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ControlLight: Towards Controllable, Consistent, and Generalizable Low-Light Enhancement

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AuthorsYufeng Yang et al.
Year2026
HF Upvotes21
arXiv2605.25569
PDFDownload
HF PageView on Hugging Face

Abstract

Existing deep learning-based low-light enhancement methods are typically trained on limited datasets with single enhancement targets, which restricts their generalization ability and controllability in real-world applications. To overcome these limitations, we propose ControlLight, a controllable, consistent, and generalizable framework for low-light enhancement. We first construct a large-scale dataset of real-world degraded images with continuous illumination-strength supervision. To further ensure consistent outputs under different control strengths, we introduce a misalignment-aware weighted flow matching loss that preserves image structure across continuous enhancement strengths. ControlLight allows users to edit real-world degraded low-light images toward satisfactory enhancement results by flexibly controlling the strength while preserving visual consistency and realism. Extensive experiments show that ControlLight achieves state-of-the-art performance against existing low-light enhancement approaches while demonstrating strong continuous controllability and generalization to real-world scenarios.


Engineering Breakdown

The Problem

Existing deep learning-based low-light enhancement methods are typically trained on limited datasets with single enhancement targets, which restricts their generalization ability and controllability in real-world applications.

The Approach

To overcome these limitations, we propose ControlLight, a controllable, consistent, and generalizable framework for low-light enhancement. To further ensure consistent outputs under different control strengths, we introduce a misalignment-aware weighted flow matching loss that preserves image structure across continuous enhancement strengths.

Key Results

Extensive experiments show that ControlLight achieves state-of-the-art performance against existing low-light enhancement approaches while demonstrating strong continuous controllability and generalization to real-world scenarios.

Research Areas

This paper contributes to the following areas of AI/ML engineering:

  • Machine learning
  • Deep learning
  • Neural networks
  • Model optimization
  • AI systems
  • Controllight

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