IC-Light
Diffusion tool that relights image foregrounds using text prompts or background images.
About
Relighting a photograph after the fact is IC-Light's specialty: the name stands for Imposing Consistent Light, and the models manipulate illumination on a foreground subject until it matches a described mood or a supplied backdrop. Two Stable Diffusion 1.5 based variants ship, a text-conditioned model that takes a foreground plus a prompt such as sunshine from a window, and a background-conditioned model that blends foreground and background images directly. The method leans on the physical consistency of light transport in HDR space, which makes merged illuminations behave like real light rather than composited glow, so results hold up in product photography and portrait compositing. Setup is a conda environment with Python 3.10 and PyTorch on a CUDA GPU, launched through a bundled Gradio interface, with weights downloading automatically and an official Hugging Face Space offering a no-install trial. Released under Apache-2.0 by lllyasviel, the developer behind ControlNet, it holds about 8,500 GitHub stars and anchors many ComfyUI relighting workflows.
Should you use IC-Light?
Pick it when
You composite product shots or portraits onto new backgrounds and need the subject's lighting to match the scene or a described mood, on a CUDA GPU or inside an existing ComfyUI relighting workflow.
Look elsewhere when
You lack a CUDA GPU, or you need to change content rather than light: FLUX.1 Kontext or Qwen-Image-Edit handle that from text. Both released models are SD 1.5 based, an older base that limits native resolution.
Alternatives to IC-Light
- Rembg
Only cuts the subject out, with no relighting, but runs on CPU under MIT and is a typical first step before IC-Light compositing.
- FLUX.1 Kontext dev
Can alter lighting or background through a text instruction on a 12B base, but lacks light-transport conditioning and has non-commercial weights.
- Qwen-Image-Edit
General Apache-2.0 instruction editing that can restyle a scene, but it is not built to match illumination to a supplied background image.
- Krita AI Diffusion
Lets you repaint light by hand with inpainting and ControlNet inside Krita, slower and more manual but with control over each region.
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Details
- Category
- AI Image/Video Editing
- Price
- Free
- Platform
- Local/Desktop
- Difficulty
- Easy (2/5)
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Added
- Jul 29, 2026