Load Upscale Model (Downloaded)

Upscalers are the most "I'll get to it later" part of a fresh ComfyUI setup - you'll need one eventually, you never remember to download it, and the default options are a wall of file names. Load Upscale Model (Downloaded) is the piece of ComfyUI Model Batch Downloader that loads the upscale_models category out of a batch result, so the upscaler arrives in the same queue run as everything else instead of being the one file you chase down afterwards.

What it actually loads

The upscale_models folder is home to the ESRGAN-family pixel upscalers - the workhorses like 4x-UltraSharp, the anime variants, and the rest. These are the "more pixels, no invention" tools from the upscaling world: they enlarge an image without hallucinating new detail, which makes them the right first rung for anything you want bigger. (If you want a model to invent detail - that's the generative restorers like SeedVR2/SUPIR, a different category entirely, and not what this loader deals with.)

So the workflow shape: generate → this loader's UPSCALE_MODEL → UpscaleModel → ImageUpscaleWithModel → whatever you do with the bigger image. The loader itself has no settings; it's a thin wrapper over ComfyUI's own UpscaleModelLoader, so the loaded model behaves exactly like one you picked from a dropdown.

Inputs and outputs

• download_result - from the download node.
• id - the manifest ID of the upscaler file (filename stem if unset).

Output: UPSCALE_MODEL, which feeds UpscaleModel (the node that actually runs the enlargement). That's the whole interface - no strength, no mode. Which upscaler you get is decided by which file you told the downloader to grab, so the interesting decisions happen in the manifest: file the upscaler under upscale_models (or the loader refuses with the pack's category-mismatch guard) and pick a model_type that matches what you downloaded.

Why batch-download your upscaler at all

Two reasons. First, fresh-box setup: an upscaler is the file that gets forgotten, and folding it into the same manifest as your checkpoint and LoRAs means it's just there. Second, swapping: the "which upscaler" question is genuinely workflow-dependent - 4x-UltraSharp for clean general use, an anime-specific one for illustration - and with a manifest you can change the file, re-run, and get the new upscaler without touching the graph wiring.

Install and troubleshooting

Same pack steps: ComfyUI Manager search for "ComfyUI Model Batch Downloader", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/watarika/ComfyUI-Model-Batch-Downloader.git

then restart ComfyUI. No Python dependencies; the download half needs aria2c on PATH.

Standard failure set: an id not present in the manifest (typo or failed download - interrupted downloads resume next run), and the category-mismatch guard if you filed the file under the wrong type. The one thing worth flagging: some upscale models are large and the downloader verifies no checksums, so if the upscaler comes out of ImageUpscaleWithModel looking broken rather than bigger, re-download the file fresh rather than debugging the loader.