Batch Load Images (Mikey)

The simplest way to describe this node: it's a folder-to-batch loader with no opinions about size or aspect ratio. Where its sibling Batch Resize Image for SDXL also resizes everything to fit a specific model's pixel budget, this one just loads - whatever's in the folder, at whatever resolution it already is.

What it does

Point it at a directory and it reads every image inside as a batch, outputting them as a single IMAGE list you can wire into whatever comes next - a resize node of your own choosing, a batch img2img sampler, a captioning pipeline, or a preview grid. It's the pack's answer to "I have a folder of images and I want them in my graph," full stop, without baking in any assumptions about what you're going to do with them afterward.

The inputs that matter

Only two: image_directory, the path to load from, and subdirectories (true/false, default false). That second one is the whole reason to reach for this node instead of a more basic loader - flip it to true and it recurses into subfolders under the path you gave it, pulling images from the entire directory tree rather than just the top level. That's genuinely useful if your dataset is organized into per-subject or per-category folders and you want everything in one batch without flattening the structure by hand first.

One output: image, marked as a list, same as the resize variant - every file becomes an entry in the batch, ready for whatever node you chain next.

Installing

Comes with the full Mikey Nodes pack. ComfyUI Manager: search "Mikey Nodes," install, restart. Manual: cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/bash-j/mikey_nodes, restart ComfyUI. Nothing model-related to download for this node specifically - it's file I/O, not inference.

Troubleshooting

• Mixed image sizes causing a batch error downstream. This node doesn't resize or normalize dimensions, so if your folder has images of wildly different resolutions, whatever consumes this node's output may choke trying to batch tensors of different shapes together. If that happens, chain a resize node (Mikey's own SDXL resize node, or ComfyUI's core Image Resize) right after this one before the batch reaches a sampler.
• Subdirectories not showing up. Double-check the subdirectories toggle is actually set to true - it defaults to false, meaning it only reads files sitting directly in the path you gave, not anything nested underneath.
• Non-image files in the folder. Loaders like this generally expect the target directory to contain only image files; stray .json, .txt, or system files (like macOS's .DS_Store) sitting in the same folder can cause a load error. Keep source folders clean if you hit unexplained failures.
• Order isn't what you expected. Folder-based loaders typically read in filesystem order, which is often alphabetical rather than creation-date order - if sequence matters (frame-by-frame images, for instance), name your files with zero-padded numeric prefixes (0001_, 0002_) so alphabetical sort matches the order you actually want.