Shadow Removal

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Overview

Shadow removal separates illumination changes caused by shadows from the underlying scene, then reconstructs a consistent appearance without altering objects or texture. Common approaches include supervised restoration networks trained on paired images, physical and geometric guidance for handling illumination and shadow boundaries, and pretrained diffusion models adapted for image or video editing. Methods are tested on benchmarks such as ISTD+, SRD, and WSRD+, as well as remote-sensing and real-world imagery where paired annotations can be scarce. A central challenge is balancing convincing shadow removal with content and color preservation, especially across domains and at soft penumbra boundaries.

Latest papers

CardsList

14 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Shadow Feature Refinement Network: Progressive Feature Refinement based on Knowledge Distillation for Effective Shadow Removal

    Oct 4, 2026Donghyun Han, Byoung-Dai LeeShadow Removal

    Kyonggi University, Korea

  2. ODDR: One-Step Deshadow Diffusion via Reward Guidance

    Oct 1, 2026Junseong Shin, Kijun Kim, Minseong Kim +2Synthetic-to-Real Domain AdaptationDiffusion Models for Image Restoration

    Department of Artificial Intelligence, Hanyang University · AX Future Technology Institute, KT · Department of Computer Science, Hanyang University

  3. After a Decade: Bringing Shadow Removal into the Real World with Agentic Training Data

    Sep 29, 2026Shilin Hu, Jingyi Xu, Dimitris Samaras +1Synthetic Data AugmentationShadow Removal

    Department of Computer Science Stony Brook University · Department of Computer Science University of North Carolina at Charlotte

  4. Consistency as Regularization for Unsupervised Shadow Removal

    Sep 1, 2026Anh-Kiet Duong, Petra Gomez-Krämer, Jean-Michel CarozzaShadow Removal

    L3i Laboratory, La Rochelle University, 17042 La Rochelle Cedex 1, France · LIENSs Laboratory, La Rochelle University, 17042 La Rochelle Cedex 1, France

  5. Domain-Grounded Candidate Selection for Agentic Image Editing: A Shadow Removal Case

    Aug 6, 2026Shilin Hu, Jingyi Xu, Dimitris Samaras +1Shadow RemovalPhysics-Guided Image Restoration

    Stony Brook University, Stony Brook NY 11794, USA · UNC Charlotte, Charlotte NC 28223, USA

  6. BRIC-Net: Boundary-Reliable Illumination-Color Interaction for Remote Sensing Image Deshadowing

    Aug 1, 2026Wei Lu, Yi Liu, Si-BaoShadow RemovalImage Enhancement

    MOE Key Lab of ICSP, IMIS Lab of Anhui, Anhui Provincial Key Lab of Multimodal Cognitive Computation, Zenmorn-AHU AI Joint Lab, School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China

  7. FreeShadow: Training-Free Shadow Removal via Illumination Transfer and Selective Content Preservation in Diffusion Models

    Jul 29, 2026Yinan Wang, Yan Huang, Yong Xu +1Diffusion Models for Image RestorationShadow Removal

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China · Pazhou Lab, Guangzhou 510005, China · Polytech Nantes, Universit´e de Nantes, Nantes 44306, France

  8. WildShadowRemover: In-the-Wild Video Shadow Removal via Detail-Preserving Video Diffusion Models

    Jul 28, 2026Jiamin Xu, Cong Wang, Zheng Dong +4Shadow RemovalVideo Diffusion Models

    Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China · Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China · State Key Laboratory of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

  9. deSEO: Physics-Aware Dataset Creation for High-Resolution Satellite Image Shadow Removal

    May 5, 2026Lorenzo Beltrame, Jules Salzinger, Filip Svoboda +4Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingShadow Removal

    Austrian Institute of Technology, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria · Technical University of Munich (TUM), TUM School of Engineering and Design, Chair of Remote Sensing Technology, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany · University of Cambridge, William Gates Building, 15 JJ Thomson Ave., CB3 0FD Cambridge, UK +3

  10. SARU: A Shadow-Aware and Removal Unified Framework for Remote Sensing Images with New Benchmarks

    Apr 28, 2026Zi-Yang Bo, Wei Lu, Hongruixuan Chen +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingShadow Removal

    MOE Key Lab of ICSP, Anhui Provincial Key Lab of Multimodal Cognitive Computation, IMIS Lab of Anhui Province, School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei, China · Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, 277-8561, Japan

  11. CFSR: Geometry-Conditioned Shadow Removal via Physical Disentanglement

    Apr 20, 2026Pan Wang, Yihao Hu, Xiujin Liu +1Shadow RemovalImage Restoration

    University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, China · Ant Group Hangzhou, China · University of Michigan - Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, USA +1

  12. Winner of CVPR2026 NTIRE Challenge on Image Shadow Removal: Semantic and Geometric Guidance for Shadow Removal via Cascaded Refinement

    Apr 17, 2026Lorenzo Beltrame, Jules Salzinger, Filip Svoboda +4Shadow RemovalImage Restoration

    1Austrian Institute of Technology · 2Technical University of Munich · University of Cambridge +1

  13. AeroDeshadow: Physics-Guided Shadow Synthesis and Penumbra-Aware Deshadowing for Aerospace Imagery

    Apr 17, 2026Wei Lu, Zi-Yang Bo, Fei-Fei Sang +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingSynthetic Data Augmentation

    MOE Key Laboratory of ICSP, IMIS Laboratory of Anhui, Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Multimodal Cognitive Computation, Zenmorn-AHU AI Joint Laboratory, School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China · School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

  14. OmniLight: One Model to Rule All Lighting Conditions

    Apr 16, 2026Youngjin Oh, Junyoung Park, Junhyeong Kwon +1Shadow RemovalImage Enhancement

    Department of ECE, INMC, Seoul National University, South Korea · IPAI, Seoul National University, South Korea