Load Image (URL)

The README's own description of this node is the whole pitch: LoadImageUrl ("Load Image (URL)") "acts just like the normal Load Image node" - except instead of picking a file out of ComfyUI's input folder, it fetches the image straight from a URL over HTTP. No manual download, no copying files between machines.

It ships in city96's ComfyUI_NetDist pack, which mostly exists to let two separate ComfyUI processes hand work back and forth over the network - city96 is better known now for ComfyUI-GGUF, the quantized-model loader most of the community runs, but this is an older, unrelated pack about distributing execution, not models.

How it works

It's a plain HTTP GET under the hood. Give it a URL that resolves directly to image bytes, and it decodes that response the same way core ComfyUI decodes a local file. In NetDist's own remote setups this is one way a second instance can pull a source image without you manually staging files on both machines. Plenty of people also just use it standalone, wired to whatever serves images over HTTP - another graph's SaveImageUrl output, a static file host, anything that returns raw image bytes on request.

The inputs and outputs that matter

• url (STRING) - the only input. Point it at anything that returns an image directly; there's no auth support, no header customization, so URLs that require a login or redirect through an HTML page won't work.

Outputs mirror the stock Load Image node exactly: IMAGE and MASK, so this drops into any spot in a graph that already expects those two - same as core, no alpha channel in the source means a blank mask back.

How to install it

Via ComfyUI Manager: search ComfyUI_NetDist. Manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/city96/ComfyUI_NetDist
pip install requests

Restart ComfyUI. requests is the pack's only dependency - nothing image-specific to install beyond that.

Common issues & troubleshooting

The node errors or loads garbage. Almost always means the URL isn't a direct image response - check it isn't redirecting to a login page, serving an HTML wrapper, or gated behind cookies/auth headers this node has no way to send. Open the URL in a private browser tab first; if you don't see a raw image immediately, this node won't either.

Mask always comes back blank. Normal, and not specific to this node - same as core Load Image, a source without an alpha channel (a plain JPEG, most PNGs) just gives you a fully-blank mask. If you need a real mask, you need a source with actual alpha.

Using it as the "receiving" half of a NetDist link. If you're pairing this with SaveImageUrl on another instance to move images between machines, remember SaveImageUrl doesn't write anything to disk on its end - you need something actually listening on the URL you point LoadImageUrl at, whether that's a small server you wrote or the other ComfyUI instance's own endpoint.