Angle Domain Guidance: Latent Diffusion Requires Rotation Rather Than Extrapolation
Cheng Jin, Zhenyu Xiao, Chutao Liu, Yuantao Gu
Abstract
Classifier-free guidance (CFG) has emerged as a pivotal advancement in text-to-image latent diffusion models, establishing itself as a cornerstone technique for achieving high-quality image synthesis. However, under high guidance weights, where text-image alignment is significantly enhanced, CFG also leads to pronounced color distortions in the generated images. We identify that these distortions stem from the amplification of sample norms in the latent space. We present a theoretical framework that elucidates the mechanisms of norm amplification and anomalous diffusion phenomena induced by classifierfree guidance. Leveraging our theoretical insights and the latent space structure, we propose an Angle Domain Guidance (ADG) algorithm. ADG constrains magnitude variations while optimizing angular alignment, thereby mitigating color distortions while preserving the enhanced text-image alignment achieved at higher guidance weights. Experimental results demonstrate that ADG significantly outperforms existing methods, generating images that not only maintain superior text alignment but also exhibit improved color fidelity and better alignment with human perceptual preferences.
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Cited by top-tier papers2
- Stochastic Self-Guidance for Training-Free Enhancement of Diffusion ModelsChubin Chen, Jiashu Zhu, Xiaokun Feng, Nisha Huang et al.ICLR 2026 · 44 citations
- Stage-wise Dynamics of Classifier-Free Guidance in Diffusion ModelsCheng Jin, Qitan Shi, Yuantao GuICLR 2026 · 13 citations
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- Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language SupervisionAlec Radford, Jong Wook Kim, Chris Hallacy, Aditya Ramesh et al.ICML 2021 · 47,906 citations
- Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic ModelsJonathan Ho, Ajay Jain, Pieter AbbeelNeurIPS 2020 · 35,902 citations
- High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion ModelsRobin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Dominik Lorenz, Patrick Esser et al.CVPR 2022 · 13,123 citations
- Denoising Diffusion Implicit ModelsJiaming Song, Chenlin Meng, Stefano ErmonICLR 2021 · 11,743 citations
- Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion ModelsLvmin Zhang, Anyi Rao, Maneesh AgrawalaICCV 2023 · 6,759 citations
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