# ACE-LoRA: Adaptive Orthogonal Decoupling for Continual Image Editing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14948 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14948/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 47 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 May 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 47)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00190/) (2021)
- [The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08691/) (2021)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Visual Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12119/) (2022)
- [Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07569/) (2018)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Experience Replay for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11682/) (2018)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [Learning to Prompt for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08654/) (2021)
- [TIES-Merging: Resolving Interference When Merging Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01708/) (2023)
- [AdaptFormer: Adapting Vision Transformers for Scalable Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13535/) (2022)
- [Language Models are Super Mario: Absorbing Abilities from Homologous Models as a Free Lunch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03099/) (2023)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [CODA-Prompt: COntinual Decomposed Attention-based Prompting for Rehearsal-Free Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13218/) (2022)
- [LoRA+: Efficient Low Rank Adaptation of Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12354/) (2024)
- [Orthogonal Gradient Descent for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07104/) (2019)
- [Orthogonal Subspace Learning for Language Model Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14152/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [BluePixel: Toward Native 4K Agentic Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19882/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

State-of-the-art diffusion models often rely on parameter-efficient fine-tuning to perform specialized image editing tasks. However, real-world applications require continual adaptation to new tasks while preserving previously learned knowledge. Despite the practical necessity, continual learning for image editing remains largely underexplored. We propose ACE-LoRA, a dynamic regularization framework for continual image editing that effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting. ACE-LoRA leverages Adaptive Orthogonal Decoupling to identify and orthogonalize task interference, and introduces a Rank-Invariant Historical Information Compression strategy to address scalability issues in continual updates. To facilitate continual learning in image editing and provide a standardized evaluation protocol, we introduce CIE-Bench, the first comprehensive benchmark in this domain. CIE-Bench encompasses diverse and practically relevant image editing scenarios with a balanced level of difficulty to effectively expose limitations of existing models while remaining compatible with parameter-efficient fine-tuning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms existing baselines in terms of instruction fidelity, visual realism, and robustness to forgetting, establishing a strong foundation for continual learning in image editing.