Composite Diffusion: whole >= Σparts

For artists or graphic designers, the spatial arrangement of a scene is a critical design choice. However, existing text-to-image diffusion models provide limited support for incorporating spatial information. This paper introduces Composite Diffusion as a means for artists to generate high-quality images by composing from sub-scenes. The artists can specify the arrangement of the sub-scenes through a free-form segment layout and can describe the content of each sub-scene using natural text and additional control inputs. We provide a comprehensive and modular framework for Composite Diffusion that enables alternative ways of generating, composing, and harmonizing sub-scenes.We further argue that existing image quality metrics lack a holistic evaluation of image composites. To address this, we propose novel quality criteria especially relevant to composite generation. We believe that our approach provides an intuitive method of art creation. Through extensive user surveys and quantitative and qualitative analysis, we show how it achieves greater spatial, semantic, and creative control over image generation. In addition, our methods do not need to retrain or modify the architecture of the base diffusion models and can work in a plug-and-play manner with the fine-tuned models.