Runware Load Image (URL)

This node does one thing: paste a URL, get an IMAGE tensor. That's it - one input, one output, no settings. But in the Runware/ComfyUI-Runware pack it quietly solves the most annoying problem you'll hit: model nodes want reference images, and they take them as IMAGE sockets, but a lot of what you actually have is a link - a Runware result URL, something from a previous render, an asset you uploaded to a host. This node bridges that.

It lives in Runware/Params alongside the builder nodes, and it's the node you reach for constantly once you know it exists. Need to feed a referenceImages socket on a Kling or Krea node from an image hosted anywhere? This. Pulled a URL out of a JSON response with Runware Get and want to see it? This.

How it works

Under the hood it's a URL fetcher with a resize wheelhouse: the node downloads the image, decodes it, and hands it back as a float IMAGE tensor in the shape ComfyUI expects ([B,H,W,C]). Its sibling upload node sends images to Runware as base64; this one does the reverse trip, turning a remote image back into something you can wire anywhere in a graph. The one real behavior quirk: if url is empty, the node returns a blank placeholder tensor rather than erroring, so an unwired or emptied URL silently gives you a black frame instead of a complaint.

The one input

• url - the image URL, as text. Any public HTTP(S) image URL works, including Runware's own imageURL result links.

Where it fits

The typical chain is: a Runware image node → you want to reuse that output as a reference somewhere else, or the custom node returned JSON and you extracted 0.imageURL with Runware Get → that string becomes this node's url → out pops an IMAGE you can feed into a referenceImages socket or a local img2img workflow. It's also the honest way to pull an image in from Discord/S3/CDN links without downloading it to your ComfyUI input folder first.

Installing it

It's part of the pack, so the install is the standard one:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Runware/ComfyUI-Runware
pip install -r ComfyUI-Runware/requirements.txt

Restart ComfyUI and it shows up under Runware/Params. No API key needed for this node specifically - it's a plain fetch - though everything else in the pack will want one.

Where people get burned

Mostly by forgetting it exists and hand-saving images to disk. And that empty-URL behavior: if a graph that used to work now feeds a black image somewhere, check whether this node's url field got disconnected. There's no error to read - the blank frame is the error message.