing abilities on complex real-world images.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 38 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2026.

Builds on

38 of 42 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023LISA: Reasoning Segmentation via Large Language Model1 Aug
  2. 2023Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models2 Feb

Other references · 36

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  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. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  5. 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
  6. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
  7. 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,893
  8. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  9. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,362
  10. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  11. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generationcited by 3,286
  12. 2023Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 3,274
24 more
  1. 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,689
  2. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
  3. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  4. 2023IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1,439
  5. 2023T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1,339
  6. 2022Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusioncited by 1,099
  7. 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 615
  8. 2024SEED-X: Multimodal Models with Unified Multi-granularity Comprehension and Generationcited by 328
  9. 2023MultiModal-GPT: A Vision and Language Model for Dialogue with Humanscited by 255
  10. 2024Mastering Text-to-Image Diffusion: Recaptioning, Planning, and Generating with Multimodal LLMscited by 224
  11. 2024HQ-Edit: A High-Quality Dataset for Instruction-based Image Editingcited by 191
  12. 2023Guiding Instruction-based Image Editing via Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 182
  13. 2023SmartEdit: Exploring Complex Instruction-based Image Editing with Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 174
  14. 2023HIVE: Harnessing Human Feedback for Instructional Visual Editingcited by 172
  15. 2023InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Taskscited by 162
  16. 2023AssistGPT: A General Multi-modal Assistant that can Plan, Execute, Inspect, and Learncited by 97
  17. 2023Inst-Inpaint: Instructing to Remove Objects with Diffusion Modelscited by 66
  18. 2023InstructEdit: Improving Automatic Masks for Diffusion-based Image Editing With User Instructionscited by 64
  19. 2023Inserting Anybody in Diffusion Models via Celeb Basiscited by 63
  20. 2023Focus on Your Instruction: Fine-grained and Multi-instruction Image Editing by Attention Modulationcited by 61
  21. 2023Watch Your Steps: Local Image and Scene Editing by Text Instructionscited by 50
  22. 2023Visual Instruction Inversion: Image Editing via Visual Promptingcited by 26
  23. 2023Learning to Follow Object-Centric Image Editing Instructions Faithfullycited by 12
  24. 2023VisorGPT: Learning Visual Prior via Generative Pre-Trainingcited by 11

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Reasoning to Edit: Hypothetical Instruction-Based Image Editing with Visual Reasoning
  2. 2025Lego-Edit: A General Image Editing Framework with Model-Level Bricks and MLLM Builder
  3. 2025EditThinker: Unlocking Iterative Reasoning for Any Image Editor
  4. 2024Image Inpainting Models are Effective Tools for Instruction-guided Image Editing
  5. 2026Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applications
  6. 2025ReasonEdit: Towards Reasoning-Enhanced Image Editing Models
  7. 2025DreamOmni2: Multimodal Instruction-based Editing and Generation
  8. 2026Meta-CoT: Enhancing Granularity and Generalization in Image Editing