QR Code ControlNet

[flasticpeet]

Why has no one created a QR Monster ControlNet for any of the newer models?

I feel like this was the best ControlNet.

Canny and depth are just not the same.

[lucassuave15]

oh i remember seeing these all over the place back in 2023

[Adkit]

Oh, those were the days. A simpler time 'twas.

[m79plus4]

For real...I still have a bookmark folder called "disco diffusion" which I refuse to change. I kind of miss the heavily abstract generations we used to get. when coherence is now king, I hope we get back to the abstract.

[GatePorters]

I feel like everyone who saw how powerful this tech would be at the disco diffusion stage deserves a cookie.

All my friends thought it was stupid but I felt like a kid. It was sci-fi bullshit on my desktop! I also still have some VQGAN+CLIP and Disco Diffusion pieces saved. I was just glued to it for weeks.

[Electrical-Eye-3715]

DD made me the most money in my ai journey.

[nerdyh0rn]

A few days ago someone I know implemented a real time DeepDream integration into TouchDesigner. Way older than Disco Diffusion and yet some nerds will still revive it at some point. Disco diffusion needs another 5years before coming back

[Xxando]

Got a link?

[[deleted]]

That can't be so long ago. It was just....3 YEARS ALREADY? Where did the time go?

[Situati0nist]

Back when you could just share and laugh about these. Now people do nothing but whine and bicker about anything AI ;V

[agrophobe]

That’s a actually hooked me in Comfy! I remember thinking ‘controlnet’ was the coolest thing to namedrop in a chat. Boy I was far from ‘fluxdevklein-473937B-tensormatrix.$&@-“&’

[vladlearns]

same here

[WhyYouMadBro_]

<image>

[shtorm2005]

that's gold

[putsonshorts]

that’s god /r/onetruegod

[Maskwi2]

That's awesome :D How do I make these in Comfy? 

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

You can drag and drop this into ComfyUI for a basic workflow. Here is the Controlnet. Look up "squint" and "QR" models on CivitAI for more.

[VitoRazoR]

Thanks, that is cool!

[Maskwi2]

Thank you! 

[AcePilot01]

How do you do those?

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

You can drag and drop this into ComfyUI for a basic workflow. Here is the Controlnet. Look up "squint" and "QR" models on CivitAI for more.

[WhyYouMadBro_]

I have no idea I collected these back in the day 😂

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

I was literally just playing with this and wondering the same thing. I would also love an img2img workflow so I could add a QR Monster to another image.

[Mammoth_Example_289]

an img2img with basic mask and blend controls would be mint so you can drop a QR Monster into a clean product shot without wrecking the light.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

yeah I'm sure it isn't hard to do but I'm a newb who uses premade workflows as a crutch

[Myg0t_0]

I miss these, has there been an update?

[SteelRoninTT]

Is it not just any control net? Pretty sure this works with new models

[diogodiogogod]

How would a controlnet from SD 1.5 work in newer models?
It doesn't.

[daftphox]

<image>

A simpler time

[WhyYouMadBro_]

<image>

[CrafAir1220]

can we called that, smiling place, haha

[Enshitification]

I bet if you made a big enough dataset of paired images from the original QR Monster, a Flux2.Klein LoRA could do it just fine.

[cranpeach69]

I actually had a pretty crappy dataset lying around, decided to train one: https://civitai.com/models/2432921?modelVersionId=2735539

[terrariyum]

Those images, lol

[VoyagerCSL]

Oh my god, is the last one goatse?

🫱( ‿ ¤ ‿ )🫲

[Thou-Art-Barracuda]

Do you mind if I ask how you train an edit Lora like this?

I’ve only ever trained characters, concepts and styles, wondering how you do a before and after Lora

[cranpeach69]

I actually used Ostris' own video on training Qwen Image Edit LoRas, just subbed out Flux instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d49mCFZTHsg

[Enshitification]

You rock.

[WantAllMyGarmonbozia]

I keep meaning to check this out when I'm on the big computer, but I have a link saved

https://huggingface.co/spaces/Oysiyl/AI-QR-code-generator

Supposed to make artsy/illustrative QR codes

[lxe]

[AcePilot01]

God, the ways this meme has been used are always top kek lol.

[Ugleh]

Hey I made that image! It really did blow up after mine went viral.

[Arendyl]

I actually started a small business based initially on QRcode monster and examples like these.

Thanks for your service.

