BranchVis: Interactive Exploration of Generative Image Editing Histories
TL;DR
BranchVis is presented, a prototype that represents prompts and generated images as nodes in a tree-based visualization, enabling direct navigation, unambiguous revisitation, integrated comparison, and management of complex histories.
Abstract
Generative image editing systems allow users to iteratively modify images through natural language prompts, yet most interfaces present this process as a linear conversational history. This obscures the branching nature of exploratory workflows, making it difficult for users to understand how images evolve, revisit intermediate states, and compare alternatives. In this work, we investigate how interactive visualizations of editing histories can address these limitations. We present BranchVis, a prototype that represents prompts and generated images as nodes in a tree-based visualization, enabling direct navigation, unambiguous revisitation, integrated comparison, and management of complex histories. A within-subject study (N = 12) comparing BranchVis to a conversational interface shows significantly higher usability, lower cognitive workload, and improved support for exploration, navigation, comparison, control, and understandability. These findings highlight editing history visualization as a promising direction for human-AI interaction.
