Universal Compressed Image Restoration via Codec-Aware Conditioning with Reinforcement Learning

We address the task of universal compressed image restoration, which involves recovering high-quality images degraded by a wide range of codecs and compression levels. While prior methods have made significant progress, they typically target specific degradation types and struggle to generalize across both traditional and learning-based codecs. To overcome this limitation, we propose a unified framework that leverages codec-aware conditioning and reinforcement learning-based fine-tuning. Specifically, we introduce a conditioning module that encodes both codec type and compression level, enabling the restoration network to adapt its behavior to diverse degradation settings. To further improve generalization, we incorporate reward-based objectives during fine-tuning, providing complementary signals that enhance training across both conventional and learned compression schemes. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in restoring images across a wide range of compression artifacts and scenarios.

Authors

• Changwoo Han Korea University
• Hongil Kim Department of Artificial Intelligence, Hanyang University, South Korea
• Donghyun Kim Yonsei University
• Sung-Chang Lim Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
• Seung-Won Jung Korea University

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