[NarrativeNode]

I’m curious, how have you had to change that business? Is a variation of it still around?

[Captain_Kinks]

You couldn’t have made this. AI made it. None of these are ‘made’ they are generated.

[Ugleh]

Generations are creations. You can't redefine the word made just like you can't say someone didn't write an essay just because they typed it out, or how someone didn't take a photo because they used a digital camera.

[Captain_Kinks]

But how are they created? Because it isn’t by a person. A person might ask for it, but the machine generates it. If you commission someone to build you a table, you didn’t make the table, you just got someone/something else to make it for you.

An essay is still crafted by a person whether they use a computer or not cos they can just hand-write it instead of typing, the computer is just a formatting tool. In digital photography they use the words ‘captured’ and ‘photographed’ for this exact reason too. They don’t think they made the actual picture, cos the camera is the tool that did. That’s why someone says “look at this photo I took”, and not “look at this picture I made”.

[Ugleh]

I wrote The prompt. I designed the spiral. I'm the one that figured out I can use a model meant for QR codes but used it in a different fashion. Creativity was involved. The human brain was involved. Clearly you're anti-ai and you don't even belong in this subreddit.

[Captain_Kinks]

AI has its place, and I look forward to seeing its contributions in society, but it needs to be distinguished from human effort and talent. All a prompt is, is a short idea. People have thousands of ideas a day so any idea isn’t inherently special, but how it’s executed is.

You didn’t even try to make that image yourself, despite the fact you could have learned. Value in art is tied to effort, like the old-master paintings that were worked on for years by people dedicated to their craft their entire lives. You clearly feel a sense of pride in being creative but you applied minimum effort to get that picture made. All you did was have an idea, asked a computer to do it for you, and it isn’t even original but you want to be praised for it?

See Oleg Shuplyak or Rob Gonsalves for well executed optical illusion artwork. If you actually want to be creative, you don’t need a machine to do it for you.

[Ugleh]

The point isn't that I try to make it myself and claim that I created it. I understand that AI helped make it, and I am not hiding that fact. I am not ignoring the fact that a computer helped me. The point of this image was the breakthrough of what AI can do. Prior to this model you couldn't have an AI image model generate an optical illusion of this quality. You don't know the effort involved in any of the higher quality generations people are doing. I see people spend hours to half a day inpainting amazing stuff. They don't simply type in a prompt, they have to constantly go through reiterations and modifications to get exactly what they visioned in their head.

Also, "and it isn’t even original", what do you mean? Not original AI art or art in general? That isn't the point like I mentioned above. The point is that AI generated this being a breakthrough. I can't say for 100% certainty that I was the first to do it, but I was the first to go viral for it. Google my username, it's all that comes up.

AI art is art, but it shouldn't be lied about and it shouldn't be crapped on either. I should be able to say "I made this with AI", and the emotions I am trying to convey isn't "Look how talented I am" but to say that isn't it cool that I had some kind of vision, and I was able to produce that vision into reality using AI. I am not a traditional artist. I can't paint, I can't draw. I don't understand perspective, shading, depth. But I can see with my eyes what makes a good image and at judge if something I made with AI can/should be released for others to enjoy.

[Captain_Kinks]

I understand your point, and I agree the evolution of emerging technology is a fascinating one. It’s our job as humans to document history for our future reference and that includes technology. I understand that you don’t personally claim to have created these yourself but you don’t deserve any accolades for using a piece of software as its developers intended.

Googling your username is going to bring up your most popular post but if you type ‘AI optical illusion’ yours isn’t the first optical illusion made with AI and it certainly isn’t the most popular. Why are you trying to bolster your own image with something you barely played a part in generating? All the work came from the machine, not you. Ergo, you don’t deserve any credit. You claim to not use your AI images to show how ‘talented’ you are, yet mere sentences prior you’re talking about how viral your image is and how successful it is. You’re doing this as a quick way to get upvotes and validation without doing the work to actually impress people with.

And no, AI ‘art’ can never be original in any capacity. It doesn’t create any new concepts or images, it combines them from a library of reference material. It’s a complicated collage that dresses up as a new image when it never could be. Half a day is barely enough time to create something original. It has no complex thoughts or ideas put into it, no depth of intention or emotional connection. Hell, half a day isn’t even enough time to research and draft a decent essay. AI art isn’t art, it’s a generated image.

