diff --git a/src/anomalib/data/base/datamodule.py b/src/anomalib/data/base/datamodule.py
index a7fd7bb23e..9471c16bb7 100644
--- a/src/anomalib/data/base/datamodule.py
+++ b/src/anomalib/data/base/datamodule.py
@@ -157,6 +157,11 @@ def _create_val_split(self) -> None:
             # converted from random training sample
             self.train_data, normal_val_data = random_split(self.train_data, self.val_split_ratio, seed=self.seed)
             self.val_data = SyntheticAnomalyDataset.from_dataset(normal_val_data)
+        elif self.val_split_mode == ValSplitMode.FROM_TRAIN:
+            # randomly sampled from training set
+            self.train_data, self.val_data = random_split(
+                self.train_data, self.val_split_ratio, label_aware=True, seed=self.seed
+            )
         elif self.val_split_mode != ValSplitMode.NONE:
             raise ValueError(f"Unknown validation split mode: {self.val_split_mode}")
 
diff --git a/src/anomalib/data/utils/split.py b/src/anomalib/data/utils/split.py
index e78d49ed5f..30659b2ea0 100644
--- a/src/anomalib/data/utils/split.py
+++ b/src/anomalib/data/utils/split.py
@@ -46,6 +46,7 @@ class ValSplitMode(str, Enum):
     NONE = "none"
     SAME_AS_TEST = "same_as_test"
     FROM_TEST = "from_test"
+    FROM_TRAIN = "from_train"
     SYNTHETIC = "synthetic"
 
 
diff --git a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/config.yaml b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/config.yaml
index ebe6c2be58..743cdb8618 100644
--- a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/config.yaml
+++ b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/config.yaml
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ dataset:
     eval: null
   test_split_mode: from_dir # options: [from_dir, synthetic]
   test_split_ratio: 0.2 # fraction of train images held out testing (usage depends on test_split_mode)
-  val_split_mode: same_as_test # options: [same_as_test, from_test, synthetic]
+  val_split_mode: from_train # options: [same_as_test, from_test, synthetic]
   val_split_ratio: 0.5 # fraction of train/test images held out for validation (usage depends on val_split_mode)
 
 model:
diff --git a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/lightning_model.py b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/lightning_model.py
index 09922ba7fc..fc3cbea151 100644
--- a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/lightning_model.py
+++ b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/lightning_model.py
@@ -59,10 +59,10 @@ class EfficientAd(AnomalyModule):
         model_size (str): size of student and teacher model
         lr (float): learning rate
         weight_decay (float): optimizer weight decay
-        padding (bool): use padding in convoluional layers
-        pad_maps (bool): relevant if padding is set to False. In this case, pad_maps = True pads the
-            output anomaly maps so that their size matches the size in the padding = True case.
+        padding (bool): use padding in the convolutional layers of the student/teacher architecture
         batch_size (int): batch size for imagenet dataloader
+        pretraining_images_dir (str): path to folder with images used to pretrain the teacher model
+                             and the code is calling it "imagenette", but it could be any dataset.
     """
 
     def __init__(
@@ -73,8 +73,8 @@ def __init__(
         lr: float = 0.0001,
         weight_decay: float = 0.00001,
         padding: bool = False,
-        pad_maps: bool = True,
         batch_size: int = 1,
+        pretraining_images_dir: str = "./datasets/imagenette",
     ) -> None:
         super().__init__()
 
@@ -84,12 +84,12 @@ def __init__(
             input_size=image_size,
             model_size=model_size,
             padding=padding,
-            pad_maps=pad_maps,
         )
         self.batch_size = batch_size
         self.image_size = image_size
         self.lr = lr
         self.weight_decay = weight_decay
+        self.pretraining_images_dir = pretraining_images_dir
 
         self.prepare_pretrained_model()
         self.prepare_imagenette_data()
@@ -115,8 +115,9 @@ def prepare_imagenette_data(self) -> None:
             ]
         )
 
-        imagenet_dir = Path("./datasets/imagenette")
+        imagenet_dir = Path(self.pretraining_images_dir)
         if not imagenet_dir.is_dir():
+            raise FileNotFoundError(f"Imagenette dataset not found at {imagenet_dir}")
             download_and_extract(imagenet_dir, IMAGENETTE_DOWNLOAD_INFO)
         imagenet_dataset = ImageFolder(imagenet_dir, transform=TransformsWrapper(t=self.data_transforms_imagenet))
         self.imagenet_loader = DataLoader(imagenet_dataset, batch_size=self.batch_size, shuffle=True, pin_memory=True)
@@ -290,7 +291,6 @@ def __init__(self, hparams: DictConfig | ListConfig) -> None:
             lr=hparams.model.lr,
             weight_decay=hparams.model.weight_decay,
             padding=hparams.model.padding,
-            pad_maps=hparams.model.pad_maps,
             image_size=hparams.dataset.image_size,
             batch_size=hparams.dataset.train_batch_size,
         )
diff --git a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/torch_model.py b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/torch_model.py
index 950087785b..7fb2d6bd95 100644
--- a/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/torch_model.py
+++ b/src/anomalib/models/efficient_ad/torch_model.py
@@ -219,9 +219,7 @@ class EfficientAdModel(nn.Module):
         pretrained_models_dir (str): path to the pretrained model weights
         input_size (tuple): size of input images
         model_size (str): size of student and teacher model
-        padding (bool): use padding in convoluional layers
-        pad_maps (bool): relevant if padding is set to False. In this case, pad_maps = True pads the
-            output anomaly maps so that their size matches the size in the padding = True case.
+        padding (bool): use padding in convoluional layers of the student/teacher architecture
         device (str): which device the model should be loaded on
     """
 
@@ -231,11 +229,10 @@ def __init__(
         input_size: tuple[int, int],
         model_size: EfficientAdModelSize = EfficientAdModelSize.S,
         padding=False,
-        pad_maps=True,
     ) -> None:
         super().__init__()
 
-        self.pad_maps = pad_maps
+        self.padding = padding
         self.teacher: PDN_M | PDN_S
         self.student: PDN_M | PDN_S
 
@@ -340,9 +337,13 @@ def forward(self, batch: Tensor, batch_imagenet: Tensor = None) -> Tensor | dict
                 (ae_output - student_output[:, self.teacher_out_channels :]) ** 2, dim=1, keepdim=True
             )
 
-            if self.pad_maps:
+            if not self.padding:
+                # when the teacher/student architecture does not use padding, the output anomaly maps
+                # are smaller than if they had it, so the maps are misaligned. To fix this, we pad
+                # score maps by 4 pixels on each side. See github.com/openvinotoolkit/anomalib/discussions/1368
                 map_st = F.pad(map_st, (4, 4, 4, 4))
                 map_stae = F.pad(map_stae, (4, 4, 4, 4))
+
             map_st = F.interpolate(map_st, size=(self.input_size[0], self.input_size[1]), mode="bilinear")
             map_stae = F.interpolate(map_stae, size=(self.input_size[0], self.input_size[1]), mode="bilinear")