🔍 Image Comparer V2 (beta)

ComfyUI's Nodes 2.0 frontend rewrite broke a lot of custom-node rendering in late 2025 - rgthree's comparer stopped working on day one, and whole packs are still catching up. Orion4D's answer is this node: Image Comparer V2, built specifically for the new Vue-based interface instead of patching around it.

It's the newer half of the pack's comparer pair. The legacy 🔍 Image Comparer is for the classic LiteGraph canvas; V2 is the "beta" version you want if you've turned on Nodes 2.0. Same job, better fit.

The job, quickly. Two IMAGE inputs, image_a and image_b, no outputs - it's a terminal preview node. You drop it at the end of two branches and compare. Where V2 differs from V1 is how you compare: it has two modes. Slide reveals B over A as you drag a vertical slider across the image - great for spotting exactly where an upscale or grading pass changed things. Click toggles between A and B on each click. There's also a Swap A/B button that reverses which image is on top without rewiring anything (slide mode only).

Same handling for mismatched sizes as its sibling: images auto-align to the largest dimension and letterbox on black, which is precisely what you want when comparing an original against its upscale.

How it avoids the Nodes 2.0 mess. The V1 node draws straight onto the LiteGraph canvas, and Nodes 2.0's own rendering can sit on top of that - which is why V1's image stops responding to clicks and darkens on hover there. V2 skips the standard thumbnail render entirely and draws through a DOM widget with zoom/DPR compensation, so the interactivity survives on the new canvas. The trade-off, noted in the README: at canvas zooms above 100% the image can progressively pixelate. Keep it at 100% and you won't see it.

Where people get burned: same trap as every comparer - it's a terminal node, no IMAGE comes out. And if you're on the classic interface, V2 is overkill; V1 is the better pick there. There's also an honest "beta" label on the box, so if you hit a rendering quirk on an unusual browser, that's the price of being early.

Install. ComfyUI Manager → search "Orion4D_MetaNode", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/orion4d/Orion4D_MetaNode

Restart ComfyUI; the node lives under Orion4D_MetaNode/Preview. No extra Python dependencies for it - the pack's requirements are mostly what ComfyUI already bundles.

Bottom line: if you're on Nodes 2.0 and you compare outputs (upscales, seeds, LoRA swaps), this is the comparer that keeps working. That's a rarer thing in 2026 than it should be.