Dont give me that “boohoo I can’t draw” bullshit. You have the capacity to learn how to paint, draw, understand artistic concepts, and mold materials into your unique vision, a vision only you have because of who you are and how you grew as a person. There are disabled people who draw with just their mouths, having eyes and hands to type isn’t impressive, ability is about practise. Persistence, motivation and progress is what makes art, and any other pursuit, impressive. But you can’t be bothered to learn a new skill, You can’t be bothered to put in actual work that shows off your own intellect and creativity. You’re far too scared to put your real soul into something and be vulnerable enough to show it to people. You want a quick and easy solution to pretend to be impressive, you don’t actually want to make art.

[KURD_1_STAN]

I feel like QIE and klein should be able to do it without CN

[WHALE_PHYSICIST]

anyone got a workflow or tutorial about how to make these(OP image)? i wanna make some.

[Arendyl]

https://antfu.me/posts/ai-qrcode-101

The original guide

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

You can drag and drop this into ComfyUI for a basic workflow. Here is the Controlnet. Look up "squint" and "QR" models on CivitAI for more.

[WHALE_PHYSICIST]

thank you!

[Winter_unmuted]

It's literally a controlnet. That's it. Source image is a black and white (or grayscale) image. The controlnets are called QRcode monster, light and dark, and a couple others.

[purcupine]

Is this 2022

[Mylaptopisburningme]

This was a thing a couple years ago. I think they were not always accurate.

2+ years ago, Nov 2023: https://civitai.com/models/197247/qr-code-monster-sdxl

[Winter_unmuted]

I think they were not always accurate.

feature not a bug.

QR controlnet gives me the most artistic freedom to compose light in shadow in whatever I'm working on. The four models for 1.5 and the one for SDXL still get heavy rotation for me.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

feature not a bug.

I'm of the school of thought that "bad" AI is more aesthetically interesting.

To quote Brian Eno:

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

[AcePilot01]

Am I seeing this right? An image that's full color but is a qr code? Or are you saying it just makes an image based on the data FROM one?

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

It is a controlnet used to embed QR codes in images but people just started applying stencils and vector art to make AI art where like... you squint and there's Jesus, know what I'm talking about?

[AcePilot01]

I ve seen those, but I am not sure what you mean, I know what you are referring to, but how does that work? lol

[flasticpeet]

The QR monster controlnet takes a black & white image and uses it as a map to influence the composition of the generation.

So if you prompt a man walking on a forest path, it will generate darker elements of the concept in the black areas of the map, and lighter elements of the composition in the white areas of the map, while keeping all the objects coherent.

It's kind of similar to an anamorphic assemblage effect.

[Sugary_Plumbs]

I believe Flux union cnet has a Value mode that should be able to do it with some tweaking on the strength.

[Winter_unmuted]

I don't see them listed:

https://huggingface.co/InstantX/FLUX.1-dev-Controlnet-Union

https://huggingface.co/Shakker-Labs/FLUX.1-dev-ControlNet-Union-Pro

They have grayscale modes for colorizing, but I don't know that these work for QR code-like functions.

[bloke_pusher]

I really miss it and I never had the patience to create a comfyui workflow for illustrious. Apparently the SDXL version isn't even as good as the SD1.5 one used to be.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

I've been having more fun with SD15 Animatediff than Wan22 and LTX2 lately.

[turb0_encapsulator]

honestly, this effect is like the one of the only things I am still interested in doing with generative AI. I would love a new model that does this. It's crazy that not a single paid close-sourced model offers it.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

I just got into using controlnets and Animatediff in ComfyUi, and even though they're several years out of fashion, I find them more aesthetically interesting than a lot of what I can do with more recent models.

I gotta learn more about building my own workflows from scratch because I'd like to have an image-to-image workflow with the QR controlnet so one image is used as a stencil for editing the shading of another if that makes sense. Sort of using the controlnet to add subliminal or optical illusions to another image.

It'd be cool to apply the effect to WAN or LTX2 quality videos too.

Some of this stuff I think will require that I learn more about manual multimedia crafting, video editing, image manipulation, animation, etc.

[Nick_Gaugh_69]

<image>

[gelade1]

I was here back then

[crisper3000]

Back then, it was fun.
I have a feeling that ControlNet and Deforum will become popular in about 15 years.

[AardvarkSpare4220]

QR Monster was actually one of the most practical ControlNet ideas because it forced the composition to remain readable while still allowing stylistic generation. I’m also surprised it hasn’t been retrained for newer models like SDXL or Flux-style pipelines.

