⚡ 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
Dynamic Thresholding
Adjusted the connections to this node again based on (new to me) information found while looking for the best settings for this node.
If you are getting nightmare fuel while using this, try adjusting the threshold_percentile. Adjusting it up make the node "clamp" down on the image more aggressively, while lowering it will make it less aggressive. I recommend using 0.9 to 0.99
Adjust the minimum CFG to match whatever the lowest value is of the sampler/scheduler combo you use. I'll include a couple versions of the workflow using a standard sampler and a CFG++ sampler. If your images are cooked, try lowering this value or adjust the "CFG" value near the KSampler.
Watermark Detection & Removal flow
Added a SAM detector node to the flow. This has given me better results and just uses the same SAM Loader from the Detailer portion of the workflow.
Disclaimer: it doesn't always detect the watermarks, but it's better than nothing.
There is a method that involves much less nodes using CLIPSeg, but in my experience, it did not work well.
Dropped Lying Sigma Sampler from the Detail Daemon group.
Cool idea to have it, but it's too much for Illustrious IMO.
Moved all the bypass switches to the beginning of the workflow.
Switched the negative prompt node back to how it was previously instead of using ImpactWildcardEncode for it.
The settings on the workflows in the .zip file are what I used for the first two images in the samples for this version. (Since someone asked how they can make their images look like mine). You can toggle the options you don't want to use if you just want to go vanilla.