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arXiv · 2606.12575

High-Fidelity Two-Step Image Generation via Teacher-Aligned End-to-End Distillation

Dongyang Liu·Ruoyi Du·David Liu·Dengyang Jiang·Liangchen Li·Qilong Wu·Zhen Li·Steven C. H. Hoi·Hongsheng Li·Peng Gao
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Abstract

Few-step diffusion distillation has become increasingly mature for 4-8-step generation, yet pushing further to 2 steps remains challenging. In this work, we introduce Z-Image Turbo++, a high-quality 2-step image generation model distilled from the 8-step Z-Image Turbo teacher. Our method addresses the central bottlenecks of increased task difficulty and limited model capacity in 2-step generation through three simple but effective design choices tailored to this regime. First, we propose Distribution-Aligned Adversarial Learning, which uses teacher-generated images rather than external real images as real samples for GAN training, providing a more attainable and informative adversarial target. Second, we adopt Step-Decoupled Parameterization, assigning independent model parameters to the two denoising steps to better match their distinct capacity demands. Third, we perform End-to-End Training with Iterative Regularization, allowing the first step to receive gradients from final image quality while preserving a meaningful intermediate generation through an explicit step-1 loss. Together, these designs substantially narrow the quality gap between 2-step and 8-step generation in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations, highlighting the potential of carefully tailored distillation strategies for improving the quality-efficiency trade-off in few-step generation.

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Dongyang Liu, Ruoyi Du, David Liu, Dengyang Jiang, Liangchen Li, Qilong Wu, Zhen Li, Steven C. H. Hoi, Hongsheng Li, Peng Gao. 2026-06-10. High-Fidelity Two-Step Image Generation via Teacher-Aligned End-to-End Distillation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12575

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