ERNIE image generation

Baidu's ERNIE Image is a distillation-friendly text-to-image family hosted on Civitai's Comfy workers. Single engine path, one operation (createImage — no img2img, variant, or edit support), two model variants that differ only in speed vs. quality:

• engine: "comfy", ecosystem: "ernie"
• Only createImage — ERNIE doesn't expose createVariant or editImage. Use Flux 2 Klein or Qwen if you need img2img or prompt-driven editing.
• Built-in diffuser, VAE, and text encoder — no model URN to pick. The only model field is the variant selector (ernie or turbo).
• LoRA support (ERNIE-tagged LoRAs only).

Variants

model	Steps (default)	cfgScale (default)	Best for
ernie	20	4	Default — full-quality output, standard sampling
turbo	8	1	Distilled for speed — 3–4× faster and ~40% of the Buzz per image (8 vs 20 at defaults); use for drafts, batches, and iteration

Leave cfgScale: 1 on turbo — it's a distilled model and doesn't respond to classifier-free guidance the way the standard variant does.

Prerequisites

• No checkpoint URN required — both variants ship with built-in diffuser / VAE / text encoder

Standard (model: "ernie")

POST https://orchestration.civitai.com/v2/consumer/workflows?wait=60
Authorization: Bearer <your-token>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "steps": [{
    "$type": "imageGen",
    "input": {
      "engine": "comfy",
      "ecosystem": "ernie",
      "model": "ernie",
      "operation": "createImage",
      "prompt": "A red panda wearing a yellow rain jacket, cinematic soft light, highly detailed",
      "width": 1024,
      "height": 1024,
      "steps": 20,
      "cfgScale": 4,
      "sampler": "euler",
      "scheduler": "simple",
      "quantity": 1
    }
  }]
}

POST/v2/consumer/workflows

Set your Civitai API token via the Token button in the navbar to enable Try It.

Request body — edit to customize (e.g. swap the image URL or prompt)

{ "steps": [ { "$type": "imageGen", "input": { "engine": "comfy", "ecosystem": "ernie", "model": "ernie", "operation": "createImage", "prompt": "A red panda wearing a yellow rain jacket, cinematic soft light, highly detailed", "width": 1024, "height": 1024, "steps": 20, "cfgScale": 4, "sampler": "euler", "scheduler": "simple", "quantity": 1 } } ] }

Valid JSON

Parameters

Field	Default	Range	Notes
prompt	— ✅	≤ 10 000 chars	Natural-language descriptions work well; ERNIE handles complex scenes better than tag-soup.
negativePrompt	(none)	≤ 10 000 chars	Optional. Shorter is usually better — ERNIE's defaults are already clean.
width / height	1024	64–2048, divisible by 16	Trained around 1024². Well-behaved near ~1 megapixel total.
steps	20	1–150	Diminishing returns past ~25.
cfgScale	4	0–30	3–5 is the sweet spot.
sampler	euler	enum	ComfySampler. euler is what the model was tuned against.
scheduler	simple	enum	ComfyScheduler.
loras	{}	{ airUrn: strength }	Stack multiple. Only urn:air:ernie:lora:... LoRAs work here.
quantity	1	1–12	Number of images per call.
seed	random	int64	Pin for reproducibility.

Portrait aspect ratio

{
  "steps": [{
    "$type": "imageGen",
    "input": {
      "engine": "comfy",
      "ecosystem": "ernie",
      "model": "ernie",
      "operation": "createImage",
      "prompt": "Portrait of a woman with flowing hair standing in a blooming cherry blossom field, golden hour lighting",
      "negativePrompt": "worst quality, blurry, low resolution",
      "width": 832,
      "height": 1216,
      "steps": 20,
      "cfgScale": 4,
      "sampler": "euler",
      "scheduler": "simple",
      "seed": 42
    }
  }]
}

POST/v2/consumer/workflows

Set your Civitai API token via the Token button in the navbar to enable Try It.

Request body — edit to customize (e.g. swap the image URL or prompt)

{ "steps": [ { "$type": "imageGen", "input": { "engine": "comfy", "ecosystem": "ernie", "model": "ernie", "operation": "createImage", "prompt": "Portrait of a woman with flowing hair standing in a blooming cherry blossom field, golden hour lighting", "negativePrompt": "worst quality, blurry, low resolution", "width": 832, "height": 1216, "steps": 20, "cfgScale": 4, "sampler": "euler", "scheduler": "simple", "seed": 42 } } ] }

Valid JSON

Turbo (model: "turbo")

Distilled variant — same input surface as standard, just lower defaults for steps and cfgScale. Use this as the default when you're iterating on prompts or generating batches; fall back to ernie for hero shots.

