# ExpressEdit: Fast Editing of Stylized Facial Expressions with Diffusion Models in Photoshop

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03448 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03448/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 39 of its 98 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [Design Guidelines for Prompt Engineering Text-to-Image Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06977/) (2021)
- [DragonDiffusion: Enabling Drag-style Manipulation on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02421/) (2023)
- [Hyper-SD: Trajectory Segmented Consistency Model for Efficient Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13686/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [PromptCharm: Text-to-Image Generation through Multi-modal Prompting and Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04014/) (2024)
- [Drag Your Noise: Interactive Point-based Editing via Diffusion Semantic Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01050/) (2024)
- [Dynamic Prompt Optimizing for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04095/) (2024)
- [The Effects of Generative AI on Design Fixation and Divergent Thinking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11164/) (2024)
- [Qwen-Image-Layered: Towards Inherent Editability via Layer Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15603/) (2025)
- [SynthID-Image: Image watermarking at internet scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09263/) (2025)
- [Flaw or Artifact? Rethinking Prompt Sensitivity in Evaluating LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01790/) (2025)
- [FreeDrag: Feature Dragging for Reliable Point-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04684/) (2023)
- [Is CLIP ideal? No. Can we fix it? Yes!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08723/) (2025)
- [Agent Banana: High-Fidelity Image Editing with Agentic Thinking and Tooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09084/) (2026)
- [Generative AI for Cel-Animation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06250/) (2025)
- [APISR: Anime Production Inspired Real-World Anime Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01598/) (2024)
- [4D Facial Expression Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16611/) (2023)
- [3DiFACE: Diffusion-based Speech-driven 3D Facial Animation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00870/) (2023)
- [Your other Left! Vision-Language Models Fail to Identify Relative Positions in Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00549/) (2025)
- [EmoTalker: Emotionally Editable Talking Face Generation via Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08049/) (2024)
- [Creative and Context-Aware Translation of East Asian Idioms with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00988/) (2024)
- [OKBench: Democratizing LLM Evaluation with Fully Automated, On-Demand, Open Knowledge Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08598/) (2025)
- [Prompting for products: Investigating design space exploration strategies for text-to-image generative models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03946/) (2024)
- [What's Next? Exploring Utilization, Challenges, and Future Directions of AI-Generated Image Tools in Graphic Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13436/) (2024)
- [Illustrious: an Open Advanced Illustration Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19946/) (2024)
- [EmojiDiff: Advanced Facial Expression Control with High Identity Preservation in Portrait Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01254/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Facial expressions of characters are a vital component of visual storytelling. While current AI image editing models hold promise for assisting artists in the task of stylized expression editing, these models introduce global noise and pixel drift into the edited image, preventing the integration of these models into professional image editing software and workflows. To bridge this gap, we introduce ExpressEdit, a fully open-source Photoshop plugin that is free from common artifacts of proprietary image editing models and robustly synergizes with native Photoshop operations such as Liquify. ExpressEdit seamlessly edits an expression within 3 seconds on a single consumer-grade GPU, significantly faster than popular proprietary models. Moreover, to support the generation of diverse expressions according to different narrative needs, we compile a comprehensive expression database of 135 expression tags enriched with example stories and images designed for retrieval-augmented generation. We open source the code and dataset to facilitate future research and artistic exploration.