ComfyUI Krea Reference

Give each reference image a job before it reaches Krea.

Krea Reference is a small ComfyUI custom-node package for directing Krea 2 with multiple image references. Instead of one source image vaguely influencing the whole result, each image gets a clear role: preserve the subject, borrow a visual style, copy lighting, suggest a material, follow a layout, or avoid copying text and logos.

The demo images above were generated with the included workflows. Each individual PNG in docs/assets/krea-v9/demos has ComfyUI workflow metadata embedded, so you can drag a demo PNG into ComfyUI to inspect the exact setup.

What It Helps You Do

Goal	How to set it up
Put image 2's style onto image 1	Image 1: keep the same subject at 0.80. Image 2: suggest the visual style at 0.45 to 0.65.
Keep a product or character recognizable	Use keep the same subject for the identity image, then add lower-strength style, lighting, or material cards.
Borrow lighting without copying the subject	Use copy lighting and mood around 0.30 to 0.45.
Borrow a surface or finish	Use suggest material or texture around 0.25 to 0.40.
Follow a pose, crop, or composition	Use copy pose and layout or copy big shapes only at gentle to medium strength.
Use a reference that contains text or logos	Add avoid copying text/logos at very low strength, usually around 0.03.

How The Workflow Thinks

Each guide card answers two questions:

1. What should Krea borrow from this image?
2. How strongly should this image guide the result?

The stack encoder combines the written prompt and all connected guide cards:

Load Image -> KG Krea 2 Image Guide Card V9 -> KG Krea 2 Reference Stack Encoder V9 -> KSampler positive input

That makes multi-reference workflows easier to reason about. A product image can be responsible for the subject, an abstract image can be responsible for style, a third image can be responsible for lighting, and a fourth can protect against text/logo copying.

Included Nodes

Node	Purpose
KG Krea 2 Image Guide Card V9	Describes one reference image. Choose a recipe or use manual tuning.
KG Krea 2 Reference Stack Encoder V9	Combines the final prompt and up to 12 guide cards into Krea conditioning.
KG Krea 2 Image Guide Card V10	The V9 card plus four more recipes, guide direction, per-card timing, and layer dials.
KG Krea 2 Reference Stack Encoder V10	The V9 stack plus balance, study reuse, a stack report, and a prepared-reference preview.

The nodes expose plain-language controls for prompt strength, image strength feel, image detail level, framing, timing, and text/logo guard behavior.

What V10 Adds

V10 extends the same architecture without touching V9; the two versions cross-connect, and saved V9 workflows keep working unchanged.

V10 control	What it does
Four more quick recipes	suggest the color palette, use the background/setting, copy the camera framing, and mood board only - jobs that previously required manual tuning.
Your own recipes	Drop schema-validated YAML/JSON files into custom_recipes/ and they appear in Use image for as first-class choices.
Aspect-focus recipes	A recipe's focus field names which aspect of its image to study - "the clothing and garment style, not the person" - so recipes can target clothing, props, or other object-bound aspects.
Starter recipes included	Three ready-made custom recipes load out of the box: borrow the weather, borrow the clothing style, and cinematic color grade.
Recipe Builder	web/recipe-builder.html (also served at /extensions/<pack folder>/recipe-builder.html): three plain-language questions become a validated recipe file - no schema knowledge needed.
Guide direction	A card can steer away from its image: a counter-example for a palette, composition, subject, or style you do not want.
When this card guides	Per-card timing: whole image, early layout only, or final details only.
Structure/Finish layers pull	Manual-mode dials over the structure-vs-finish conditioning layers.
Balance strong cards	Keeps several simultaneously hot cards from fighting by budgeting their total departure.
Reuse image studies	Caches image studies by content, so strength and timing tweaks re-run without any encoder passes.
stack_report output	A plain-language account of what every card requested, what it got, and why.
prepared_references output	A contact sheet of exactly what the vision encoder studied after treatments.

The V10 demo images above were generated with the V10 recipes and have the matching V10 workflow embedded - drag one into ComfyUI to inspect the exact setup. Each demo's full journey (input images, settings, prompt, result) is documented in the V10 user guide.

Per-node details: V10 guide card and V10 stack encoder. Try krea-v10-full-showcase-workflow.json for all of it in one graph.