POST https://orchestration.civitai.com/v2/consumer/workflows?wait=60
Authorization: Bearer <your-token>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "steps": [{
    "$type": "imageGen",
    "input": {
      "engine": "comfy",
      "ecosystem": "ernie",
      "model": "turbo",
      "operation": "createImage",
      "prompt": "A red panda wearing a yellow rain jacket, cinematic soft light, highly detailed",
      "width": 1024,
      "height": 1024,
      "steps": 8,
      "cfgScale": 1,
      "sampler": "euler",
      "scheduler": "simple",
      "quantity": 1
    }
  }]
}

POST/v2/consumer/workflows

Set your Civitai API token via the Token button in the navbar to enable Try It.

Request body — edit to customize (e.g. swap the image URL or prompt)

{ "steps": [ { "$type": "imageGen", "input": { "engine": "comfy", "ecosystem": "ernie", "model": "turbo", "operation": "createImage", "prompt": "A red panda wearing a yellow rain jacket, cinematic soft light, highly detailed", "width": 1024, "height": 1024, "steps": 8, "cfgScale": 1, "sampler": "euler", "scheduler": "simple", "quantity": 1 } } ] }

Valid JSON

Turbo-specific tuning:

Field	Default	Notes
steps	8	Stay in 6–12. Pushing past ~16 wastes Buzz without improving output on the distilled model.
cfgScale	1	Distilled — leave at 1. Raising it usually over-saturates / burns the output.

Everything else (prompt, negativePrompt, dimensions, sampler, scheduler, seed, quantity, loras) matches the standard variant.

Reading the result

Standard imageGen output: an images[] array, one entry per quantity (shape and URL expiry).

Cost

Preview the exact charge with whatif=true (Payments (Buzz)).

Per-pixel + per-step scaling against 1024² and the variant's default step count:

Standard:

total = 20 × (width × height / 1024²) × (steps / 20) × quantity

Turbo:

total = 8 × (width × height / 1024²) × (steps / 8) × quantity

Shape	Standard (Buzz)	Turbo (Buzz)
1024² / default steps / quantity: 1 (defaults)	20	8
832×1216 / default steps / quantity: 1	~20	~8
1024² / default steps / quantity: 4	~80	~32
1024² / steps: 40 (standard) / steps: 16 (turbo)	~40	~16

Standard pricing is ~2.5× turbo at defaults — reach for turbo when iterating on prompts.

Runtime

Typical claim duration (job.startedAt → job.completedAt) with quantity: 1:

Variant	Shape	Claim duration
ernie (standard)	1024² / 20 steps	~29 s
ernie (standard)	832×1216 / 20 steps	~27 s
turbo	1024² / 8 steps	~13 s

wait=60 covers single-image calls comfortably. For quantity > 1, larger dimensions, or high steps counts, compute + queue wait can outlast your HTTP client's timeout — submit with wait=60 and re-issue GET /v2/consumer/workflows/{id}?wait=60 on a loop until the response is terminal (see Submitting work → Query parameters), or register a webhook.

Troubleshooting

Timeouts, moderation blocks and expired blob URLs: see Common troubleshooting.

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
400 with "operation must be createImage"	Passed editImage or createVariant	ERNIE only supports createImage. Use Qwen or Flux 2 Klein for img2img / edit.
400 on model	Sent a full AIR URN or a value other than ernie / turbo	The model field is a variant selector, not a checkpoint URN. Only "ernie" and "turbo" are valid.
400 on width / height	Value not divisible by 16, or outside 64–2048	Round to a valid multiple of 16 inside that range.
Turbo output looks over-saturated / blown out	cfgScale > 1 on the distilled model	Set cfgScale: 1 for turbo. Raise steps instead if you want more fidelity.
Standard output ignores the prompt	cfgScale too low	Bump toward 4–6. cfgScale: 1 on standard barely steers the model.
LoRA silently has no effect	Wrong AIR URN, or ecosystem mismatch	Only urn:air:ernie:lora:… LoRAs work here. Verify the URN on the LoRA's Civitai page.
Request timed out (wait expired)	Large quantity, atypical dimensions, or high steps	Resubmit and resume with a GET …?wait=60 loop, or register a webhook.

Related

• SubmitWorkflow · GetWorkflow
• Qwen image generation — alternative with edit + variant operations and LoRA support
• Flux 2 image generation — higher-fidelity general-purpose alternative with createVariant
• Z-Image generation — the other distilled, extremely cheap + fast image recipe (sdcpp-based)
• Anima image generation — anime-tuned sdcpp ecosystem, same single-operation shape
• Image upscaling — chain after imageGen for higher-res output
• Prompt enhancement — LLM-rewrite a prompt before feeding it in via $ref
• Full parameter catalog: ComfyErnieStandardCreateImageGenInput and ComfyErnieTurboCreateImageGenInput in the API reference
• imageGen OpenAPI spec