Rebel Preview Image 📺

You don't always want to write a file. When you're iterating on a prompt or debugging a workflow, you want to look at the image without cluttering your output folder - which is exactly what ComfyUI's PreviewImage node is for. Rebel Preview Image 📺 is the pack's animated version: feed it an IMAGE and it renders the picture on the canvas (drawn over the pack's animated background, per the README's promise that images load seamlessly over the animation), writing only to ComfyUI's temp folder rather than your permanent output. It's the iterate-fast node, dressed to match.

How it works

Standard wrapper, with one twist worth knowing: the preview is a temp-file operation. The node writes the image to ComfyUI's temp directory with a randomized suffix (_temp_xxxxx), pushes it to the browser, and ComfyUI's temp cleaner sweeps it away later - so you get to see your results without building a permanent collection of 47 near-identical PNGs. The actual preview rendering is ComfyUI's own PreviewImage code; the wrapper just points it at temp storage and adds the cosmetic theme/color_scheme enums on top. The animation and the image preview coexist because the JS draws the backdrop in the background layer and lets the preview render over it.

The inputs that matter

• images - the IMAGE to preview, from your VAE Decode or any pixel output.
• theme / color_scheme - the 12 animations and 14 palettes, sitting behind the preview image.

There are no outputs - it's an output node that ends the branch, just like stock PreviewImage.

Installing it

One clone, no dependencies:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/RealRebelAI/Rebels_Animated_Nodes.git

Restart ComfyUI, then hard refresh the browser (Ctrl + F5 / Cmd + Shift + R) so the cached frontend JavaScript reloads and the animation draws. It's under Rebel AI → Animated Core.

Where people get burned

• "The image isn't in my output folder." Correct - it's a preview, so it goes to temp. That's the feature, not a bug. If you want it permanently, that's the Rebel Save Image node's job.
• Preview shows the previous run. Output nodes re-run when their inputs change; if nothing changed upstream, ComfyUI may serve the cached last result. Run something new and it updates.
• No animation after install. Browser cache - hard refresh, and re-refresh after pack updates. The pack's #1 documented issue.
• Flat on Nodes 2.0. The pack draws on the legacy LiteGraph canvas; under ComfyUI's newer frontend the preview works but the animated backdrop can go missing.

If you're building a Rebel-styled workspace, this is the natural companion to the Rebel Save node: preview while you iterate, save when you're happy, both in the same jacket.