view_bridge_image

view_bridge_image is a preview node with a bonus: it shows you the image, optionally composites a mask onto it so you can see exactly what's being masked, and then passes both the image and the mask back out so the graph keeps running. Most preview nodes are dead ends - wire them in and the pipeline stops there. This one is a "bridge": it looks like a terminal, but it's also a pass-through.

Where you'll actually reach for it is inpainting and regional work. Before you burn a generation, you want to confirm that (a) the image arriving at your inpaint stage is the image you think it is, and (b) the mask actually covers what you intend. This node shows both in one place, and because it doesn't terminate the wire, you can drop it into an existing pipeline for a run, look at the preview, and leave it there or delete it without rerouting anything.

How it works

The image input is what gets displayed. If you also wire in a mask, the node composites the two using the operation you pick, so you can eyeball the mask region against the real pixels. Then both the (possibly composited) image and the mask flow out of the image and mask outputs for the next node.

The inputs and outputs that matter

• image (IMAGE) - required, the image to preview.
• mask (MASK) - optional. Feed a mask to overlay on the image for inspection.
• operation - the enum with +, -, *, &, or None. This picks how the mask combines with the image for the preview. Default + adds the mask visually; None skips compositing and just shows the image.
• output_mask (BOOLEAN, default off) - whether to also emit the mask on the mask output.
• image_update (IMAGE_FILE) - optional. A slot for pulling in an image via the pack's file-bridge system (the same IMAGE_FILE type its batch loaders use) without a full image wire.

Outputs are image (the image, composited or not) and mask (the mask, when output_mask is on).

How to install it

It's in the ComfyUI-Apt_Preset pack. Install once via Manager (search "ComfyUI-Apt_Preset") or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/cardenluo/ComfyUI-Apt_Preset

then run install.bat (Windows) or pip install -r requirements.txt and restart ComfyUI. No model downloads for this node.

Common issues & troubleshooting

Two things to keep straight. First, this is an output node, so ComfyUI treats it as a terminal and writes the preview to your output directory each run - that's standard behavior, not a bug. Second, the operation enum is small and literal: & is a bitwise-ish combine, * multiplies, +/- add or subtract. If a preview looks washed out or inverted, try None first to confirm you're seeing the raw image, then reintroduce the mask - that isolates whether the issue is the composite or the mask itself.

Pack-level, the usual: this is a niche pack by a Bilibili-based author, README translated, names terse. The one real community issue is IMPORT FAILED for the whole pack when dependencies are skipped - run install.bat, restart, and confirm the node loads before debugging the workflow.