mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

In-Token Learning for High-Fidelity Image Restoration via Diffusion Transformers

arXiv 2609.33523 ↗First posted 27 Sep 2026cs.CVcited by 0

On the map: Diffusion models → Inverse problems and image restoration

Abstract (arXiv)

We present In-Token Learning, an image restoration framework that adapts a pretrained diffusion transformer using conditional rectified flow matching. Clean targets paired with degraded inputs supervise transport from Gaussian noise to restored images. Spatially aligned degraded-image tokens are fused with evolving latent tokens along the channel dimension, preserving the image-token count at a given resolution. Direct Low-Quality Guidance (DLG) combines frozen degraded-image embeddings with a fixed task prompt through the native conditioning pathway, without a trainable ControlNet-style branch or image captioning. We evaluate super-resolution and denoising on DIV2K, LSDIR, FFHQ, RealLQ250, and RealPhoto60, and automatic colorization on DIV2K and LSDIR. The tasks use separately trained checkpoints under the same framework. Results show competitive fidelity and perceptual quality under the evaluated protocols, with weaker generalization on RealLQ250. We report full-image QHD (2560×1440) inference and a tiled 12K restoration demonstration of Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Attention cost still increases with resolution. This technical report preserves the early broader study underlying Fill2SR, which subsequently developed the real-world super-resolution direction.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 30 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2026.

Builds on

30 of 40 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024FaithDiff: Unleashing Diffusion Priors for Faithful Image Super-resolution27 Nov
  2. 2024DreamClear: High-Capacity Real-World Image Restoration with Privacy-Safe Dataset Curation24 Oct
  3. 2023SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolution27 Nov
  4. 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolution11 May

Other references · 26

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  2. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  4. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,869
  5. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  6. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 6,013
  7. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  8. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,503
  9. 2021RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embeddingcited by 4,703
  10. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
  11. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  12. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
14 more
  1. 2021Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinementcited by 1,511
  2. 2021MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformercited by 1,081
  3. 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 1,006
  4. 2022Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Imagescited by 991
  5. 2021Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Datacited by 970
  6. 2017The Perception-Distortion Tradeoffcited by 587
  7. 2021Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolutioncited by 529
  8. 2022MANIQA: Multi-dimension Attention Network for No-Reference Image Quality Assessmentcited by 522
  9. 2024Scaling Up to Excellence: Practicing Model Scaling for Photo-Realistic Image Restoration In the Wildcited by 286
  10. 2024In-Context LoRA for Diffusion Transformerscited by 158
  11. 2020Instance-aware Image Colorizationcited by 76
  12. 2022DDColor: Towards Photo-Realistic Image Colorization via Dual Decoderscited by 36
  13. 2022BigColor: Colorization using a Generative Color Prior for Natural Imagescited by 34
  14. 2025Acquire and then Adapt: Squeezing out Text-to-Image Model for Image Restorationcited by 8

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  1. 2026Your Pre-trained Diffusion Model Secretly Knows Restoration
  2. 2026Efficient One-Step Diffusion Restoration Model with Compact Token Compression and Linear Attention
  3. 2026Degradation-Aware and Structure-Preserving Diffusion for Real-World Image Super-Resolution
  4. 2025RestoRect: Degraded Image Restoration via Latent Rectified Flow & Feature Distillation
  5. 2026PixRestore: Unified Image Restoration via Pixel Diffusion Transformer
  6. 2026Tuning Real-World Image Restoration at Inference: A Test-Time Scaling Paradigm for Flow Matching Models
  7. 2025LucidFlux: Caption-Free Photo-Realistic Image Restoration via a Large-Scale Diffusion Transformer
  8. 2026Image Tokenizers Should Be Trained Between Images