---
license: apache-2.0
base_model: cuiziteng/Illumination-Adaptive-Transformer
pipeline_tag: image-to-image
tags:
- low-light-enhancement
- exposure-correction
- image-enhancement
- onnx
---

# IAT — Illumination Adaptive Transformer (ONNX)

**First public ONNX export** of the [Illumination Adaptive Transformer (IAT)](https://github.com/cuiziteng/Illumination-Adaptive-Transformer) by Cui et al.

This repo contains three ONNX variants exported from the official PyTorch checkpoints, covering both low-light enhancement and exposure correction tasks.

## Variants

| File | Checkpoint | Training Data | Use Case |
|------|-----------|---------------|----------|
| `onnx/iat_exposure.onnx` | `best_Epoch_exposure.pth` | [Exposure Errors](https://github.com/mahmoudnafifi/Exposure_Correction) | Over/under-exposure correction |
| `onnx/iat_lol_v1.onnx` | `best_Epoch_lol_v1.pth` | [LOL-V1](https://daooshee.github.io/BMVC2018website/) | Low-light enhancement |
| `onnx/iat_lol_v2.onnx` | `best_Epoch_lol.pth` | [LOL-V2](https://github.com/flyywh/CVPR-2020-Semi-Low-Light) | Low-light enhancement (improved) |

## Model Specs

| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| Parameters | ~90K |
| File size | ~0.1 MB per variant |
| Input shape | `(1, 3, H, W)` float32, values in `[0, 1]` |
| Normalization | **None** — just rescale to [0,1], no ImageNet mean/std |
| Output names | `mul`, `add`, `enhanced` |
| Which output to use | `enhanced` (index 2) |
| Dynamic axes | batch, height, width |
| ONNX opset | 17 |

## Preprocessing

```python
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image

img = Image.open("dark_photo.jpg").convert("RGB")
img_np = np.array(img).astype(np.float32) / 255.0   # [0, 1]
# Transpose to CHW and add batch dim
input_tensor = img_np.transpose(2, 0, 1)[np.newaxis, ...]  # (1, 3, H, W)
```

**Important:** Do NOT apply ImageNet normalization. The model expects raw `[0, 1]` pixel values.

## Usage with ONNX Runtime

```python
import numpy as np
import onnxruntime as ort
from PIL import Image

# Load model
session = ort.InferenceSession("onnx/iat_lol_v2.onnx", providers=["CPUExecutionProvider"])

# Preprocess
img = Image.open("dark_photo.jpg").convert("RGB")
img_np = np.array(img).astype(np.float32) / 255.0
input_tensor = img_np.transpose(2, 0, 1)[np.newaxis, ...]  # (1, 3, H, W)

# Run inference — use "enhanced" (index 2)
mul, add, enhanced = session.run(None, {"input": input_tensor})

# Post-process
enhanced = np.clip(enhanced[0], 0, 1)               # (3, H, W)
enhanced = (enhanced.transpose(1, 2, 0) * 255).astype(np.uint8)  # (H, W, 3)
result = Image.fromarray(enhanced)
result.save("enhanced.jpg")
```

## ONNX Export Fixes

The original PyTorch code required three monkey-patches for clean ONNX tracing:

1. **`IAT.apply_color`**: Replaced `torch.tensordot(image, ccm, dims=[[-1], [-1]])` with `torch.matmul(image, ccm.T)` — `tensordot` with negative dimension indices is not supported by the ONNX exporter.

2. **`IAT.forward`**: Replaced Python for-loop over the batch dimension (`for i in range(b)`) with vectorized `torch.bmm` for the color matrix multiply and broadcast `**` for gamma correction. Python loops produce unrollable static graphs that break with dynamic batch sizes.

3. **`Aff_channel.forward`**: Same `tensordot` to `matmul` fix as patch 1, applied to the channel affinity block in the local branch.

See `export_iat_onnx.py` in this repo for the full export script with patches.

## Architecture

IAT is a lightweight image enhancement model with two branches:

- **Local branch**: Learns per-pixel multiplicative (`mul`) and additive (`add`) adjustment maps via a shallow transformer. `enhanced_local = input * mul + add`
- **Global branch**: Learns a 3x3 color correction matrix (CCM) and a scalar gamma value. Applied after local enhancement: `enhanced = (enhanced_local @ CCM^T) ^ gamma`

The combination of local pixel-wise adjustments and global color/tone correction makes it effective for both low-light enhancement and exposure correction, while keeping the model extremely small (~90K parameters).

## Benchmark Results

Results from the original paper:

| Dataset | PSNR | SSIM |
|---------|------|------|
| LOL-V1 | 23.38 | 0.809 |
| LOL-V2 | 23.50 | 0.824 |

## Citation

```bibtex
@InProceedings{Cui_2022_BMVC,
    title     = {Illumination Adaptive Transformer},
    author    = {Cui, Ziteng and Li, Kunchang and Gu, Lin and Su, Shenghan and Gao, Peng and Jiang, Zhengkai and Qiao, Yu and Harada, Tatsuya},
    booktitle = {British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC)},
    year      = {2022}
}
```

## License

Apache-2.0 — same as the original IAT repository.

## Acknowledgments

- Original model and research by [Cui et al.](https://github.com/cuiziteng/Illumination-Adaptive-Transformer)
- ONNX export by [ListingGems](https://listinggems.com) — an offline product photo editor for marketplace sellers