[Concept] Image Feed(s)

[LukeG89]

Just an idea.

Currently, we have different ways to see images, but all methods have some issues and/or limitations.

• Preview Image nodes (as well as Save Image nodes) can only display the latest image or batch of images you generated

• Show Image Feed 🐍 displays ALL the previews of your workflows (e.g. including ControlNet Preprocessors)

• Queue window is the best option, but has a similar problem as Show Image Feed 🐍

How to overcome the limitation of Preview Image nodes and just display the wanted images in a single place?

There could be an option to include Preview Image (or Save Image) nodes as Image Feed windows!

Proposed workflow:

• Select a Preview Image node (e.g. node title: "Final Image" - node color: "blue")
• Right-click menu
  • Controller Panel
    • Include this node as Image Feed

And then:

• Click "+" on Controller window
• On the list, there is also "Final Image" with a blue background color
• Select it -> A new Image Feed window is created

Now you can browse, zoom and move around every single image from that specific Preview Image node.

@chrisgoringe @JorgeR81 What do you think?

[JorgeR81]

Maybe it could be more simple.

Each Preview Image node, could have an extra icon / button ( "history" )

When you click it, it would be blue.

And when it's blue, when you scroll the Preview Image node, it will show it's past images.

When you scroll, it will be overlayed: current image number / total images in that node.

You can open and save past images, like you can do with the current image.

And if you generate again, the button would be "toggled off", to display the current generation.

[chrisgoringe]

What's the advantage of doing this compared to, say, looking at the images in the folder?

Or having a button that opens a new window in the browser with the image history?

Just wondering. I've never used the features you describe, so not at all sure what the use case is.

[JorgeR81]

What's the advantage of doing this compared to, say, looking at the images in the folder?
Or having a button that opens a new window in the browser with the image history?

For me the advantages of an image feed are:

• You don't need to use a Save Image node, which saves all the images, even the ones you don't want to keep.
• And if you use a Preview Image node, you don't need to worry about saving every image you like, after generating it.
  Once you're done, you can review all images in the current session, and save the ones you like. 
  Although if I have a really good image, I save it right away, just in case :)

---

Advantages of having a feed in the Controller:

• Instead of having a global feed, we could have an image feed for each stage/Preview Image ( e.g. Sampler, Refiner, Face Detailer ).
  In a normal feed, all the images would show up in sequence, so it's more confusing to figure out which is which.

[JorgeR81]

Instead of displaying the image feed, one by one, in the Preview Image node, a scrollable gallery could show up.

It could look like other ComfyUI gallery extensions, but it would be only for the history of a specific Preview Image node.

https://github.com/wogam/image-gallery-comfyui

[chrisgoringe]

Right. I think there are already lots of tools that allow you to view images, I don't plan to build another. But integrating with something that already exists, maybe.

I'm aware of the danger of the Controller trying to become everything. It's a view of the workflow that is easier to work with.

[JorgeR81]

But integrating with something that already exists, maybe.

What do you mean ?

• Displaying the image feed, one by one, in the Preview Image node.
• And if we have a gallery extension, open that instead.

That could work.

---

I'm aware of the danger of the Controller trying to become everything. It's a view of the workflow that is easier to work with.

Yeah, this would be nice, but I agree that there are more important features, for the Controller.

I was about to suggest that, if you decide to do something like this, maybe it could work better as a separate extension.
Even without the Controller, it would be interesting to see the feed / history for a particular Preview Image node in the graph.

[JorgeR81]

In case you want to try this someday, as a separate extension, it could work like this:

• We have a new right click option the in the Preview Image node: Show History
• If enabled, the image history, for that node, will be shown directly the Preview Image node ( like an Image Bach )

We just need to zoom in the graph, to better see all the images, or display them one by one. 

This way we could use the native features of the Preview Image node, and a gallery extension would be needed.

[chrisgoringe]

What I meant was, that rather than building scrolling views into the controller, an Image Preview node in the controller could keep a list of all the (finished) images it has shown, and that we could provide a mechanism to launch a new browser tab which contains one of the many image carousel packages out there, loaded with the list of images.

[chrisgoringe]

I will add that as an idea #321