Official PyTorch Implementation of StarSRGAN: Improving Real-World Blind Super-Resolution

Accepted for Oral Presentation at the International Conference in Central Europe on

Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision 2023 (WSCG 2023).

May 15-19, 2023, Prague/Pilsen, Czech Republic

Khoa D. Vo, Len T. Bui.

Faculty of Information Technology (FIT), University of Science, VNU.HCM, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The training has been divided into two stages. These two stages have the same data synthesis process and training pipeline, except for the loss functions. Specifically,

1. We first train StarSRNet with L1 loss from the pre-trained model ESRGAN.
2. We then use the trained StarSRNet model as an initialization of the generator, and train the StarSRGAN with a combination of L1 loss, perceptual loss and GAN loss.

We use DF2K (DIV2K and Flickr2K) for our training. Only HR images are required.
You can download from :

1. DIV2K: http:https://data.vision.ee.ethz.ch/cvl/DIV2K/DIV2K_train_HR.zip
2. Flickr2K: https://cv.snu.ac.kr/research/EDSR/Flickr2K.tar

Here are steps for data preparation.

For the DF2K dataset, we use a multi-scale strategy, i.e., we downsample HR images to obtain several Ground-Truth images with different scales.
You can use the scripts/generate_multiscale_DF2K.py script to generate multi-scale images.
Note that this step can be omitted if you just want to have a fast try.

python scripts/generate_multiscale_DF2K.py --input datasets/DF2K/HR --output datasets/DF2K/multiscale

We then crop DF2K images into sub-images for faster IO and processing.
This step is optional if your IO is enough or your disk space is limited.

You can use the scripts/extract_subimages.py script. Here is the example:

 python scripts/extract_subimages.py --input datasets/DF2K/multiscale --output datasets/DF2K/multiscale_sub --crop_size 400 --step 200

You need to prepare a txt file containing the image paths. The following are some examples in meta_info.txt (As different users may have different sub-images partitions, this file is not suitable for your purpose and you need to prepare your own txt file):

sub/000001_s001.png
sub/000001_s002.png
sub/000001_s003.png
...

You can use the scripts/generate_meta_info.py script to generate the txt file.
You can merge several folders into one meta_info txt. Here is the example:

 python scripts/generate_meta_info.py --input datasets/DF2K/HR, datasets/DF2K/multiscale --root datasets/DF2K, datasets/DF2K --meta_info datasets/DF2K/meta_info/meta_info.txt

1. Modify the content in the option file options/train_realesrnet_x4plus.yml accordingly:

   train:
       name: DF2K
       type: StarSRGANDataset
       dataroot_gt: datasets/DF2K # modify to the root path of your folder
       meta_info: datasets/DF2K/meta_info.txt # modify to your own generate meta info txt
       io_backend:
           type: disk

2. Before the formal training, you may run in the --debug mode to see whether everything is OK. We use four GPUs for training:

   CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 \
   python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node=4 --master_port=4321 starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrnet.yml --launcher pytorch --debug

   Train with a single GPU in the debug mode:

   python starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrnet.yml --debug

3. The formal training. We use four GPUs for training. We use the --auto_resume argument to automatically resume the training if necessary.

   CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 \
   python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node=4 --master_port=4321 starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrnet.yml --launcher pytorch --auto_resume

   Train with a single GPU:

   python starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrnet.yml --auto_resume

1. After the training of Real-ESRNet, you now have the file experiments/train_StarSRNet_2M/model/net_g_2000000.pth. If you need to specify the pre-trained path to other files, modify the pretrain_network_g value in the option file train_starsrgan.yml.

2. Modify the option file train_starsrgan.yml accordingly. Most modifications are similar to those listed above.

3. Before the formal training, you may run in the --debug mode to see whether everything is OK. We use four GPUs for training:

   CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 \
   python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node=4 --master_port=4321 starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrgan.yml --launcher pytorch --debug

   Train with a single GPU in the debug mode:

   python starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrgan_x4plus.yml --debug

4. The formal training. We use four GPUs for training. We use the --auto_resume argument to automatically resume the training if necessary.

   CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 \
   python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node=4 --master_port=4321 starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrgan.yml --launcher pytorch --auto_resume

   Train with a single GPU:

   python starsrgan/train.py -opt options/train_starsrgan.yml --auto_resume

You can finetune StarESRGAN on your own dataset. Typically, the fine-tuning process can be divided into two cases:

1. Generate degraded images on the fly
2. Use your own paired data

Only high-resolution images are required. The low-quality images are generated with the degradation process described in Real-ESRGAN during trainig.

1. Prepare dataset

See this section for more details.

2. Download pre-trained models

Download pre-trained models into experiments/pretrained_models.

3. Finetune

Modify options/finetune_starsrgan.yml accordingly, especially the datasets part:

train:
    name: DF2K
    type: StarSRGANDataset
    dataroot_gt: datasets/DF2K # modify to the root path of your folder
    meta_info: datasets/DF2K/meta_info.txt # modify to your own generate meta info txt
    io_backend:
        type: disk

We use four GPUs for training. We use the --auto_resume argument to automatically resume the training if necessary.

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3 \
python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node=4 --master_port=4321 starsrgan/train.py -opt options/finetune_starsrgan.yml --launcher pytorch --auto_resume

Finetune with a single GPU:

python realesrgan/train.py -opt options/finetune_starsrgan.yml --auto_resume