A StackGAN is named as such because it has two GANs that are stacked together to form a network that is capable of generating high-resolution images. It has two stages, Stage-I and Stage-II. The Stage-I network generates low-resolution images with basic colors and rough sketches, conditioned on a text embedding, while the Stage-II network takes the image generated by the Stage-I network and generates a high-resolution image that is conditioned on a text embedding. Basically, the second network corrects defects and adds compelling details, yielding a more realistic high-resolution image.
We can compare a StackGAN network to the work of a painter. As a painter starts working, they draw primitive shapes such as lines, ...
