Eric Qwen Direction Save

A direction is only worth the two Encode passes it took to build it if you can reuse it. Eric Qwen Direction Save writes a QWEN_DIRECTION out to ComfyUI/models/qwen_directions/ as a .safetensors file, and it does it cheaply - direction files run 1–3 MB, the same order as a small LoRA and a rounding error next to the 54 GB model.

That's the workflow: encode a pair, compute the direction, save it, and six months later load it straight from the dropdown on a completely different image. Film emulation is the canonical example - you encode a color photo and its Nik Silver Efex B&W conversion, compute the "Silvermax direction", save it, and apply it to any future photo without redoing the pair.

The inputs

• direction - from Direction Compute or an Average node.
• filename - default my_direction. The tooltip shows the neat bit: subfolders are supported, so silvermax/01 creates the folder automatically. The docs recommend zero-padded names (01, 02 not 1, 2) so directory listings sort correctly.
• save_as_bf16 - off by default. Toggle for half the file size; fine for archiving, since bf16 is the precision the conditioning tensors already run in.

Output is the same direction you put in - it's a passthrough, so you can chain Save after an Average and keep the flow going, or just let it terminate.

Where it lands

Files go under ComfyUI/models/qwen_directions/. The Dropdown on Direction Load and Direction Average From Folder scans this tree recursively and refreshes every run, so a save shows up without restarting.

Installing it

ComfyUI Manager → "Eric Qwen-Edit", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/EricRollei/Eric_Qwen_Edit_Experiments.git

Restart. It needs a pipeline loaded upstream (any pack loader, model from Qwen/Qwen-Image-Edit-2511, ~54 GB) only because the Encode/Direction Compute nodes upstream need one - Save itself is pure tensor writing.

Gotchas

• Save won't save the LoRA. Directions target the Qwen2.5-VL text encoder's embedding space, not the denoiser. That's a feature: directions are portable across LoRA configurations. Save the direction, not the setup.
• Naming is your library. A direction called direction_1 is useless next week. Name it for the edit (silvermax_final, smile_happy), and use subfolders to keep pairs separate from averaged finals.
• There's no overwrite guard you'll notice. Writing the same filename again silently replaces the file. Keep versions in subfolders if you're iterating.
• Not the same as a checkpoint. Direction Load expects a direction file, and the dropdown only lists what's in models/qwen_directions/ - don't point it at a random safetensors and expect it to parse.