# Component-Aware Sketch-to-Image Generation Using Self-Attention Encoding and Coordinate-Preserving Fusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09484 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09484/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11585/) (2017)
- [Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00951/) (2020)
- [MaskGAN: Towards Diverse and Interactive Facial Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11922/) (2019)
- [Recovering Realistic Texture in Image Super-resolution by Deep Spatial Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02815/) (2018)
- [Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04061/) (2021)
- [A Note on the Inception Score](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01973/) (2018)
- [DCFace: Synthetic Face Generation with Dual Condition Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07060/) (2023)
- [Distribution Matching Losses Can Hallucinate Features in Medical Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08841/) (2018)
- [SketchyGAN: Towards Diverse and Realistic Sketch to Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02753/) (2018)
- [Sketch Less for More: On-the-Fly Fine-Grained Sketch Based Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10310/) (2020)
- [A Study on the Evaluation of Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10935/) (2022)
- [It's All About Your Sketch: Democratising Sketch Control in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07234/) (2024)
- [LinesToFacePhoto: Face Photo Generation from Lines with Conditional Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08914/) (2019)
- [Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Image: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.7799/) (2014)
- [Improving Sketch Colorization using Adversarial Segmentation Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08590/) (2023)
- [Locally-Focused Face Representation for Sketch-to-Image Generation Using Noise-Induced Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19005/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Translating freehand sketches into photorealistic images remains a fundamental challenge in image synthesis, particularly due to the abstract, sparse, and stylistically diverse nature of sketches. Existing approaches, including GAN-based and diffusion-based models, often struggle to reconstruct fine-grained details, maintain spatial alignment, or adapt across different sketch domains. In this paper, we propose a component-aware, self-refining framework for sketch-to-image generation that addresses these challenges through a novel two-stage architecture. A Self-Attention-based Autoencoder Network (SA2N) first captures localised semantic and structural features from component-wise sketch regions, while a Coordinate-Preserving Gated Fusion (CGF) module integrates these into a coherent spatial layout. Finally, a Spatially Adaptive Refinement Revisor (SARR), built on a modified StyleGAN2 backbone, enhances realism and consistency through iterative refinement guided by spatial context. Extensive experiments across both facial (CelebAMask-HQ, CUFSF) and non-facial (Sketchy, ChairsV2, ShoesV2) datasets demonstrate the robustness and generalizability of our method. The proposed framework consistently outperforms state-of-the-art GAN and diffusion models, achieving significant gains in image fidelity, semantic accuracy, and perceptual quality. On CelebAMask-HQ, our model improves over prior methods by 21% (FID), 58% (IS), 41% (KID), and 20% (SSIM). These results, along with higher efficiency and visual coherence across diverse domains, position our approach as a strong candidate for applications in forensics, digital art restoration, and general sketch-based image synthesis.