Learning to Kindle the StarlightYu Yuan, Jiaqi Wu, Lindong Wang et al.
Capturing highly appreciated star field images is extremely challenging due to light pollution, the requirements of specialized hardware, and the high level of photographic skills needed. Deep learning-based techniques have achieved remarkable results in low-light image enhancement (LLIE) but have not been widely applied to star field image enhancement due to the lack of training data. To address this problem, we construct the first Star Field Image Enhancement Benchmark (SFIEB) that contains 355 real-shot and 854 semi-synthetic star field images, all having the corresponding reference images. Using the presented dataset, we propose the first star field image enhancement approach, namely StarDiffusion, based on conditional denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPM). We introduce dynamic stochastic corruptions to the inputs of conditional DDPM to improve the performance and generalization of the network on our small-scale dataset. Experiments show promising results of our method, which outperforms state-of-the-art low-light image enhancement algorithms. The dataset and codes will be open-sourced.
Ghost-free High Dynamic Range Imaging via Hybrid CNN-Transformer and Structure TensorYu Yuan, Jiaqi Wu, Zhongliang Jing et al.
Eliminating ghosting artifacts due to moving objects is a challenging problem in high dynamic range (HDR) imaging. In this letter, we present a hybrid model consisting of a convolutional encoder and a Transformer decoder to generate ghost-free HDR images. In the encoder, a context aggregation network and non-local attention block are adopted to optimize multi-scale features and capture both global and local dependencies of multiple low dynamic range (LDR) images. The decoder based on Swin Transformer is utilized to improve the reconstruction capability of the proposed model. Motivated by the phenomenal difference between the presence and absence of artifacts under the field of structure tensor (ST), we integrate the ST information of LDR images as auxiliary inputs of the network and use ST loss to further constrain artifacts. Different from previous approaches, our network is capable of processing an arbitrary number of input LDR images. Qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by comparing it with existing state-of-the-art HDR deghosting models. Codes are available at https://github.com/pandayuanyu/HSTHdr.
SSR-Encoder: Encoding Selective Subject Representation for Subject-Driven GenerationYuxuan Zhang, Yiren Song, Jiaming Liu et al.
Recent advancements in subject-driven image generation have led to zero-shot generation, yet precise selection and focus on crucial subject representations remain challenging. Addressing this, we introduce the SSR-Encoder, a novel architecture designed for selectively capturing any subject from single or multiple reference images. It responds to various query modalities including text and masks, without necessitating test-time fine-tuning. The SSR-Encoder combines a Token-to-Patch Aligner that aligns query inputs with image patches and a Detail-Preserving Subject Encoder for extracting and preserving fine features of the subjects, thereby generating subject embeddings. These embeddings, used in conjunction with original text embeddings, condition the generation process. Characterized by its model generalizability and efficiency, the SSR-Encoder adapts to a range of custom models and control modules. Enhanced by the Embedding Consistency Regularization Loss for improved training, our extensive experiments demonstrate its effectiveness in versatile and high-quality image generation, indicating its broad applicability. Project page: https://ssr-encoder.github.io