We consider a class of convex integral functionals composed of a term of linear growth in the gradient of the argument, and a fidelity term involving L 2 distance from a datum. Such functionals are known to attain their infima in the BV space. Under the assumption that the domain of integration is convex, we prove that if the datum is in W 1,1 , then the functional has a minimizer in W 1,1 . In fact, the minimizer inherits W 1,p regularity from the datum for any p ∈ [1, +∞]. We also obtain a quantitative bound on the singular part of the gradient of the minimizer in the case that the datum is in BV . We infer analogous results for the gradient flow of the underlying functional of linear growth. We admit any convex integrand of linear growth, possibly defined on vector-valued maps.The functional E λ f is weakly lower semicontinuous on W. However, this space is not reflexive. Hence, without additional assumptions E λ f may fail to attain its infimum. In order to resolve this issue, one may opt to consider instead its lower semicontinuous envelope E λ f in L 2 (Ω, R n ).