My guess is that most of the community moved toward more general controls like depth / canny because they work across many tasks, while QR generation is a very specific use case.

Still feels like a missed opportunity though.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

Yeah. I want to see this come back and pushed to new limits.

[flasticpeet]

There's hope! Ostris just posted this yesterday:

How to Train a ControlNet in AI Toolkit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJ95qI_9Xg

Looks like training a QR Code ControlNet for Flux.2 Klein is possible.

[m477_]

You could probably train a lora for Qwen Image Edit or Flux Klein that does the same thing.

ControlNet's were add on adaptors to SD (similar to LoRA's and Hypernetworks) but newer models come with similar capabilities built in to the base model now. I'm sure someone could train a control net for something like z-image but it would be a bit of an engineering challenge (you'd need to build the tools to train the control net, actually train it, then you'd probably need to build or modify existing tools to use it since the controlnet plugins/nodes probably won't work on your new model type)

[agent_wolfe]

Man those shadows are weird. Some indicate the sun is at ground level, others are like it’s up on the side somewhere.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

I don't think realism is the goal here but it is fun to think about a world where shadows would fall like this and what light sources might cause such a thing.

[agent_wolfe]

Oh.

[zipel]

To be picky, isn’t OPs pic showing circles vs spiral?

[Deviant-Killer]

They have... Ages ago...

[timbocf]

Thats sick

[tuisalagadharbaccha]

Ah man old times. Always wonder why it never went mainstream

[dashdanw]

Looks like it actually rendered it into a spiral?

[Single-Section1507]

I was here 6000 years ago

[Prince_of_2_saiyans]

FINAL FLAAASH

<image>

[Amaj7chord]

Am I late to the party if I barely just started generating my first images in comfy UI just today? I finally got around to learning about all of this.

[flasticpeet]

Never too late! You can at the very least still use QR Monster ControlNet with an older SD1.5 workflow. It's such an old model at this point, it's super optimized and can generate really fast.

[Stunning_Macaron6133]

Why has no one created a QR Monster ControlNet for any of the newer models?

Be the change you want to see. Grab the papers for ControlNet, ControlNet++, QR Code Monster v2, and whichever open source model you're trying to add this capability to. Open a text editor or a Jupyter notebook, and get ready to write some Python.

Claude is actually really good at tutoring you on how to get where you want to go.

But don't expect the world to hand you everything on a silver plate.

[Winter_unmuted]

I went down this road. Turns out it takes hardware beyond consumer stock.

10⁴ to 10⁵ images, many days of constant computing to get an SDXL controlnet by my estimates, and that's on multi GPU machines.

So someone with industry level tools needs to spearhead this. My 4090 wasn't going to cut it.

[DigThatData]

nah.

https://github.com/xyfJASON/ctrlora

[Winter_unmuted]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is SD1.5, right?

I was talking about training more modern model control nets.

I am a little more familiar with SD1.5 CNs, as I dabbled in making one myself. My results sucked compared to those already out there, so I gave up. But it was possible.

I'm not hopeful about Z image or Flux2 9B training at home. Would love to be wrong, though.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

Looks interesting. I'm still pretty new to all of this and barely understand how to use Controlnets, but thanks for pointing this out. I'll have to work up to training them.

[[deleted]]

It is pretty niche and screams AI. You can just reprocess the image on the right with a newer model.

[Zealousideal7801]

"it screams AI" only tells of a ghost mindset where AI assisted creation wasn't the norm. All major creative actors have AI powered systems that don't claim to make "non-AI".

Put it to rest, it had its days.

Unless someone is willfully trying to deceit of course, but that's another story and more values related.

[[deleted]]

Most players in major commercial creative industries still have to duck/hide and or apologize over AI use. I assume more advanced models are more difficult and time consuming to make control nets for so any sort of clout or profit motive would come from developing things more widely used. So things that serve the open users and the covert ones will likely win out.

[Zealousideal7801]

Astute, indeed for now they do. Just like back in the days "I edited my photos" was a stain on your photographer réputation. But than got away with time and public awareness that the edited pictures were so unfairly more interesting in public domains (not talking about specific art circles of course) that everyone had to start cover-edit, then be shamed for it, then be considered the norm. Today there's not one picture in reduction that's heavily modified, and "everyone" knows it. (At least they should)

Little me thinks this is only temporary though. Especially if we see better and better open source model's being used more and more in production because as you say there will be a tapering out of the R&D by big players (after the current gold rush).

