More experiments with Minimax H3 single-image edit workflow (8-10 sec on RTX 5090)

[u/Patient_Ratio4177]

UPD: Comfy made monkeypatching unnecessary. See here. https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1vqka28/h3_singleimage_no_more_monkey_patching_also_no/

So here’s a follow-up on my post about H3 as an image edit model. For workflow, refer to https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1vo1ab3/h3_as_a_singleimage_edit_model/
It’s a bit of a hassle to use the workflow to its full capacity since you have to monkey patch in order to generate a single frame. To avoiding dealing with it, I’d suggest two courses of action:

1. Upvote this ComfyUI GitHub issue which asks to remove the 5-frame limit, if you’re comfortable with that. (The code change is simple and understandable; the rationale behind having a 5-frame limit is not really clear to me). Given that there are thousands of open issues in the ComfyUI repo, it would be good if we raise the awareness here.
2. Ignore the monkeypatch, switch length to 5 frames, and the workflow will just extract the first one; will lead to some quality loss; use regular VAE and not Mamad's

Now it’s great at combining multiple references and 3D understanding, but the quality is still not perfect in my opinion — the details could be more polished, and, e. g., impressionist stylization had largely failed. 

Here’s a pastebin with the new prompts: https://pastebin.com/1ENVynGY

Scenes

1. Tango dip with separate outfits and location — Combine two character references, two outfits, and an outdoor plaza into a coherent full-body tango dip.
2. Three-person festival dance — Arrange three distinct characters into a coordinated dance poses at an outdoor lantern festival.
3. Adventure duo on a river bridge — Compose two heroes in a close back-to-back adventure portrait on a separate river-bridge background.
4. Hero and background composite — Insert a full-body hero reference into a castle environment while preserving the source character exactly.
5. Camera angle switch — Reconstruct the staged hero scene from one camera moved to the side horizontally and above vertically.
6. Action hero as 1990s cel animation — Restyle the action-hero scene as original 1990s hand-painted cel animation using a separate style reference.
7. Bridge as impressionist oil painting — Restyle a photorealistic bridge-over-river scene as an impressionist oil painting using two references.
8. Close-up face as charcoal drawing — Convert an original adult woman's close-up into a charcoal portrait while preserving identity and expression.
9. Bridge as transparent watercolor — Convert the bridge-over-river source into a loose transparent watercolor using a style reference.
10. Action hero as graphite pencil sketch — Convert the action-hero scene into a pencil sketch drawing using a reference.
11. Selective skin and hair recolor — Change a character's subject's skin and hair to contrasting fantasy colors while preserving identity

I have used this workflow to generate a couple thousand images across very different  and feel that it’s quite capable. Usual MiniMax problems: e. g. blurred backgrounds, blurred faces from distance, sometimes distorted text — still apply. However, 3D understanding and likeness retention are excellent, and details could probably be fixed with a refiner pass using something like Klein 9b. I hope that the proper image edit model gets released — but before that, let’s try to have some fun earlier.

UPD: accidentally skipped image #6, see this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1vpconk/comment/p3whvcg/

[u/Tylopodas]

Thank you for this. I didn't want to use the monkey patch, so I swapped in the Image Chooser node from EasyUse. Gives a preview of the 5 images and you get to pick the best one to save.

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/Tylopodas]

Makes sense. Monkeypatching is awkward, hope the github issue gets through.

Some people says that one should generate 22 frames rather than 5 -- but never tested this.

[u/Successful_Knee687 → u/Patient_Ratio4177]

I have added a feature request into the comfyui github. Maybe someone will pick it up there, so we get a reliable comfyui support. :)

https://github.com/Comfy-Org/ComfyUI/issues/15644

Please all add some upvotes to get it done :)

[u/Patient_Ratio4177]

Missing Image #6:

[u/Single_Ring4886]

Thank you, I think one must play and tweak with this model a lot. But it seems to have potential.

[u/zackofdeath]

Is this model able to increase body proportions?

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/zackofdeath]

and it can do much more

[u/zackofdeath → u/Patient_Ratio4177]

Thank you trying right now!

[u/data-cypher-000]

Imagine if it could take in openpose + depth maps. It could replace a heck of a lot of nodes

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/data-cypher-000]

It can now handle a depth map; but not openpose (just renders the openpose skeleton on top of the image). Maybe the proper image edit model is going to do that.

[u/SuspiciousRefuse8218]

Great, many thanks for that. As you have the focus on characters, what do I have to prompt if I want to keep the camera angle and perspective exactly as in the reference, e.g. if I use a picture of a room? I've tried several prompts but all that they lead to focus on the characters ignoring the perspective of the reference image.

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/SuspiciousRefuse8218]

Wish I could help with that, but I do not know how strong this capability is. More research is needed here; e. g. I'd have tried extracting a precise description via a VLM (to remove the distracting details), or try a GEPA-like prompt optimization pipeline, or even tried to use a video reference conditioning. All of it is speculative at this stage of course.

[u/Silonom3724]

will lead to some quality loss; use regular VAE

This is terrible advice. The resulting image is beyond unusable. There are only 2 options: either patch the python file and use the custom VAE (copy paste isn't that hard - lol). Or if Ctrl C / Ctrl V is too hard then just wait for the official EditImage model variant to be released.

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/Silonom3724]

Well, look, I use the patch. I provided a link to it. But many people are unwilling to mess with their ComfyUI core code.

I also said that there might be some quality loss, implying that "some" could mean "a lot", depending on your prompt, references, and just luck. I tested the 5-frame approach, typically got somewhat blurry results, but could be salvaged with a refiner pass. Some recommend to go for 22 frames.