DiffRetouch: Using Diffusion to Retouch on the Shoulder of Experts

TL;DR

DiffRetouch leverages diffusion models to generate diverse, style-rich image retouching results, allowing user customization and addressing limitations of deterministic approaches.

Contribution

Introduces a diffusion-based image retouching method that captures diverse styles, offers adjustable attributes, and incorporates techniques to reduce texture distortion and control insensitivity.

Findings

Outperforms existing methods in visual appeal and diversity

Enables user-controlled retouching through adjustable attributes

Demonstrates superior sample diversity and retouching quality

Abstract

Image retouching aims to enhance the visual quality of photos. Considering the different aesthetic preferences of users, the target of retouching is subjective. However, current retouching methods mostly adopt deterministic models, which not only neglects the style diversity in the expert-retouched results and tends to learn an average style during training, but also lacks sample diversity during inference. In this paper, we propose a diffusion-based method, named DiffRetouch. Thanks to the excellent distribution modeling ability of diffusion, our method can capture the complex fine-retouched distribution covering various visual-pleasing styles in the training data. Moreover, four image attributes are made adjustable to provide a user-friendly editing mechanism. By adjusting these attributes in specified ranges, users are allowed to customize preferred styles within the learned fine-retouched distribution. Additionally, the affine bilateral grid and contrastive learning scheme are introduced to handle the problem of texture distortion and control insensitivity respectively. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the superior performance of our method on visually appealing and sample diversity. The code will be made available to the community.