UltraStyle: Best of both worlds in style and content for style transfer

Achieving an ideal balance between style fidelity and content preservation remains a critical challenge in style transfer. In this work, we present UltraStyle, a new framework that reconciles these two objectives through a reformulation of the learning process. Unlike prior LoRA-based methods that rely on noise prediction, UltraStyle adopts a reconstruction-centered optimization paradigm, allowing the diffusion model to better retain global structural features while faithfully reproducing stylistic patterns. We propose a dual-phase training method that first isolates content representations before specializing style learning, minimizing cross-interference. To further refine detail preservation without sacrificing structure, we introduce a progressive loss transition strategy during training. Moreover, we develop a flexible inference control mechanism that enables smooth adjustment of content and style influences in the generation phase. Experimental results demonstrate that UltraStyle consistently delivers stylized outputs with superior structural integrity and stylistic authenticity, significantly mitigating issues such as content drift and feature entanglement found in existing methods.

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Publication Details

Journal
PLoS ONE
Published
2026-04-03
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0346260
Primary Topic
Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

UltraStyle: Best of both worlds in style and content for style transfer

Fanju Zeng, Yongqian Tan
PLoS ONE
Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis
article

UltraStyle: Best of both worlds in style and content for style transfer

Fanju Zeng, Yongqian Tan
article en

Abstract

Achieving an ideal balance between style fidelity and content preservation remains a critical challenge in style transfer. In this work, we present UltraStyle, a new framework that reconciles these two objectives through a reformulation of the learning process. Unlike prior LoRA-based methods that rely on noise prediction, UltraStyle adopts a reconstruction-centered optimization paradigm, allowing the diffusion model to better retain global structural features while faithfully reproducing stylistic patterns. We propose a dual-phase training method that first isolates content representations before specializing style learning, minimizing cross-interference. To further refine detail preservation without sacrificing structure, we introduce a progressive loss transition strategy during training. Moreover, we develop a flexible inference control mechanism that enables smooth adjustment of content and style influences in the generation phase. Experimental results demonstrate that UltraStyle consistently delivers stylized outputs with superior structural integrity and stylistic authenticity, significantly mitigating issues such as content drift and feature entanglement found in existing methods.

PLoS ONEVol. 21(4)
Kaili University (CN)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 34%
Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis
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