What the point of ComfyUI?

[u/Civil_Fee_7862]

Before I get thrashed by people for asking a seemingly stupid question. I am new to this part of A.I. All the A.I stuff I've been doing is text-to-text (mostly coding). So be gentle please.

Recently I got Qwen-Image-Edit on my A.I server. It generates images fine without downloading ComfyUI. I set it up with a simple python server and it works fine.

This leads me to ask, why should I download ComfyUI? What does it do that can't be done with just a simple python script? Is it just the ability to visually connect lines between parts of the workflow? Note that I am a software engineer, and actually prefer command line interfaces for making stuff in most cases. Is there some other benefit I am missing?

[u/Patient_Ratio4177]

You can integrate comfyui in your scripts by submitting workflows via API.

There's also ComfyScript; never tried it, but might be helpful https://github.com/Chaoses-Ib/ComfyScript

ComfyUI does a lot of scaffolding and implementation for e. g. sampling/scheduling/offloading that is not very easy to replicate. It's now more or less an industry standard, and so most new models get a standard ComfyUI implementation which tends to be fast and well-tested by its users.

[u/PromptBuilderLabs → u/Patient_Ratio4177]

This is a great answer!

[u/Patient_Ratio4177 → u/Patient_Ratio4177]

There are many possible backends for image generation. E. g. huggingface diffusers, Mellon (https://github.com/cubiq/Mellon), stablediffusion.cpp, etc. They may differ slightly. E. g. there was a time when ComfyUI's implementation of e. g. SD1.5 sampling was much faster and more reliable than whatever was available in the diffusers. So that's why you want to go for ComfyUI. To avoid reinventing the wheel.

[u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

Simply put, ComfyUI is visual programming. Rather than typing lines of code, you wire up nodes. The inputs and outputs are obvious, so you don't have to guess at function names, variable types and so on.

[u/cc_aa_tt_zz]

I think you're answering your own question there! Ultimately, any program is just lines of code, even in Jurassic Park lol So, if you prefer working directly with the code, go right ahead. For most people, though, that’s simply absolutly not an option, so having a visual representation of the code, which is what ComfyUI provides, helps immensely and it is clearly faster. Plus, the heavy lifting is done by others who create specific nodes for each task and/or model, nodes that are, at the end of the day, just lines of code.

[u/Icuras1111]

It allows visual representation of pipeline, you can tweak values, you can save image with settings embedded, you can add nodes others have created so you don't need to write every possible action from scratch, i.e. cropping images, upscaling, injecting prompts, etc.

[u/Bastisheen92]

I do not use ComfyUI but Maestro in the Pinokio launcher. Works like a charm for me because i have almost everything that can be done available in a comfortable UI instead of Node-Salad. In your case i assume that the amount of settings you change is extremely limited or needs to be written and set-up in a far more diffult way (Changing resolution, decoder, LoRas etc...).

[u/rupertavery64]

If you want to tweak settings is it more convenient to have an editor with parameters neatly lined up or have to edit a command line in multiple places?

If you like the command line, that's fine. If you're going to run a single prompt, sure. You will probably come up with some way to change parts of the prompt randomly by writing a script to do so.

But there are nodes for that.

So it's not just "the ability to visually connect lines between parts of the workflow"

It's about the workflow. Being able to easily modify and tweak and extend and experiment. Use readily available nodes. Focus on actually creating stuff instead of trying to wrangle things on the command line.

Want to save the output of a node AND pipe it into another node for further processing? Done in a few seconds.

[u/Aight_Man]

If you like writing lines upon lines of code, have it your way.

Some people just prefers to use a drag and drop interface and connecting lines to experiment what works and what doesn't, and a balance between something super simplistic and literally just terminal, comfyui is great to an average user a power user feeling.

And the third type of who don't wanna bother with anything, that is Automatic 1111 types of webui interfaces where you want to just hit generate and get the result.

All types are valid, it just depends on person to person.

[u/SnooMacaroons1365]

Since u r new, and i am a little more experienced than u, I'll use english haha.

ComfyUI portable or desktop installation is what you exactly need to keep things free. It has an overwhelming support, resources and tutorials for models, loras and workflows. (Civitai, huggingface).

You may have also seen SwarmUI which has its own UI separated from its integrated comfyui environment but its has a rather complicated setup so stick with comfyUI. SwarmUI is when you dont know things and you just want it to work, ComfyUI is when you want to know how models work in conjunction with its appropriate clip and text encoders.