The process begins with an empty page (a single full-page panel). Initial cuts—whether single or multiple equally spaced ones—divide this page into distinct panels. Subsequent cuts are applied to existing panels and can be nested to achieve arbitrary levels of complexity.

Cuts are defined by:

Direction — horizontal or vertical
Position — selected from 5 potential relative positions to the panel being cut
Angle — a slight deviation from the defined direction for aesthetic purposes
Number of cuts — only applicable for one relative position option, where cuts are forced to have equal spacing

Sample layouts are provided in the sample_layouts folder, but you can create and store your own using the Save Panel Layout node.

The image below shows one of the sample layouts:

A Panel Layout does NOT store specific panel properties such as:

Corner shape
Margins relative to page borders
Line thickness or style

However, it can implicitly define relative spacing between panels through the order of cuts, though not with concrete values.

The order of panels (annotated with number stamps) is determined by the cut sequence. By default, this order also defines relative spacing between panels. The first cut(s) create larger margins, suggesting a reading direction parallel to the cut for nested panels, which are visually grouped due to having smaller margins. The panel order aligns with this visual suggestion—to deviate from this pattern, you must modify the panels or their order separately from the layout.

When saving, previewing, or processing a layout, you can choose between left-to-right or right-to-left orientations. These options don't change the underlying data—a layout saved as left-to-right can be used as right-to-left—but help maintain visual coherence with your preferred reading direction.

Panels

Panels are represented as shapely.Polygon objects, defining the concrete shape of each panel on the canvas.

To extract panels from a layout, use the Build Layout Panels node.

These panels can be modified using the following nodes:

Rotate Polygon
Scale Polygon
Translate Polygon
Skew Polygon
Bevel Polygon
Offset Polygon Bounds

Alternatively, panels can be extracted from images using the Detect Panels In Image node. This node uses a basic computer vision algorithm that performs best on blank images with black shapes representing the panels. However, clean and simple panel layouts from comics or manga can also be used effectively as input.

Once a polygon is adjusted as desired, you can convert it into a mask using one of these nodes:

Panel to Mask
Polygon To Resized Mask (recommended when used with the Paste Crops with Masks node)

To better understand the differences and potential uses of these nodes, refer to the example workflows.

You can use the Draw Panels Edges node to generate an image with the panels' outlines, which you can use to have clear visual separation between the panels and the rest of the page. Additionally, there are nodes available that create panel borders using dashed or dotted lines instead of solid strokes.

As you may have noticed, panels are sometimes referred to as "polygons" in the node names and outputs.
This dual naming, though potentially confusing, is intentional: nodes and outputs using the "polygon" nomenclature are designed for broader compatibility with other packages that may also use shapely.Polygon objects.