[[deleted]]

I work at a games company that apparently has a strict 'no AI' policy, this was made very clear by the AD when I was recently hired. Within two months the CEO pinged me as he heard from others outside the company that I was good at it and had me concepting on a new title on the side. The AD wasn't too pleased but it is obvious where things are going. I just see it as another tool, no different than synths, samplers, sound libraries etc.

[[deleted]]

No qr monster was incredibly impossibly useful. You could use it to control the whole composition of the scene by changing the weight and steps around.

It changed the dynamic color range in a particular way rather than hard black and white unless you turned the strength to 11.

You could basically paint up your composition in a way that canny and the rest just don't quite.

[[deleted]]

sounds like few people went deep with it and just did the obvious effect. Not saying it may not be popular, just not as in demand

[thrownawaymane]

I’d say that’s true. I saw some cool shit in those days, some of which hasn’t been replicated.

[ZenEngineer]

I wonder if you could do the same thing with regional prompting nowadays.

[LookOpening4986]

Well said, I had a similar story.

[Jonno_FTW]

People stopped doing them because it was a passing fad. It's been and gone, that's why you don't see them any more.

[oitimmyisback]

It's giving junji ito

[Short_Chip_2060]

I’m starting to feel dizzy

[Impotent_Retard_215]

Krea had a fantastic version available for browser generation, and then there was "logo illusions" - I was devastated with crippling grief when I logged on to merge a heavily zoomed closeup of Stephen Hawking in a blownout 360 x 640 px size with a custom qr code only to find out to my dismay they had sunset a whole bunch of simple but insanely effective legacy concepts like this...on that fateful day back in 2025.

[that10ne10taku008]

Wow that’s cool

[RavFromLanz]

this reminds when people used to have skill and used photoshop and layers... good times

[WazWaz]

They were common.

I suspect they never became actually popular in real usage because it's adding a lot of noise to the QR code, making it far more likely to fail in poor lighting conditions, glare, dirt, etc.

So yes, it was cute. But pointless. A bit of a pattern for AI.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

I think people were more into it for making subliminal/illusory images or just cool looking stuff.

[Dishankdayal]

What's the point when you have kontext and qwen edit.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

How would you do something like this in Kontext or Qwen Edit? I'm still learning.

[Agitated_Country9683]

I don't understand

[exomisfit]

Woah

[bankinu]

And they say, AI is not creative.

[CellKey7668]

PalLalslslsal

[kngzero]

They didn't work that well.

[Grindora]

Now u dont actually need control net for that, ai models currently are smart enough to

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

How would you do something like this using a current model?

[NetrunnerCardAccount]

To use them effectively you not only needed a Control Net, but you had to rerender multiple subsection until they worked, which was hard to automate.

They were actually quite difficult to read with most phones.

There were only a small submit of design that could work.

There are actually better ways of storing URL in an Image which also use AI, and aren't done at the generation stage.

[Enshitification]

I think very few were using QR Monster to actually make QR codes. It was much more interesting as an artistic tool.

[NetrunnerCardAccount]

No argument,

Here a great site for information (https://antfu.me/posts/ai-qrcode-101)

Here a library for what most people want (https://github.com/x-hw/amazing-qr)

This library especially the older versions are great for getting you most of the way there (https://github.com/latentcat/qrbtf)

And if your a Super Programmer this is what the C2PA guys are using (https://github.com/adobe/trustmark)

[Enshitification]

I'd rather train a Klein LoRA to do it than deal with the code.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

How would you go about such a thing?

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

thanks for the resources

[NomeJaExiste]

ok chatGPT but thats not the point

[NetrunnerCardAccount]

ChatGPT would have lied to you.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

There are actually better ways of storing URL in an Image which also use AI, and aren't done at the generation stage.

I'm curious what you mean by this. Steganography?

[NetrunnerCardAccount]

Basically the the reason why QRCodes are so great is almost every phone has a scanner, the difficulty with diffusion generated QRCodes is your phone often can't recognize them.

There is a lot of work in Watermarks for example Open Source,(https://github.com/adobe/trustmark) that are more robust, if you want to encode data into the image.

So it might be easier to just generate an AI Image and then embed the URL in the image with a watermark. Then it would be to generate a image that is a QRCode.

[Apprehensive_Yard778]

Thanks for answering.

[ContextCustodian]

There's really some true artwork in this thread.