Model reference · open weights

kandinsky-2-2-prior

Image kandinsky-community Text→image 1 build Open weights 3k dl/mo

kandinsky-2-2-prior is an open-weight image model from kandinsky-community. kandinsky-2-2-prior (BF16) weighs 10.6 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • Kandinsky 2.2 is a text-to-image diffusion model developed by kandinsky-community that uses a transformer-based image prior and a MoVQGAN decoder.
  • It supports text-to-image generation, image-to-image editing, and inpainting, and can produce outputs at 1024 x 1024 resolution with various aspect ratios.
  • The model is licensed under Apache-2.0.

Summary of the kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-prior model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released bykandinsky-community
Released2023-06-09
VRAM10.6 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for kandinsky-2-2-prior (BF16)

10.6 GBweights, file size
4.1 GBbiggest part
5.0 GBworking memory, one 1024² image
537 MBruntime overhead
CardOne imageMemory
RTX 3060 12 GBfits (encoders offloaded)11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBfits (encoders offloaded)15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

From the model card

What kandinsky-community says about kandinsky-2-2-prior

Read the model card

Kandinsky inherits best practices from Dall-E 2 and Latent diffusion while introducing some new ideas.

It uses the CLIP model as a text and image encoder, and diffusion image prior (mapping) between latent spaces of CLIP modalities. This approach increases the visual performance of the model and unveils new horizons in blending images and text-guided image manipulation.

The Kandinsky model is created by Arseniy Shakhmatov, Anton Razzhigaev, Aleksandr Nikolich, Igor Pavlov, Andrey Kuznetsov and Denis Dimitrov

Usage

Kandinsky 2.2 is available in diffusers!

pip install diffusers transformers accelerate

Text to image

from diffusers import AutoPipelineForText2Image
import torch

pipe = AutoPipelineForText2Image.from_pretrained("kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-decoder", torch_dtype=torch.float16)
pipe = pipe.to("cuda")

prompt = "portrait of a young women, blue eyes, cinematic"
negative_prompt = "low quality, bad quality"

image = pipe(prompt=prompt, negative_prompt=negative_prompt, prior_guidance_scale =1.0, height=768, width=768).images[0]
image.save("portrait.png")

Text Guided Image-to-Image Generation

from PIL import Image
import requests
from io import BytesIO

url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion/main/assets/stable-samples/img2img/sketch-mountains-input.jpg"
response = requests.get(url)
original_image = Image.open(BytesIO(response.content)).convert("RGB")
original_image = original_image.resize((768, 512))
from diffusers import AutoPipelineForImage2Image
import torch

pipe = AutoPipelineForImage2Image.from_pretrained("kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-decoder", torch_dtype=torch.float16)
pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()

prompt = "A fantasy landscape, Cinematic lighting"
negative_prompt = "low quality, bad quality"

image = pipe(prompt=prompt, image=original_image, strength=0.3, height=768, width=768).images[0]

out.images[0].save("fantasy_land.png")

Interpolate

from diffusers import KandinskyV22PriorPipeline, KandinskyV22Pipeline
from diffusers.utils import load_image
import PIL

import torch

pipe_prior = KandinskyV22PriorPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-prior", torch_dtype=torch.float16
)
pipe_prior.to("cuda")

img1 = load_image(
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/diffusers-images/resolve/main" "/kandinsky/cat.png"
)

img2 = load_image(
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/diffusers-images/resolve/main" "/kandinsky/starry_night.jpeg"
)

# add all the conditions we want to interpolate, can be either text or image
images_texts = ["a cat", img1, img2]

# specify the weights for each condition in images_texts
weights = [0.3, 0.3, 0.4]

# We can leave the prompt empty
prompt = ""
prior_out = pipe_prior.interpolate(images_texts, weights)

pipe = KandinskyV22Pipeline.from_pretrained("kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-decoder", torch_dtype=torch.float16)
pipe.to("cuda")

image = pipe(**prior_out, height=768, width=768).images[0]

image.save("starry_cat.png")

Text Guided Inpainting Generation

from diffusers import AutoPipelineForInpainting
from diffusers.utils import load_image
import torch
import numpy as np

pipe = AutoPipelineForInpainting.from_pretrained("kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-decoder-inpaint", torch_dtype=torch.float16)
pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()

prompt = "a hat"

init_image = load_image(
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/diffusers-images/resolve/main" "/kandinsky/cat.png"
)

mask = np.zeros((768, 768), dtype=np.float32)
# Let's mask out an area above the cat's head
mask[:250, 250:-250] = 1

out = pipe(
    prompt=prompt,
    image=init_image,
    mask_image=mask,
    height=768,
    width=768,
    num_inference_steps=150,
)

image = out.images[0]
image.save("cat_with_hat.png")

Breaking change on the mask input:

We introduced a breaking change for Kandinsky inpainting pipeline in the following pull request: https://github.com/huggingface/diffusers/pull/4207. Previously we accepted a mask format where black pixels represent the masked-out area. We have changed to use white pixels to represent masks instead in order to have a unified mask format across all our pipelines. Please upgrade your inpainting code to follow the above. If you are using Kandinsky Inpaint in production. You now need to change the mask to:

# For PIL input
import PIL.ImageOps
mask = PIL.ImageOps.invert(mask)

# For PyTorch and Numpy input
mask = 1 - mask

Text-to-Image Generation with ControlNet Conditioning

import torch
import numpy as np

from transformers import pipeline
from diffusers.utils import load_image

from diffusers import KandinskyV22PriorPipeline, KandinskyV22ControlnetPipeline

# let's take an image and extract its depth map.
def make_hint(image, depth_estimator):
    image = depth_estimator(image)["depth"]
    image = np.array(image)
    image = image[:, :, None]
    image = np.concatenate([image, image, image], axis=2)
    detected_map = torch.from_numpy(image).float() / 255.0
    hint = detected_map.permute(2, 0, 1)
    return hint

img = load_image(
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/diffusers-images/resolve/main/kandinskyv22/cat.png"
).resize((768, 768))

# We can use the `depth-estimation` pipeline from transformers to process the image and retrieve its depth map.
depth_estimator = pipeline("depth-estimation")
hint = make_hint(img, depth_estimator).unsqueeze(0).half().to("cuda")

# Now, we load the prior pipeline and the text-to-image controlnet pipeline
pipe_prior = KandinskyV22PriorPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-prior", torch_dtype=torch.float16
)
pipe_pri

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

How it works

How image models work

Text promptwhat to makeText encoderunderstands itDiffusion stepsdenoise to pixelsImagePNG / JPEGA diffusion model starts from noise and denoises it, guided by your prompt, into a finished image.

Running it yourself

Run it on a rented GPU

Rent a machine by the hour. Runs as it is with diffusers, on the machine, in Python.

# on your rented machine: pip install diffusers transformers accelerate
import torch
from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline

pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("kandinsky-community/kandinsky-2-2-prior", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")
image = pipe(prompt="a red bicycle on a cobbled street").images[0]
image.save("/workspace/out.png")
Renting a GPU: connect, tunnels, Python
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