NTIRE 2026 The 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) Challenge: AI Flash Portrait (Track 3)
Abstract
In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of the NTIRE 2026 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) challenge, with a specific focus on Track 3: AI Flash Portrait. Despite significant advancements in deep learning for image restoration, existing models still encounter substantial challenges in real-world low-light portrait scenarios. Specifically, they struggle to achieve an optimal balance among noise suppression, detail preservation, and faithful illumination and color reproduction. To bridge this gap, this challenge aims to establish a novel benchmark for real-world low-light portrait restoration. We comprehensively evaluate the proposed algorithms utilizing a hybrid evaluation system that integrates objective quantitative metrics with rigorous subjective assessment protocols. For this competition, we provide a dataset containing 800 groups of real-captured low-light portrait data. Each group consists of a 1K-resolution low-light input image, a 1K ground truth (GT), and a 1K person mask. This challenge has garnered widespread attention from both academia and industry, attracting over 100 participating teams and receiving more than 3,000 valid submissions. This report details the motivation behind the challenge, the dataset construction process, the evaluation metrics, and the various phases of the competition. The released dataset and baseline code for this track are publicly available from the same \href{https://github.com/zsn1434/AI_Flash-BaseLine/tree/main}{GitHub repository}, and the official challenge webpage is hosted on \href{https://www.codabench.org/competitions/12885/}{CodaBench}.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.11230,
title = {NTIRE 2026 The 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) Challenge: AI Flash Portrait (Track 3)},
author = {Ya-nan Guan and Shaonan Zhang and Hang Guo and Yawen Wang and Xinying Fan and Tianqu Zhuang and Jie Liang and Hui Zeng and Guanyi Qin and Lishen Qu and Tao Dai and Shu-Tao Xia and Lei Zhang and Radu Timofte and Bin Chen and Yuanbo Zhou and Hongwei Wang and Qinquan Gao and Tong Tong and Yanxin Qian and Lizhao You and Jingru Cong and Lei Xiong and Shuyuan Zhu and Zhi-Qiang Zhong and Kan Lv and Yang Yang and Kailing Tang and Minjian Zhang and Zhipei Lei and Zhe Xu and Liwen Zhang and Dingyong Gou and Yanlin Wu and Cong Li and Xiaohui Cui and Jiajia Liu and Guoyi Xu and Yaoxin Jiang and Yaokun Shi and Jiachen Tu and Liqing Wang and Shihang Li and Bo Zhang and Biao Wang and Haiming Xu and Xiang Long and Xurui Liao and Yanqiao Zhai and Haozhe Li and Shijun Shi and Jiangning Zhang and Yong Liu and Kai Hu and Jing Xu and Xianfang Zeng and Yuyang Liu and Minchen Wei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.11230},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Accepted to CVPR 2026 Workshop. Includes supplementary material as ancillary file