Abstract
Many image processing, computer graphics, and computer vision problems can be treated as image-to-image translation tasks. Such translation entails learning to map one visual representation of a given input to another representation. Image-to-image translation with generative adversarial networks (GANs) has been intensively studied and applied to various tasks, such as multimodal image-to-image translation, super-resolution translation, object transfiguration-related translation, etc. However, image-to-image translation techniques suffer from some problems, such as mode collapse, instability, and a lack of diversity. This article provides a comprehensive overview of image-to-image translation based on GAN algorithms and its variants. It also discusses and analyzes current state-of-the-art image-to-image translation techniques that are based on multimodal and multidomain representations. Finally, open issues and future research directions utilizing reinforcement learning and three-dimensional (3D) modal translation are summarized and discussed.