Studio Compare Board

"Which one's better - A or B?" is the most common question in look development, and the honest answer is you can't tell from a mid-run preview at 512px. MKRStudioCompareBoard builds a proper side-by-side board: two images, labeled, on a themed canvas, with a header that says what you're comparing and footers for context. It's the presentation layer for A/B testing that makes the comparison legible to a client instead of a mess of unlabeled windows.

Mechanically it's a layout node - it takes image_a and image_b, resizes them to fit the board with a gutter between, and composites them onto a themed canvas with a header (title + subtitle), a footer (footer_left/footer_right), and optional index labels. Orientation flips the layout from left/right to top/bottom, which is what you want for comparing tall aspect ratios.

The inputs that matter

• image_a / image_b - the two IMAGE inputs. If your variants come out of two KSampler branches, this is the node that finally shows them together.
• title / subtitle - what the board is claiming to compare. Put the hypothesis in the title; it'll read in the header.
• label_a / label_b - default "A" and "B". Rename to something meaningful like "SDXL" vs "Flux" and the board becomes self-documenting.
• theme - Carbon/Paper/Signal/Blueprint.
• orientation - Horizontal or Vertical.
• margin_px / gutter_px / header_px / footer_px - spacing control; defaults are reasonable at 1080p.
• shadow_strength - drop-shadow under the images, 0 to 1.
• show_index - add index numbers if you're paging through several boards.

What comes out

image (the finished board) and compare_info (a JSON string describing the comparison). Optional delivery_plan_json input lets the pack's delivery pipeline pick up what this board is for.

Installing it

Part of criskb/MKRShift_Nodes from Cris K B. ComfyUI Manager search "MKRShift_Nodes", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/criskb/MKRShift_Nodes

Restart. No pip requirements, no models.

When it shines and when it doesn't

This is genuinely the one you reach for when a client says "send me both." It does not do pixel-level diffing or blend overlays - if you need to spot the difference down to the eyelash, you want a dedicated comparison/AB-diff node with a flicker toggle, not this. And it's exactly two images, so it's not the batch tool - that's MKRStudioContactSheet. Right tool, right job: two variants, one legible board.