Topaz Photo AI

The name is a small lie, in the good direction: Topaz Photo AI doesn't call any cloud API and needs no key. But it does need a licensed, installed copy of Topaz Photo AI on the same machine, because what this node actually does is launch the real tpai.exe engine as a subprocess, hand it your image and a pile of CLI flags, then load the result back. That's the whole trick, and it's why this is the star node of the Comfy-Topaz pack.

Why bother, when SeedVR2 and friends are free? Because Topaz is still the paid baseline everyone benchmarks open upscalers against - it pulled more discussion than SUPIR and ESRGAN combined in the first half of 2026 - and its reputation is that it stays true to the source instead of regenerating it. The community verdict has been consistent for years: "SUPIR tends to imagine random shit, Topaz is more true to life." If you already own a Topaz license and live in ComfyUI, this pulls the upscale/sharpen step into your graph instead of exporting, processing in the app, and importing back.

How it works. For each image in the input batch it saves a temp PNG to ComfyUI/temp/upscaled, runs tpai.exe with --output, --compression, --format png, and --showSettings, then reads the enhanced file back. It's synchronous and external - every run spawns the app, so budget a few seconds per image rather than expecting realtime. The --showSettings flag makes tpai print the final settings JSON to stdout, which the node parses to produce its two string outputs. You can literally watch it work in the ComfyUI console.

Auto-pilot vs manual - the key design decision. Leave the upscale and sharpen inputs unconnected and Topaz auto-detects what the image needs. That's the simplest path. When you do that, the autopilot_settings output shows what it decided, and settings lists every feature and knob that went into the final image. Both are string readouts (one JSON blob per image) for your eyes, not plumbing - you inspect them, you don't feed them onward. To take control, wire in a TopazUpscaleSettings and/or TopazSharpenSettings node and it overrides auto-pilot for that pass.

Inputs and outputs that matter:

• images (required, IMAGE) - what gets enhanced.
• compression - 0–10, default 2. Output compression for the processed file.
• tpai_exe - string path to the executable. Auto-filled from the ComfyUI setting when empty; set it once and forget it.
• upscale / sharpen - the two settings nodes, both optional.
• Outputs: settings (STRING list), autopilot_settings (STRING list), IMAGE (the upscaled/enhanced result - wire it into a Save Image or preview).

Install and the one gotcha that bites everyone:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/choey/Comfy-Topaz

Restart ComfyUI (or use Manager, search Comfy-Topaz). Then open Settings → Topaz Photo AI (tpai.exe) and point it at your executable - the default C:\Program Files\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Photo AI\tpai.exe is right for a stock install. It's Windows-only, and you need a paid Topaz license; no license, no engine, nothing to shell out to.

The classic failure is ValueError: Topaz AI Upscaler not found at ... - a bad path, almost always because the setting was never touched. Beyond that, expect the first run to be slower and remember auto-pilot is a starting point, not gospel. When it's configured right, this is the rare node that makes a subscription app feel like part of the open ecosystem rather than a detour from it.