Install

Clone this repo into your ComfyUI custom_nodes directory and restart ComfyUI:

cd /path/to/ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/kgilper/krea-reference.git

This repo does not include model weights. Use your own Krea-compatible model, CLIP, and VAE files in ComfyUI.

Try It In Five Minutes

1. Copy example_assets/krea-reference-examples into your ComfyUI input/ folder.
2. Load example_workflows/krea-v9-full-showcase-workflow.json.
3. Queue it once with the included synthetic reference images.
4. Replace the Load Image nodes with your own test images.
5. On each guide card, choose Use image for and adjust How strongly this image guides.

The full showcase demonstrates five roles:

Slot	Recipe	Starting Strength
Content anchor	keep the same subject	0.80
Visual style	suggest the visual style	0.65
Material/texture	suggest material or texture	0.35
Lighting/mood	manual tuning with lighting controls	0.45
Text/logo guard	avoid copying text/logos	0.03

Recipe Examples

These examples show the effect of common guide-card recipes. Open the linked PNG or drag it into ComfyUI to load the embedded workflow.

Recipe	Example	Use it when
balanced		One image should be a broad, general reference.
keep the same subject		The object, product, person, or character must stay recognizable.
suggest the visual style		You want palette, medium, finish, and art direction without copying the style image's subject.
copy lighting and mood		You want light direction, contrast, haze, glow, or atmosphere.
suggest material or texture		You want a surface quality such as fabric, stone, ceramic, paper, metal, or paint.
avoid copying text/logos		A reference contains words, labels, UI, signs, symbols, or brand marks.

Example Workflows

Workflow	Best for
krea-v10-full-showcase-workflow.json	First V10 run. Six cards including the new palette, environment, and framing recipes, per-card timing, gentle balance, and both feedback outputs.
krea-v10-counter-example-workflow.json	The V10 away from this image direction: keep the subject, push a style out.
krea-v10-reference-stack-workflow.json	Compact V10 starter graph with the report and prepared-references previews wired.
krea-v10-starter-recipe-workflow.json	A shipped custom recipe in action: cinematic color grade (from the auto-loaded starter pack) grading the scene from a style reference.
krea-v9-full-showcase-workflow.json	First V9 run. Shows content, style, material, lighting, and text/logo guard cards together.
krea-v9-no-prompt-style-transfer-workflow.json	Applying image 2's style to image 1 with no written prompt.
krea-v9-reference-stack-workflow.json	Compact starter graph for building your own multi-reference workflow.

The examples intentionally avoid LoRA, model-enhancer, and switch-node plumbing so the Krea reference nodes are easy to inspect.

Good Starting Values

Strength	Meaning	Good uses
0.00	Off	Keep a card connected but inactive.
0.03 to 0.08	Tiny nudge	Text/logo guard, shape hints, stubborn prompts.
0.10 to 0.25	Gentle guidance	Layout, material, mood-board influence.
0.25 to 0.45	Strong guidance	Lighting, texture, pose, broad style.
0.50 to 0.90	Very strong	Content anchor or deliberate style transfer. Watch for over-copying.

Tips:

• Start strengths low and raise slowly.
• Use 0.80 only when the main subject must stay stable.
• Lower Image detail level if a style image starts copying the wrong subject.
• Raise Written prompt strength when the text prompt should win over references.
• Use text/logo guard whenever a reference includes readable marks.

Documentation

Start here	What it contains
V10 visual HTML guide	Visual walkthrough of everything V10 adds: new recipes, direction, timing, balance, reuse, and the feedback outputs.
V10 Markdown user guide	Same V10 guide in Markdown form for GitHub reading.
V9 visual HTML guide	Full visual walkthrough of the core recipes with embedded-workflow demo PNGs.
V9 Markdown user guide	Same guide in Markdown form for GitHub reading.
Documentation landing page	Short navigation by task.
Node documentation index	Per-node input and output details.
V9 technical paper	How and why the nodes work: architecture, math, verification, extension and porting guides.
V10 technical companion	The V10 mechanics on top of that architecture: direction math, balance, the study cache, verification, limitations.
Example workflows	What each bundled workflow is for.
Testing guide	Maintainer checks for contract tests and workflow validation.

Development Checks

The contract tests run without launching ComfyUI:

python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "test_*.py" -v
python -m compileall -q kg_krea_v9 kg_krea_v10 __init__.py

License

MIT. See LICENSE.