ComfyUI Installation Process (Desktop Application)

ComfyUI is a node-based user interface type for Stable Diffusion. It allows the implementation of generative AI models to achieve different output materials, from images and videos to even audio or 3D model generation. Some important examples of generative AI models are Stable Diffusion and Flux, which are responsible for image generation. 

One of the unique aspects that ComfyUI captures is the customization capacity it provides to its users, allowing them to apply different AI workflow processes. There are different applicable options for running ComfyUI. The most common approaches are either locally, through downloading the Portable ComfyUI version, or ComfyUI’s desktop application, or accessing it through a cloud-based website such as RunDiffusion. 

The local installation process of ComfyUI would include multiple steps to complete the setup holistically. The following steps are for downloading the ComfyUI Desktop Application.


In parallel, downloading and installing git would also be necessary to be able to run ComfyUI, through this link: https://git-scm.com/downloads


After applying the mentioned steps, open the ComfyUI Setup program and continue the
installation steps accordingly, to finalize the initial ComfyUI setup:

1) Select the GPU type of your device

2) Choose the installation location (better to place it in a new folder)

3) For migrating from an already installed portable version of ComfyUI (skip if you don’t have the ComfyUI portable version)

4) Finalizing desktop app settings

By doing so, ComfyUI will automatically run final downloads to conclude the setup. After the downloads are done, ComfyUI opens up, showcasing multiple existing workflow templates, which users can review. You can select the workflow according to your output intention.

Installing ComfyUI-Manager

All the seen workflows are bound to some necessary AI models and sometimes custom nodes as well, which require installation for the workflows to run.

Furthermore, to be able to download such AI models or custom nodes, the next step is to download the ComfyUI-Manager extension: https://github.com/Comfy-Org/ComfyUI-Manager 

Below is a simple step to download the ComfyUI-Manager:

1. Go to your ComfyUI/custom_nodes folder.
2. Open terminal (cmd) within this file location (by left-clicking on the location bar, and
   typing cmd).
3. Paste the following code: git clone https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager
   comfyui-manager
4. Hit enter.
5. Restart ComfyUI to ensure that the installation has taken place.
   
   

This process should download the ComfyUI-Manager to your program, which would show on the top-right side of ComfyUI.

Conclusion

By downloading ComfyUI-Manager, you can now access the library of AI models and custom nodes through the ComfyUI navigation bar. Thus, the process of downloading the AI models and custom nodes inside ComfyUI is now streamlined. 

Ultimately, this process would frame the complete setup method of ComfyUI’s Desktop Application. You can always install missing models or custom nodes through the ComfyUI Manager.