Awesome-Image-Colorization

A collection of Deep Learning based Image Colorization papers and corresponding source code/demo program, including Automatic and User Guided (i.e. with User Interaction) colorization, as well as video colorization.

Feel free to create a PR or an issue. (Pull Request is preferred)

Outline

• Automatic Image Colorization
  • Software / Demo
  • Papers
• User Guided Image Colorization
  • Based on scribble
  • Based on reference image
  • Based on palette
  • Based on language(text)
  • Multi-modal
  • Interactive Colorization
• Human-AI Collaborated Colorization System
• Video Colorization
  • Survey
  • Automatically
  • Based on reference
  • Based on scribble
  • Based on text
  • Based on palette
  • Multimodal

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1. Automatic Image Colorization

1.1 Software / Demo

Name	Author/Owner	Code/Project Link
DeOldify	Jason Antic	[link]
Palette.fm	Emil Wallner	[link]
ArtImageHub	artimagehub.com	[link]

1.2 Papers

• Natural images

Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Learning Large-Scale Automatic Image Colorization	ICCV 2015	[project] [code]
Deep Colorization	ICCV 2015
Learning Representations for Automatic Colorization	ECCV 2016	[project] [code]
Colorful Image Colorization	ECCV 2016	[project] [code]
Let there be Color!: Joint End-to-end Learning of Global and Local Image Priors for Automatic Image Colorization with Simultaneous Classification	SIGGRAPH 2016	[project] [code]
Learning Diverse Image Colorization	CVPR 2017	[code]
Structural Consistency and Controllability for Diverse Colorization	ECCV 2018
Coloring With Limited Data: Few-Shot Colorization via Memory Augmented Networks	CVPR 2019	[project] Unofficial: [code (PyTorch)]
ChromaGAN: Adversarial Picture Colorization with Semantic Class Distribution	WACV 2020	[code]
Instance-aware Image Colorization	CVPR 2020	[code] [project]
Pixelated Semantic Colorization	IJCV 2020
Colorization Transformer	ICLR 2021	[code]
Focusing on Persons: Colorizing Old Images Learning from Modern Historical Movies	ACM MM 2021	[code]
Towards Vivid and Diverse Image Colorization with Generative Color Prior	ICCV 2021	[code]
SCSNet: An Efficient Paradigm for Learning Simultaneously Image Colorization and Super-Resolution (also reference based)	AAAI 2022
Bridging the Domain Gap towards Generalization in Automatic Colorization	ECCV 2022	[code]
ColorFormer: Image Colorization via Color Memory assisted Hybrid-attention Transformer	ECCV 2022	[code]
BigColor: Colorization using a Generative Color Prior for Natural Images	ECCV 2022	[project] [code]
CT2: Colorization Transformer via Color Tokens	ECCV 2022	[code]
Disentangled Image Colorization via Global Anchors	SIGGRAPH Asia 2022	[code] [project]
UniColor: A Unified Framework for Multi-Modal Colorization with Transformer (also multi-modal)	SIGGRAPH Asia 2022	[project]
Improved Diffusion-based Image Colorization via Piggybacked Models	arxiv 23.04	[project]
DDColor: Towards Photo-Realistic and Semantic-Aware Image Colorization via Dual Decoders	ICCV 2023	[code] [project]
Diffusing Colors: Image Colorization with Text Guided Diffusion (also text-based)	SIGGRAPH Asia 2023	[project]
Automatic Controllable Colorization via Imagination	CVPR 2024	[code] [project]
Control Color: Multimodal Diffusion-based Interactive Image Colorization	arxiv 24.02	[code] [project]
MultiColor: Image Colorization by Learning from Multiple Color Spaces	ACM MM 2024
Image Colorization via Efficient Diffusion Model	TMM 2026

• Line arts

Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Region Assisted Sketch Colorization	TIP 2023

2. User Guided Image Colorization

2.1 Based on scribble

• Software / Demo

Image Type	Name	Author/Owner	Code/Project Link
Line art	Petalica Paint (Old version: PaintsChainer)	Preferred Networks, Inc.	[Petalica Paint (Online service)] [PaintsChainer V1 code]
Line art	Style2Paints (SEPA)	Style2Paints Research	[link]

• Papers: Natural images

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Real-Time User-Guided Image Colorization with Learned Deep Priors	SIGGRAPH 2017	[project] [code1] [code2]
Natural Gray-Scale	iColoriT: Towards Propagating Local Hint to the Right Region in Interactive Colorization by Leveraging Vision Transformer	WACV 2023	[project] [code]
Natural Gray-Scale	LGA-Net: Learning Local and Global Affinities for Sparse Scribble based Image Colorization	ICCV 2025	[code]

