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Glossary · ComfyUI Basics

What Is Outpainting in ComfyUI?

By Earngenix Team ·

⚡ Quick Answer

Outpainting extends an image beyond its original borders, generating new content that continues the scene outward. Instead of masking something inside the picture like inpainting, you pad the canvas with blank space on one or more sides and let ComfyUI fill that space in based on what's already there.

Think of it as pulling a photo's edges outward and asking the model to guess what's just outside the frame — matching the original's lighting, style, and composition as it extends the scene.

Where You'll See It

The Pad Image for Outpainting node adds blank padding to whichever side (or sides) you choose, and outputs both an extended image and a mask marking exactly where the new content needs to go. That feeds into the same VAE Encode (for Inpainting) pipeline used for inpainting — outpainting is really inpainting applied to newly-added blank space.

Quick Example

Turning a square portrait into a widescreen shot: pad the left and right sides with the Pad Image for Outpaintingnode, then run the same masked-KSampler pipeline used for inpainting. The model fills the padded sides with scenery that matches the original photo's lighting and background.

Extend in smaller steps — around 25–50% of the original size at a time — rather than one huge jump. Large single-pass extensions give the model more empty space to invent at once, which usually shows in blurrier or less coherent results near the edges.

Frequently Asked Questions

Inpainting regenerates a masked area inside an existing image. Outpainting extends the canvas outward and generates new content in the added space. Both rely on the same masked-sampling mechanics underneath.

Smaller extensions — roughly 25–50% of the original image size — usually blend better than one huge jump. For large extensions, it often works better to outpaint in a few smaller passes instead of one giant one.

No. Outpainting works with a regular checkpoint through the Pad Image for Outpainting node plus the same inpaint-conditioning pipeline. A dedicated inpaint model can still help the new area blend more cleanly.

See It In Action

Ready to extend your first canvas?

Our in-paint and out-paint guide walks through the padding, masking, and sampling steps with real examples.

Published: 2026-08-25 · Last updated: 2026-08-25

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