ArchAi3D_Qwen_Colorization

Colorizing a black-and-white photo is one of those jobs where the AI genuinely outshines the manual approach - and Qwen-Image-Edit, being a multimodal editor, is suspiciously good at it, because it can actually see the photo before it paints it. This node is a thin, opinionated wrapper around that: it builds the colorization instruction (auto colors, custom color hints, a historical era, or all three), plus a system prompt that tells Qwen to behave like a photo restoration specialist instead of an artist having fun.

What's on the panel

Five inputs, and only one of them is actually a dilemma:

• auto_color (default on) - let the model choose realistic colors on its own. This is the "just do it well" mode and it's the right default.
• color_hints - used when you turn auto_color off. Give it specifics: "blue sky, green grass, red car, brown brick building". The node drops your hints into the prompt.
• era - the period-accurate option. Nine choices: none, 1900s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Victorian, Medieval. Each maps to a phrase like "appropriate for the 1950s era," so the model reaches for period-appropriate palettes (think muted film tones for the 1940s, Kodachrome-ish saturation for the 1960s).
• preserve_skin_tones (default on) - appends the "maintain natural skin tones" instruction. Leave it on; skin is where colorizers always fail, and this is the pack's attempt to keep faces from turning green or orange.
• debug_mode - prints the generated prompt so you can see what the node actually asked for.

Outputs

prompt - the colorization instruction ready for your Qwen encoder - and system_prompt, the restoration-specialist framing ("Colorize black and white or grayscale images with realistic, natural colors... Preserve all image details, composition, contrast, and clarity"). Wiring that system prompt in is worth doing; without it Qwen has a tendency to "improve" the photo while it's at it.

How it works

Pure prompt composition - there's no colorization model hidden in here, no separate checkpoint. The node picks era phrases and color hints, layers in the skin-tone clause, and hands a plain-language instruction to Qwen-Image-Edit, which dual-encodes your B&W image (vision semantics + appearance) and repaints it in color. The whole trick is that the instruction is well-worded, which is the part people normally get wrong.

When to reach for it

Family photo restoration, historical archive work, vintage image enhancement, B&W art you want colored. The era presets are the differentiator - most "colorize" prompts forget that a 1920s photo and a 1970s photo should not share a palette. Pair it with the pack's watermark removal or a quick cleanup pass first, and run it through the encoder with your Qwen Edit model; it's a two-node job from there.

Install + notes

Standard pack install - ComfyUI Manager ("ArchAi3d Qwen") or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/amir84ferdos/ComfyUI-ArchAi3d-Qwen.git
cd ComfyUI-ArchAi3d-Qwen && pip install -r requirements.txt

Restart, find it under ArchAi3d/Qwen/Editing. You still need Qwen-Image-Edit weights. Two practical notes: auto_color + era together is the best combo (era nudges, auto fills in the rest), and if you're colorizing a face-heavy portrait, consider cropping to the face first - Qwen Edit's identity consistency on unseen faces is not its strong suit, and the model is more likely to mangle a small face in a wide shot than in a close crop.