• Papers: Sketch / Line arts

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Manga	Manga colorization	SIGGRAPH 2006	[Project]
Line art / Sketch / Manga	LazyBrush: Flexible Painting Tool for Hand-drawn Cartoons	Eurographics 2009	[Project Home & Software] Unofficial: [code(Matlab)]
Line art / Sketch	Outline Colorization through Tandem Adversarial Networks	1704.08834	[code]
Sketch	Scribbler: Controlling Deep Image Synthesis with Sketch and Color	CVPR 2017
Line art / Sketch	Auto-painter: Cartoon Image Generation from Sketch by Using Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks	Neurocomputing 2018	[code]
Line art	User-Guided Deep Anime Line Art Colorization with Conditional Adversarial Networks	ACM MM 2018	[code]
Line art	Two-stage Sketch Colorization	SIGGRAPH Asia 2018	[Project]
Line art	User-Guided Line Art Flat Filling with Split Filling Mechanism	CVPR 2021	[Project] [code]
Line art	Dual Color Space Guided Sketch Colorization	TIP 2021
Line art	Delaunay Painting: Perceptual Image Colouring from Raster Contours with Gaps	CGF 2022
Line art	FlatGAN: A Holistic Approach for Robust Flat-Coloring in High-Definition with Understanding Line Discontinuity	ACM MM 2023	[code]
Line art	Winding Number Features for Vector Sketch Colorization	CGF 2024
Line art	KISSColor: Kinetic and Intuitive Stroke Stretching for Vector Drawing Colorization	SIGGRAPH Asia 2025

2.2 Based on reference image

• Natural images

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Deep Exemplar-based Colorization	SIGGRAPH 2018	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Example-Based Colourization Via Dense Encoding Pyramids (also palette based)	Pacific Graphics 2018	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	A Superpixel-based Variational Model for Image Colorization	TVCG 2019
Natural Gray-Scale	Automatic Example-based Image Colourisation using Location-Aware Cross-Scale Matching	TIP 2019
Natural Gray-Scale	Stylization-Based Architecture for Fast Deep Exemplar Colorization	CVPR 2020	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Gray2ColorNet: Transfer More Colors from Reference Image	ACM MM 2020
Natural Gray-Scale	Globally and Locally Semantic Colorization via Exemplar-Based Broad-GAN	TIP 2021
Natural Gray-Scale	Yes, "Attention Is All You Need", for Exemplar based Colorization	ACM MM 2021
Natural Gray-Scale	SCSNet: An Efficient Paradigm for Learning Simultaneously Image Colorization and Super-Resolution (also automatic)	AAAI 2022
Natural Gray-Scale	Semantic-Sparse Colorization Network for Deep Exemplar-based Colorization	ECCV 2022
Natural Gray-Scale	Unsupervised Deep Exemplar Colorization via Pyramid Dual Non-local Attention	TIP 2023	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Lightweight Deep Exemplar Colorization via Semantic Attention-Guided Laplacian Pyramid	TVCG 2024

• Sketch / Line arts

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Manga	Comicolorization: Semi-Automatic Manga Colorization	SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 Technical Briefs	[code]
Sketch	TextureGAN: Controlling Deep Image Synthesis with Texture Patches	CVPR 2018	[code]
Line art / Sketch	Adversarial Colorization Of Icons Based On Structure And Color Conditions	ACM MM 2019	[Code]
Line art / Sketch	Reference-Based Sketch Image Colorization using Augmented-Self Reference and Dense Semantic Correspondence	CVPR 2020	[project]
Manga	Manga Filling Style Conversion with Screentone Variational Autoencoder	SIGGRAPH Asia 2020	[project]
Line art / Sketch	Colorization of Line Drawings with Empty Pupils	PG 2020
Line art / Sketch	Active Colorization for Cartoon Line Drawings	TVCG 2020
Line art / Sketch	Line Art Correlation Matching Feature Transfer Network for Automatic Animation Colorization	WACV 2021
Line art / Sketch	Style-Structure Disentangled Features and Normalizing Flows for Diverse Icon Colorization	CVPR 2022
Line art / Sketch	Eliminating Gradient Conflict in Reference-based Line-Art Colorization	ECCV 2022	[code]
Line art / Sketch	Self-driven Dual-path Learning for Reference-based Line Art Colorization under Limited Data	TCSVT 2023
Line art / Sketch	FlexIcon: Flexible Icon Colorization via Guided Images and Palettes (also palette based)	ACM MM 2023
Line art / Sketch	AnimeDiffusion: Anime Face Line Drawing Colorization via Diffusion Models	TVCG 2024	[code]
Manga	ColorFlow: Retrieval-Augmented Image Sequence Colorization	arxiv 24.12	[code] [webpage]
Line art / Sketch	MangaNinja: Line Art Colorization with Precise Reference Following	CVPR 2025	[code] [webpage]
Line art / Sketch	Image Referenced Sketch Colorization Based on Animation Creation Workflow	CVPR 2025	[code]
Line art / Sketch	Cobra: Efficient Line Art COlorization with BRoAder References	SIGGRAPH 2025	[code] [webpage]
Line art / Sketch	MagicColor: Multi-Instance Sketch Colorization	ICCV 2025	[code] [webpage]
Line art / Sketch	ColorizeDiffusion: Improving Reference-Based Sketch Colorization with Latent Diffusion Model	WACV 2025	[code]
Line art / Sketch	ColorizeDiffusion v2: Enhancing Reference-based Sketch Colorization Through Separating Utilities	arxiv 25.04	[code]
Line art / Sketch	MangaDiT: Reference-Guided Line Art Colorization with Hierarchical Attention in Diffusion Transformers	arxiv 25.08
Line art / Sketch	Towards High-resolution and Disentangled Reference-based Sketch Colorization	arxiv 26.03	[code]

