In the ever-evolving world of AI technology, we come across powerful tools that have revolutionized the way we make digital art. Among these tools, AI face restorers like Codeformer and GFPGAN stand out as exceptional solutions to address annoying imperfections in both AI-generated faces and old real-world photographs. Both tools aim to repair facial imperfections, but they differ in their approaches and capabilities.

In this blog post, I'll analyze and compare these AI face restoration tools, focusing on their use cases, architecture, run times, popularity, and inputs/outputs. Additionally, I will introduce Replicate Codex, an invaluable resource for discovering AI models that cater to a variety of creative needs. I'll show you how you can use Replicate Codex to find similar models that might also help solve your restoration challenges. Let's begin!

Introduction to Codeformer and GFPGAN

Codeformer, by sczhou, is a face restoration tool designed to repair facial imperfections, such as those generated by Stable Diffusion. It is often used after creating an image using Stable Diffusion to make the face look better.

Codeformer is a robust face restoration algorithm for old photos / AI-generated faces

On the other hand, GFPGAN, developed by tencentarc, bills itself as a practical face restoration algorithm for old photos or AI-generated faces.

An example restoration of an old photo by GFPGAN

Users often run Stable Diffusion images first through Codeformer and then through GFPGAN or vice versa for improved results. Sometimes, users even use both models to clean up their images.

Use Cases and Capabilities

Codeformer's use cases

Codeformer is a cutting-edge AI model designed for robust blind face restoration, particularly in cases where the input images are of very low quality. By employing a learned discrete codebook prior in a small proxy space, it greatly reduces the uncertainty and ambiguity of the restoration mapping process. Codeformer casts blind face restoration as a code prediction task, providing rich visual atoms to generate high-quality faces even when the inputs are severely degraded.

The CodeFormer model utilizes a Transformer-based prediction network to model the global composition and context of low-quality faces for code prediction. This enables the discovery of natural faces that closely approximate the target faces, regardless of the degradation level of the input. A controllable feature transformation module is also included, allowing for a flexible trade-off between fidelity and quality.

Thanks to the expressive codebook prior and global modeling, Codeformer achieves superior performance in both quality and fidelity compared to the state of the art, demonstrating robustness to degradation.

GFPGAN's use cases

GFPGAN is an advanced AI model that aims to tackle real-world blind face restoration challenges by leveraging the rich and diverse priors encapsulated in a pre-trained face GAN. The Generative Facial Prior (GFP) is incorporated into the face restoration process through novel channel-split spatial feature transform layers. This enables GFPGAN to achieve a good balance between realness and fidelity, even when the input images are of low quality.

With the powerful generative facial prior and delicate design elements, GFP-GAN can jointly restore facial details and enhance colors in a single forward pass. This approach is more efficient than GAN inversion methods that require expensive image-specific optimization at inference.

Extensive experiments show that GFPGAN outperforms prior art on both synthetic and real-world datasets, making it a powerful tool for blind face restoration tasks.

Architectural Design

Codeformer's architecture

The architectural design of Codeformer revolves around a Transformer-based prediction network that models the global composition and context of low-quality faces for code prediction. This helps in discovering natural faces that closely approximate the target faces, even with severely degraded inputs. Additionally, a controllable feature transformation module is proposed to enhance the adaptiveness for different degradations and allow a flexible trade-off between fidelity and quality.

GFPGAN's architecture

GFPGAN's architecture is designed to leverage the rich and diverse priors found in a pre-trained face GAN for blind face restoration. This is achieved through the incorporation of Generative Facial Prior (GFP) into the restoration process via novel channel-split spatial feature transform layers. These layers enable GFPGAN to strike a balance between realness and fidelity while restoring facial details and enhancing colors in just a single forward pass.

Run Times, Performance, and Popularity

In terms of run times, GFPGAN is slightly faster, averaging 6 seconds for completion, while Codeformer takes around 10 seconds on average. Both models' run time average was calculated on the Nvidia T4 GPU by Replicate. Their performance depends on the hardware capabilities of the system running them.

GFPGAN enjoys greater popularity, boasting 19,750,908 runs and a model rank of 3 on Replicate Codex. Codeformer, however, has 9,585,877 runs, a model rank of 6. You can view the models' data and compare them to comparable Image-to-Image models here.

What does it all mean?

By understanding the architectural designs and capabilities of both Codeformer and GFPGAN, users can make informed decisions about which model best suits their specific needs for face restoration tasks.

Codeformer's strong suit lies in its robustness to handle severely degraded inputs, making it an ideal choice when dealing with low-quality images that require significant restoration. Its Transformer-based prediction network and controllable feature transformation module provide flexibility, enabling users to achieve the desired balance between fidelity and quality.

On the other hand, GFPGAN is tailored to handle real-world blind face restoration challenges, leveraging the Generative Facial Prior encapsulated in a pre-trained face GAN. Its novel channel-split spatial feature transform layers help it to achieve a balance between realness and fidelity. Furthermore, GFPGAN's ability to restore facial details and enhance colors in a single forward pass makes it an efficient and powerful solution for face restoration tasks.

Discovering Alternative AI Models with Replicate Codex

Replicate Codex is a fantastic resource for discovering AI models that cater to various creative needs, including image generation, image-to-image conversion, and much more. It's a fully searchable, filterable, tagged database of all the models on Replicate, and also allows you to compare models and sort by price or explore by creator. It's free, and it also has a digest email that will alert you when new models come out so you can try them.

If you're interested in finding similar models to Codeformer and GFPGAN, follow these steps:

Step 1: Visit Replicate Codex

Head over to Replicate Codex to begin your search for similar models.

Step 2: Use the Search Bar

Use the search bar at the top of the page to search for models with specific keywords, such as "face restoration" or "image enhancement." This will show you a list of models related to your search query.

Exploring model popularity and cost on Replicate Codex

Step 3: Filter the Results

On the left side of the search results page, you'll find several filters that can help you narrow down the list of models. You can filter and sort models by type (Image-to-Image, Text-to-Image, etc.), cost, popularity, or even specific creators.

By applying these filters, you can find the models that best suit your specific needs and preferences. For example, if you're looking for an image restoration model that's the cheapest or most popular, you can just search and then sort by the relevant metric.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Codeformer and GFPGAN offer unique capabilities in the realm of face restoration.

Codeformer excels in handling severely degraded inputs, making it ideal for low-quality images requiring substantial restoration. Its Transformer-based prediction network and controllable feature transformation module offer flexibility in achieving the desired balance between fidelity and quality.

Conversely, GFPGAN is designed to address real-world blind face restoration challenges by leveraging the Generative Facial Prior within a pre-trained face GAN. Its innovative channel-split spatial feature transform layers facilitate a balance between realness and fidelity, while its ability to restore facial details and enhance colors in a single forward pass makes it an efficient and powerful solution for face restoration tasks.

In plain English: Codeformer works well with really bad quality images and helps you balance how real and clear the fixed face should look. On the other hand, GFPGAN is made for fixing faces in real-life situations and uses special technology to make faces look both realistic and clear. Plus, GFPGAN can fix the face and improve colors all in one step, making it a strong and efficient choice for face restoration tasks.

Now that you know the differences between Codeformer and GFPGAN, you can decide which model is best for your face restoration needs. You can also check out the complete guides to using Codeformer and GFPGAN for further information. Thanks for reading. Good luck!

Subscribe or follow me on Twitter for more content like this!