⚡ Illustrious Workflow as of version 18
🛠️ Purpose & Design Philosophy
This workflow is a high-fidelity environment built for Illustrious XL. It prioritizes stability and professional texture over generation speed. It follows an "all-in-one" philosophy: configure your prompts, hit queue, and let the workflow handle the multi-stage refinement from start to finish.
Not for Speed: This is a heavy-duty refinement tool. If you want 2-second previews, use a basic SDXL workflow.
Personal Use: Built for my specific production needs. It is shared as-is for those who want a "set-and-forget" pipeline for Illustrious.
All-in-One Logic: The workflow handles generation, detailing, and upscaling in one continuous pass.
🚀 Key Features & 2026 Logic
Global Model Patching (RescaleCFG): Includes a pre-configured RescaleCFG patch (Multiplier: 0.7) applied globally. This acts as "HDR Insurance," preventing the "deep-fried" or over-saturated look common in high-CFG Illustrious runs.
Detail Daemon Sampler: Integrated to enhance structural depth. In this version, it is tuned to start at 0.4 to preserve the core Illustrious character proportions while sharpening hair and eye details.
Hybrid Upscale Strategy: * Group Bypass Switch: Easily toggle between a Pixel-only (Lanczos) path for flat anime styles and an Upscale-Model path for 2.5D/highly detailed renders.
Ultimate SD Upscale: Re-draws the upscaled canvas at a 0.35 denoise to lock in fine textures.
Power LoRA Loader: Manage multiple Illustrious-specific LoRAs without messy wiring.
Triple Detailer Groups: 3-stage targeted refinement for faces, hands, and clothing using standard detection models.
CivitAI Meta-Sync: Images are saved with full metadata (Model, LoRAs, Sampler info) for automatic site parsing.
⚠️ Disclaimer & Compatibility
Install at Your Own Risk: Custom nodes can break your environment. I am not responsible for troubleshooting your specific installation.
ComfyUI Portable: Built and tested on the Portable version. Desktop app users may face additional hurdles.
The "Your Version" Factor: Your node versions and environment are 99.9% likely to differ from mine.
Nodes 2.0: I do not recommend using Nodes 2.0. It creates unpredictable UI behavior; I will not provide support for issues involving this feature.
🤝 Support & Boundaries
No DMs: DMs are disabled due to repeat spam. Please check the Discussions tab below; most questions have already been answered.
Modifications: You are free to hack this workflow apart. However, you are responsible for fixing it if it breaks.
Custom Requests: I do not make private workflows. If you need a custom solution, post a Bounty on CivitAI. There are many talented creators ready to help you for a fee.
Description
Edit: Fixed version uploaded over the original v8c file on 9 May 2025 9:39PM UTC
Version 8c changes:
As always - newer does not necessarily mean better.
Generation time using the default settings on the workflow: 167 seconds on a 5060ti 16GB
Generation time with extras enabled: 217 seconds
Added several Group Bypass nodes throughout the workflow:
These will allow you to toggle things on and off throughout the workflow before you start the generation process.
The main reason for this was that I initially was trying to figure out how to utilize the Context Switch from rgthree’s custom nodes.
The reason for that is I wanted two options at the detailer portion of the workflow and to reduce the amount of manually toggling a bunch of things just for this one part.
Option 1: use the 2 usual FaceDetailer nodes that I already had in the workflow.
Option 2: use a combined Detailer node that will do it all at once.
Everything on the smaller Group Bypass nodes throughout the workflow can be bypassed. So if you’re just wanting to use the initial KSampler, now you can easily.
Smoothed Energy Guidance (SEG) has been added for the initial image generation only:
Having it connected to the whole workflow slows it down too much.
What does it do?
It “influences how the model generates images, resulting in enhanced image detail, realism, and composition.”
It’s supposed to be more stable than Perturbed Attention Guidance, but who knows?
FreeU V2:
Settings have been adjusted to fit results I liked, but can easily be changed or bypassed.
Dynamic Thresholding has been added back in and is bypassed by default.
FreeU V2 and Dynamic Thresholding - Post (after) KSampler:
There will be a 2nd set of these two nodes specifically for everything after the 1st KSampler.
This was done to exclude SEG from the rest of the workflow.
Ultimate SD Upscale:
There is a node next to each USDU that is for CFG called Add/Subtract “b” from CFG. These particular nodes are set to add or subtract 2 from the initial CFG setting. This is supposed to affect upscaling via USDU in a positive way.
If adding more CFG, then less steps should be used and vice versa. To toggle Add or Subtract, just click on the “op” field on the node and select either Add or Subtract.
Added an “upscale with model” group between the two USDU ControlNet groups.
This group will upscale the output from USDU 1 and then downscale it back to the original starting image size. Then it will be upscaled again in USDU 2 and typically will come out nice than just feeding the image directly from USDU 1.
I have had pretty good success with this and it does not add too much time, unless your upscale model is one of those that take forever to load.
Color Match and Color Correct can now be bypassed individually without breaking the flow.
Mahiro has been removed.
Disclaimer: depending on your local install of ComfyUI, this workflow may not function correctly for you due to an endless amount of factors where your ComfyUI install may differ from mine.
Hoping this will be the last workflow update for a while. *fingers crossed”