Controllable Image Generation

Overview

The field studies how to make image generators follow specific instructions about what an image contains and how its elements look and are arranged. Common approaches condition diffusion or flow models on layouts, boxes, sketches, masks, poses, depth maps, and reference images, or steer their attention, latent representations, noise, and activations; newer systems also plan and check images through iterative reasoning. Researchers evaluate control using compositional and spatial benchmarks as well as domain-specific tasks such as medical imaging, fashion, and remote sensing. A central challenge is meeting precise local constraints while preserving realism, identity, prompt meaning, and diversity, especially when several controls interact.

Latest papers

CardsList

216 papers22 papers in the last four weeks, up 47% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. CogBlender: Towards Continuous Cognitive Intervention in Text-to-Image Generation

    Mar 10, 2026Shengqi Dang, Yi He, Jiaying Lei +2T2I GenerationControllable Image Generation

  2. CoCo: Code as CoT for Text-to-Image Preview and Rare Concept Generation

    Mar 9, 2026Haodong Li, Chunmei Qing, Huanyu Zhang +11T2I GenerationImage Generation

  3. From "What" to "How": Constrained Reasoning for Autoregressive Image Generation

    Mar 3, 2026Ruxue Yan, Xubo Liu, Wenya Guo +3Autoregressive Image GenerationCompositional T2I Generation

  4. TerraDiT: Point-Conditioned Diffusion Transformer for Satellite Image Synthesis

    Mar 2, 2026Srikumar Sastry, Dan Cher, Brian Wei +4Diffusion TransformerControllable Image Generation

  5. SesaHand: Enhancing 3D Hand Reconstruction via Controllable Generation with Semantic and Structural Alignment

    Feb 28, 2026Zhuoran Zhao, Xianghao Kong, Linlin Yang +33D Hand ReconstructionSynthetic Data Generation

  6. SeeThrough3D: Occlusion Aware 3D Control in Text-to-Image Generation

    Feb 26, 2026Vaibhav Agrawal, Rishubh Parihar, Pradhaan Bhat +2Controllable Image GenerationOcclusion Reasoning

  7. Exploring the AI Obedience: Why is Generating a Pure Color Image Harder than CyberPunk?

    Feb 26, 2026Hongyu Li, Kuan Liu, Yuan Chen +6Image GenerationImage Generation Evaluation

  8. CoLoGen: Progressive Learning of Concept-Localization Duality for Unified Image Generation

    Feb 25, 2026YuXin Song, Yu Lu, Haoyuan Sun +6Image GenerationConditional Image Generation

  9. RL-RIG: A Generative Spatial Reasoner via Intrinsic Reflection

    Feb 23, 2026Tianyu Wang, Zhiyuan Ma, Qian Wang +3Image GenerationControllable Image Generation

  10. MICON-Bench: Benchmarking and Enhancing Multi-Image Context Image Generation in Unified Multimodal Models

    Feb 23, 2026Mingrui Wu, Hang Liu, Jiayi Ji +2Image GenerationUnified Multimodal Models

  11. Controlled Face Manipulation and Synthesis for Data Augmentation

    Feb 22, 2026Joris Kirchner, Amogh Gudi, Marian Bittner +1Synthetic Data AugmentationImage Editing

  12. Multi-Level Conditioning by Pairing Localized Text and Sketch for Fashion Image Generation

    Feb 20, 2026Ziyue Liu, Davide Talon, Federico Girella +5Image GenerationConditional Image Generation

  13. Style-Aware Gloss Control for Generative Non-Photorealistic Rendering

    Feb 18, 2026Santiago Jimenez-Navarro, Belen Masia, Ana SerranoControllable Image GenerationDisentangled Representation Learning

  14. SketchingReality: From Freehand Scene Sketches To Photorealistic Images

    Feb 16, 2026Ahmed Bourouis, Mikhail Bessmeltsev, Yulia GryaditskayaConditional Image GenerationControllable Image Generation

  15. Controlling Your Image via Simplified Vector Graphics

    Feb 16, 2026Lanqing Guo, Xi Liu, Yufei Wang +2Controllable Image GenerationDiffusion-Based Image Editing

  16. General and Efficient Steering of Diffusion Models

    Feb 11, 2026Qingsong Wang, Mikhail Belkin, Yusu WangDiffusion Model GuidanceActivation Steering

  17. Hierarchical Concept-to-Appearance Guidance for Multi-Subject Image Generation

    Feb 3, 2026Yijia Xu, Zihao Wang, Haokun Gui +1Subject-Driven Image GenerationImage Generation

  18. Dynamics-Inspired Diffusion for Foreground-Preserving Document Background Editing

    Jan 29, 2026Taewon Kang, Yu Shen, Ming C. LinDiffusion-Based Image EditingImage Editing

  19. Pro-Pose: Unpaired Full-Body Portrait Synthesis via Canonical UV Maps

    Dec 19, 2025Sandeep Mishra, Yasamin Jafarian, Andreas Lugmayr +5Identity-Preserving Image GenerationUnpaired Image-to-Image Translation

  20. CoatFusion: Controllable Material Coating in Images

    Dec 1, 2025Sagie Levy, Elad Aharoni, Matan Levy +2Image EditingControllable Image Generation

  21. CountLoop: Training-Free High-Instance Image Generation via Iterative Agent Guidance

    Aug 18, 2025Anindya Mondal, Sauradip Nag, Ayan Banerjee +3Diffusion Model GuidanceObject Counting