2.3 Based on palette

• Natural images

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Image	Palette-based Photo Recoloring	SIGGRAPH 2015	[project]
Natural Gray-Scale	Coloring with Words: Guiding Image Colorization Through Text-based Palette Generation (also text based)	ECCV 2018	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Example-Based Colourization Via Dense Encoding Pyramids (also reference based)	Pacific Graphics 2018	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	PalGAN: Image Colorization with Palette Generative Adversarial Networks	ECCV 2022	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Exploring Palette based Color Guidance in Diffusion Models	MM 2025

• Sketch / Line arts

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Line art / Sketch	FlexIcon: Flexible Icon Colorization via Guided Images and Palettes (also reference based)	ACM MM 2023
Line art / Sketch	SketchDeco: Decorating B&W Sketches with Colour	arxiv 24.05	[code] [webpage]

2.4 Based on language or text

• Natural images

Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Language-Based Image Editing with Recurrent Attentive Models	CVPR 2018	[code]
Coloring with Words: Guiding Image Colorization Through Text-based Palette Generation (also palette based)	ECCV 2018	[code]
Learning to Color from Language	NAACL 2018	[code]
L-CoDe: Language-based Colorization using Color-object Decoupled Conditions	AAAI 2022	[code]
L-CoDer: Language-based Colorization with Color-object Decoupling Transformer	ECCV 2022	[code]
L-CoIns: Language-based Colorization with Instance Awareness	CVPR 2023
L-CAD: Language-based Colorization with Any-level Descriptions	NeurIPS 2023	[code]
Diffusing Colors: Image Colorization with Text Guided Diffusion	SIGGRAPH Asia 2023	[project]
COCO-LC: Colorfulness Controllable Language-based Colorization	ACM MM 2024	[project] [code]
Controllable Image Colorization with Instance-aware Texts and Masks (also automatic)	arxiv 25.05

• Sketch / Line arts

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Line art	Tag2Pix: Line Art Colorization Using Text Tag With SECat and Changing Loss	ICCV 2019	[code] [code2 (GUI)]
Scene Sketch	Language-based Colorization of Scene Sketches	SIGGRAPH Asia 2019	[code] [project]
Line art	Line Art Colorization Based on Explicit Region Segmentation	Pacific Graphics 2021	[code]
Sketch	Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models	ICCV 2023	[code]

2.5 Multi-modal

Image Type	Paper	Input	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Interactive Deep Colorization Using Simultaneous Global and Local Inputs	stroke + palette	ICASSP 2019
Natural Gray-Scale	UniColor: A Unified Framework for Multi-Modal Colorization with Transformer	stroke + exemplar + text	SIGGRAPH Asia 2022	[project]
Line art	Two-Step Training: Adjustable Sketch Colourization via Reference Image and Text Tag	exemplar + text	CGF 2023	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Control Color: Multimodal Diffusion-based Interactive Image Colorization	text, stroke, exemplar	arxiv 24.02	[code] [project]
Natural Gray-Scale	Versatile Vision Foundation Model for Image and Video Colorization	text, scribble, exemplar	SIGGRAPH 2024
Line art	OmniColor: A Unified Framework for Multi-modal Lineart Colorization	text, scribble, exemplar	arxiv 26.03	[code]

2.6 Interactive Colorization

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Deep Edge-Aware Interactive Colorization against Color-Bleeding Effects	ICCV 2021	[project] [code(metric)]
Line art	Guiding Users to Where to Give Color Hints for Efficient Interactive Sketch Colorization via Unsupervised Region Prioritization	WACV 2023

