XB-BOX - Batch Folder Loader

ComfyUI's stock image loaders want you to pick one file from a dropdown. XB_BatchFolderLoader does something different: you point it at a folder on disk and it serves you the images from it one at a time, advancing through them with its seed field. Same workflow, re-run it, get the next image. If you've ever built a batch pipeline by dragging the same Load Image node fifty times, this is the version that doesn't make you.

It's categorized under XB_ToolBox/Batch_Process, and it's aimed at the "run this whole workflow over a directory of inputs" job - img2img a folder, upscale a folder, caption a folder. The node doesn't loop itself (it's one image per run), but a seed stepper plus "queue" makes it a one-button assembly line.

How it works

At load time the node:

1. Lists every image (png, jpg, jpeg, webp, bmp, jfif) in the directory you give it.
2. Sorts them naturally - img2.png before img10.png, the way a human expects, not the string-sort ComfyUI often gives you.
3. Picks the current file as seed % total_count, so seed = 0 is the first image, seed = 1 the second, and so on. The seed field's own tooltip calls it a "built-in auto-stepper" - bump it by one per run, or use the increment control_after_generate setting to do it automatically.

One important quirk: directory is an absolute OS path, not a ComfyUI-folder path. The node raises FileNotFoundError if you hand it a relative path or a non-existent directory - this is the opposite of the usual "put it in input/" workflow, and it's the first thing that trips people up.

The outputs are the interesting part:

• IMAGE - the current image as a tensor.
• MASK - its alpha channel if present (inverted to the ComfyUI mask convention), or a zero mask if not.
• FILE_NAME - a formatted string Images/Batch/YYYY-MM-DD/<name>, built for feeding a save node that writes into a dated batch folder.
• TOTAL_COUNT - a STRING like Total images detected: 42, which is the node's own progress indicator.

The inputs that matter

• directory - absolute path to your folder.
• seed - the stepper. 0 = first file (natural-sorted), 1 = second, etc.

Installing

Part of XB_ToolBox - ComfyUI Manager → XB_ToolBox, or

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/WJLUOXIAO/XB_ToolBox.git

restart, no extra dependencies.

Common issues

• "Directory not found" - you gave a relative path. Use the full path, e.g. D:/comics/panel1 or /home/user/pics.
• Same image every time - seed isn't stepping. Set the seed's control_after_generate to increment.
• Wrong order - it natural-sorts, so a2 < a10. If your filenames aren't zero-padded, accept the order or rename.
• MASK is all black - that's the "no alpha channel" case, correctly reported as an empty mask. Not a bug.

The catch: because it loads one file per run, it's not a true "process everything" node - you drive it with the seed stepper rather than a batch size. That's a feature for some workflows (watch each result before advancing) and a mild annoyance for others, where a bulk loader would be nicer.