Introducing WaveSpeedAI Ic Light on WaveSpeedAI

Introducing IC-Light: AI-Powered Image Relighting on WaveSpeedAI

Lighting can make or break a photograph. Whether you’re a professional photographer, an e-commerce seller, or a creative artist, you’ve likely faced the frustration of capturing the perfect shot only to find the lighting falls short. Traditional solutions require expensive studio equipment, extensive post-production work, or costly reshoots. Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of IC-Light V2 on WaveSpeedAI—a groundbreaking AI model that transforms image lighting with simple text prompts and directional controls.

What is IC-Light?

IC-Light, short for “Imposing Consistent Light,” is an advanced AI relighting model created by Lvmin Zhang—the same researcher behind the revolutionary ControlNet technology. The model was formally presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) in 2025, establishing its credibility in the academic AI community.

At its core, IC-Light uses HDR lighting representation and light latents to relight any image while preserving the original subject’s details, textures, and colors. Unlike traditional editing tools that simply adjust brightness and contrast, IC-Light understands the three-dimensional structure of your images and applies physically accurate lighting that follows real-world light transport principles.

The V2 iteration brings significant improvements with advanced 16-channel VAE (Variational Autoencoder) technology, delivering more powerful and precise lighting control than ever before.

Key Features

• Text-Driven Relighting: Describe the lighting you want in natural language—“golden hour sunlight,” “soft studio light,” “dramatic side lighting”—and IC-Light intelligently applies it to your image.

• Directional Light Control: Choose from five lighting directions (None, Left, Right, Top, Bottom) for precise control over where light appears to originate in your image.

• Detail Preservation: The model performs non-destructive transformations, maintaining the integrity of your original image while only modifying lighting characteristics.

• Consistent Results: Thanks to the innovative use of Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) in latent space during training, IC-Light produces remarkably consistent relighting results that can even be merged as normal maps.

• High Resolution Output: Maintains the original image resolution and fine details using the 16-channel VAE architecture.

Real-World Use Cases

E-Commerce Product Photography

Standardizing product lighting across an entire catalog traditionally requires controlled studio environments and consistent shooting conditions. With IC-Light, e-commerce sellers can transform inconsistent product photos into professionally lit images without reshoots. Major retailers have already embraced AI photography tools to scale their visual content—Wayfair generates over 50 unique product images from each sample photo, while IKEA has reduced primary catalog shots from 500+ to under 100 by leveraging AI rendering.

IC-Light fits seamlessly into this workflow, allowing businesses to:

• Standardize lighting across product lines
• Add professional-quality shadows and depth
• Match product lighting to lifestyle background scenes
• Cut studio costs by eliminating the need for perfect lighting setups

Portrait Enhancement

Portrait photographers often work in challenging lighting conditions—outdoor shoots with harsh midday sun, indoor venues with unflattering fluorescent lights, or spontaneous moments that can’t wait for ideal conditions. IC-Light rescues these shots by adding flattering light after the fact. Request “soft window light from the left” or “warm studio lighting” and watch flat portraits transform into professionally lit images.

Creative and Artistic Projects

For artists and designers, IC-Light opens new creative possibilities. Experiment with dramatic cinematic lighting, transform day shots into moody nighttime scenes, or create surreal lighting effects that would be impossible to achieve in reality. The text-conditioned approach means your imagination is the only limit.

Real Estate Photography

Property listings with bright, inviting interiors sell faster. IC-Light can transform dark or poorly lit room photos into warm, welcoming spaces. Add natural-looking window light, brighten shadowy corners, or create that coveted “golden hour” ambiance that makes potential buyers feel at home.

Social Media Content Creation

Not everyone has access to professional lighting equipment, but everyone deserves photos that pop. Content creators can elevate everyday smartphone photos to professional quality, ensuring consistent visual branding across platforms without investing in expensive gear.

Getting Started with IC-Light on WaveSpeedAI

Using IC-Light through WaveSpeedAI is straightforward. Here’s how to relight your images using the WaveSpeed Python SDK:

import wavespeed

output = wavespeed.run(
    "wavespeed-ai/ic-light",
    {
        "prompt": "warm golden hour sunlight from the right",
        "image": "https://your-image-url.com/photo.jpg",
        "lighting_direction": "Right"
    },
)

print(output["outputs"][0])

Pro Tips for Best Results:

1. Be specific with your prompts: “Warm golden hour sunlight” produces better results than simply “light”
2. Combine prompt and direction: Describe the quality of light while specifying the angle for maximum control
3. Use Left or Right directions for products: These often create the most appealing depth and dimension
4. Choose None for ambient effects: When you want the prompt to fully control lighting placement without directional bias
5. Start with quality source images: Clear subjects with well-defined edges produce the best results

Why Choose WaveSpeedAI for IC-Light?

Running advanced AI models locally requires significant computational resources and technical expertise. WaveSpeedAI removes these barriers by providing:

• No Cold Starts: Your API calls execute immediately without waiting for model initialization
• Fast Inference: Optimized infrastructure delivers results in seconds, not minutes
• Affordable Pricing: At $0.20 per image, professional-quality relighting is accessible to everyone—from individual creators to enterprise teams
• Simple REST API: Integrate IC-Light into your existing workflows with minimal code
• Reliability: Production-ready infrastructure you can depend on for consistent results

Transform Your Images Today

Whether you’re looking to rescue photos with poor lighting, standardize your product catalog, or experiment with creative lighting effects, IC-Light on WaveSpeedAI puts professional-grade relighting capabilities at your fingertips.

The gap between amateur and professional photography has never been smaller. With IC-Light, the lighting you imagined is now just a prompt away.

Ready to transform your images? Try IC-Light on WaveSpeedAI and experience the future of image relighting.