3. Human-AI Collaborated Colorization System

Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
FlatMagic: Improving Flat Colorization through AI-driven Design for Digital Comic Professionals	CHI 2022	[code]
No Pixel Left Behind: Filling Gaps in Anime Colorization	CHI 2026	[code] [webpage]

4. Video Colorization

4.0 Survey

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
	Video Colorization: A Survey	JCST 2024

4.1 Automatically

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Fully Automatic Video Colorization with Self-Regularization and Diversity	CVPR 2019	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	VCGAN: Video Colorization With Hybrid Generative Adversarial Network	TMM 2022	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	ColorSurge: Bringing Vibrancy and Efficiency to Automatic Video Colorization via Dual-Branch Fusion	SIGGRAPH 2025	[code]

4.2 Based on reference

• Natural images

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Switchable Temporal Propagation Network	ECCV 2018
Natural Gray-Scale	Tracking Emerges by Colorizing Videos	ECCV 2018	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	Deep Exemplar-based Video Colorization	CVPR 2019	[code]
Natural Gray-Scale	DeepRemaster: Temporal Source-Reference Attention Networks for Comprehensive Video Enhancement	SIGGRAPH Asia 2019	[code] [project]
Natural Gray-Scale	Reference-Based Video Colorization with Spatiotemporal Correspondence	2011.12528
Natural Gray-Scale	BiSTNet: Semantic Image Prior Guided Bidirectional Temporal Feature Fusion for Deep Exemplar-based Video Colorization	TPAMI 2024	[code] [project]
Natural Gray-Scale	Exemplar-based Video Colorization with Long-term Spatiotemporal Dependency	KBS 2024
Natural Gray-Scale	ColorMNet: A Memory-based Deep Spatial-Temporal Feature Propagation Network for Video Colorization	ECCV 2024	[code] [project]

• Sketch / Line arts

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Line art	The Animation Transformer: Visual Correspondence via Segment Matching	ICCV 2021	[App]
Line art	Line Art Correlation Matching Feature Transfer Network for Automatic Animation Colorization	WACV 2021
Line art	Deep Sketch-guided Cartoon Video Inbetweening	TVCG 2021	[code]
Line art	Reference-Based Deep Line Art Video Colorization	TVCG 2022
Line art	Learning Inclusion Matching for Animation Paint Bucket Colorization	CVPR 2024	[webpage] [code]
Line art	Paint Bucket Colorization Using Anime Character Color Design Sheets	arxiv 24.10	[code]
Line art	ToonCrafter: Generative Cartoon Interpolation	SIGGRAPH Asia 2024	[code] [webpage]
Line art	LVCD: Reference-based Lineart Video Colorization with Diffusion Models	SIGGRAPH Asia 2024	[webpage]
Line art	AniDoc: Animation Creation Made Easier	CVPR 2025	[webpage] [code]
Line art	SketchColour: Channel Concat Guided DiT-based Sketch-to-Colour Pipeline for 2D Animation	arxiv 25.07	[webpage] [code]
Line art	AnimeColor: Reference-based Animation Colorization with Diffusion Transformers	MM 2025	[code]
Line art	ToonComposer: Streamlining Cartoon Production with Generative Post-Keyframing	arxiv 25.08	[webpage] [code]
Line art	DACoN: DINO for Anime Paint Bucket Colorization with Any Number of Reference Images	ICCV 2025	[code]
Line art	A Unified Framework for Industrial Cel-Animation Colorization with Temporal-Structural Awareness	ICCV 2025
Line art	LongAnimation: Long Animation Generation with Dynamic Global-Local Memory	ICCV 2025	[webpage]
Line art	TimeColor: Flexible Reference Colorization via Temporal Concatenation	arxiv 26.01	[webpage]

4.3 Based on scribble

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	SVCNet: Scribble-based Video Colorization Network with Temporal Aggregation	TIP 2023	[code]

4.4 Based on text

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Towards Photorealistic Video Colorization via Gated Color-Guided Image Diffusion Models	ACM MM 2024
Natural Gray-Scale	L-C4: Language-Based Video Colorization for Creative and Consistent Color	arxiv 24.10
Natural Gray-Scale	ColorDiffuser: Video Colorization with Pretrained Text-to-Image Diffusion Models	ACMMM 2025	[code] [project]

4.5 Based on palette

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	Consistent Video Colorization via Palette Guidance	arxiv 25.01

4.6 Multimodal

Image Type	Paper	Source	Code/Project Link
Natural Gray-Scale	VanGogh: A Unified Multimodal Diffusion-based Framework for Video Colorization	arxiv 25.01	[code] [webpage]