Stack_ShadowAndGlow

Most of ComfyUI's ecosystem is built around generation - sampling, conditioning, upscaling. Stack_ShadowAndGlow is one of the few nodes in Apt_Preset that's straight-up graphic design: it's a config bundle for the two layer effects every image editor has had since Photoshop 3 - drop shadow and glow - meant to be applied downstream to a cutout or composited element, not to a generated scene as a whole.

What it's for. If you're compositing a subject onto a new background (a common workflow after a segmentation or background-removal pass), a flat cutout reads as fake without some kind of depth cue. A drop shadow grounds it against the surface it's sitting on; a glow can sell a rim-light or "magical" edge. This node doesn't do any compositing itself - like several others in the pack, it has no image input at all, it just defines the effect parameters and outputs a SHADOW_AND_GLOW_DATA bundle for whatever node applies it.

The shadow settings. shadow_x/shadow_y (-100 to 100) set the offset direction and distance, shadow_color and shadow_opacity the obvious things, shadow_blur how soft the edge is. shadow_type picks between three renderings: single is one plain shadow, multi stacks several shadows (multi_shadow_count, 1-10) for a layered "sticker" depth effect, and gradient fades between gradient_shadow_start and gradient_shadow_end rather than using one flat color - useful for a shadow that reads as more natural under angled light.

The glow settings. Two independent glows: outer_glow_color/opacity/radius projects a halo outward from the subject's edges, and inner_glow_color/opacity/radius does the same but pulling inward from the edge toward the center - the combination you'd reach for on something like a neon sign, a magic effect, or just to give a flat cutout a bit more visual presence.

Installing it. Standard pack install, nothing extra needed for this node specifically: cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/cardenluo/ComfyUI-Apt_Preset, restart ComfyUI, or search "ComfyUI-Apt_Preset" in ComfyUI Manager. Windows users should run the bundled install.bat once after cloning to be safe, since other nodes in this pack pull in extra dependencies Manager's resolver can miss.

Troubleshooting. Because this node produces nothing visible by itself, the first thing to check if "nothing happened" is whether its SHADOW_AND_GLOW_DATA output is actually wired into a node downstream that applies it - this config-then-apply split is a recurring pattern across the pack, and it's easy to leave the config node dangling while you're still building the graph. If a shadow or glow looks invisible even when correctly wired, check opacity first - both glow types default to 0.8, which is visible, but shadow blur and radius both default to 0, meaning a hard, unblurred edge; if you expected something soft and diffuse, you need to actively raise shadow_blur or the glow radius fields rather than assume a sensible default is doing it for you. And if you set up a gradient shadow but it looks identical to a flat one, double check both gradient_shadow_start and gradient_shadow_end are actually different colors - they default to near-black on near-black, which will look flat unless you deliberately contrast them.