danielgatis

    danielgatis/rembg

    Rembg is a tool to remove images background

    computer-vision
    background-removal
    image-processing
    python
    Python
    MIT
    20.4K stars
    2.1K forks
    20.4K watching
    Updated 2/27/2026
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    About rembg

    Rembg

    Downloads License Hugging Face Spaces Streamlit App Open in Colab

    Rembg is a tool to remove images background.

    example car-1 example car-1.out example car-2 example car-2.out example car-3 example car-3.out

    example animal-1 example animal-1.out example animal-2 example animal-2.out example animal-3 example animal-3.out

    example girl-1 example girl-1.out example girl-2 example girl-2.out example girl-3 example girl-3.out

    example anime-girl-1 example anime-girl-1.out example anime-girl-2 example anime-girl-2.out example anime-girl-3 example anime-girl-3.out

    If this project has helped you, please consider making a donation.

    Sponsors

    Unsplash PhotoRoom Remove Background API
    https://photoroom.com/api

    Fast and accurate background remover API

    Requirements

    python: >=3.10, <3.14
    

    Installation

    If you have onnxruntime already installed, just install rembg:

    pip install rembg # for library
    pip install "rembg[cli]" # for library + cli
    

    Otherwise, install rembg with explicit CPU/GPU support.

    CPU support:

    pip install rembg[cpu] # for library
    pip install "rembg[cpu,cli]" # for library + cli
    

    GPU support (NVidia/Cuda):

    First of all, you need to check if your system supports the onnxruntime-gpu.

    Go to onnxruntime.ai and check the installation matrix.

    onnxruntime-installation-matrix

    If yes, just run:

    pip install "rembg[gpu]" # for library
    pip install "rembg[gpu,cli]" # for library + cli
    

    Nvidia GPU may require onnxruntime-gpu, cuda, and cudnn-devel. #668 . If rembg[gpu] doesn't work and you can't install cuda or cudnn-devel, use rembg[cpu] and onnxruntime instead.

    GPU support (AMD/ROCM):

    ROCM support requires the onnxruntime-rocm package. Install it following AMD's documentation.

    If onnxruntime-rocm is installed and working, install the rembg[rocm] version of rembg:

    pip install "rembg[rocm]" # for library
    pip install "rembg[rocm,cli]" # for library + cli
    

    Usage as a cli

    After the installation step you can use rembg just typing rembg in your terminal window.

    The rembg command has 4 subcommands, one for each input type:

    • i for files
    • p for folders
    • s for http server
    • b for RGB24 pixel binary stream

    You can get help about the main command using:

    rembg --help
    

    As well, about all the subcommands using:

    rembg <COMMAND> --help
    

    rembg i

    Used when input and output are files.

    Remove the background from a remote image

    curl -s http://input.png | rembg i > output.png
    

    Remove the background from a local file

    rembg i path/to/input.png path/to/output.png
    

    Remove the background specifying a model

    rembg i -m u2netp path/to/input.png path/to/output.png
    

    Remove the background returning only the mask

    rembg i -om path/to/input.png path/to/output.png
    

    Remove the background applying an alpha matting

    rembg i -a path/to/input.png path/to/output.png
    

    Passing extras parameters

    SAM example
    
    rembg i -m sam -x '{ "sam_prompt": [{"type": "point", "data": [724, 740], "label": 1}] }' examples/plants-1.jpg examples/plants-1.out.png
    
    Custom model example
    
    rembg i -m u2net_custom -x '{"model_path": "~/.u2net/u2net.onnx"}' path/to/input.png path/to/output.png
    

    rembg p

    Used when input and output are folders.

    Remove the background from all images in a folder

    rembg p path/to/input path/to/output
    

    Same as before, but watching for new/changed files to process

    rembg p -w path/to/input path/to/output
    

    rembg s

    Used to start http server.

    rembg s --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7000 --log_level info
    

    To see the complete endpoints documentation, go to: http://localhost:7000/api.

    Remove the background from an image url

    curl -s "http://localhost:7000/api/remove?url=http://input.png" -o output.png
    

    Remove the background from an uploaded image

    curl -s -F file=@/path/to/input.jpg "http://localhost:7000/api/remove"  -o output.png
    

    rembg b

    Process a sequence of RGB24 images from stdin. This is intended to be used with another program, such as FFMPEG, that outputs RGB24 pixel data to stdout, which is piped into the stdin of this program, although nothing prevents you from manually typing in images at stdin.

    rembg b image_width image_height -o output_specifier
    

    Arguments:

    • image_width : width of input image(s)
    • image_height : height of input image(s)
    • output_specifier: printf-style specifier for output filenames, for example if output-%03u.png, then output files will be named output-000.png, output-001.png, output-002.png, etc. Output files will be saved in PNG format regardless of the extension specified. You can omit it to write results to stdout.

    Example usage with FFMPEG:

    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 10 -an -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 pipe:1 | rembg b 1280 720 -o folder/output-%03u.png
    

    The width and height values must match the dimension of output images from FFMPEG. Note for FFMPEG, the "-an -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 pipe:1" part is required for the whole thing to work.

    Usage as a library

    Input and output as bytes

    from rembg import remove
    
    input_path = 'input.png'
    output_path = 'output.png'
    
    with open(input_path, 'rb') as i:
        with open(output_path, 'wb') as o:
            input = i.read()
            output = remove(input)
            o.write(output)
    

    Input and output as a PIL image

    from rembg import remove
    from PIL import Image
    
    input_path = 'input.png'
    output_path = 'output.png'
    
    input = Image.open(input_path)
    output = remove(input)
    output.save(output_path)
    

    Input and output as a numpy array

    from rembg import remove
    import cv2
    
    input_path = 'input.png'
    output_path = 'output.png'
    
    input = cv2.imread(input_path)
    output = remove(input)
    cv2.imwrite(output_path, output)
    

    Force output as bytes

    from rembg import remove
    
    input_path = 'input.png'
    output_path = 'output.png'
    
    with open(input_path, 'rb') as i:
        with open(output_path, 'wb') as o:
            input = i.read()
            output = remove(input, force_return_bytes=True)
            o.write(output)
    

    How to iterate over files in a performatic way

    from pathlib import Path
    from rembg import remove, new_session
    
    session = new_session()
    
    for file in Path('path/to/folder').glob('*.png'):
        input_path = str(file)
        output_path = str(file.parent / (file.stem + ".out.png"))
    
        with open(input_path, 'rb') as i:
            with open(output_path, 'wb') as o:
                input = i.read()
                output = remove(input, session=session)
                o.write(output)
    

    To see a full list of examples on how to use rembg, go to the examples page.

    Usage as a docker

    Only CPU

    Just replace the rembg command for docker run danielgatis/rembg.

    Try this:

    docker run -v path/to/input:/rembg danielgatis/rembg i input.png path/to/output/output.png
    

    Nvidia CUDA Hardware Acceleration

    Requirement: using CUDA in docker needs your host has NVIDIA Container Toolkit installed. NVIDIA Container Toolkit Install Guide

    Nvidia CUDA Hardware Acceleration needs cudnn-devel so you need to build the docker image by yourself. #668

    Here is a example shows you how to build an image and name it rembg-nvidia-cuda-cudnn-gpu

    docker build -t rembg-nvidia-cuda-cudnn-gpu -f Dockerfile_nvidia_cuda_cudnn_gpu .
    

    Be aware: It would take 11GB of your disk space. (The cpu version only takes about 1.6GB). Models didn't included.

    After you build the image, run it like this as a cli

    sudo docker run --rm -it --gpus all -v /dev/dri:/dev/dri -v $PWD:/rembg rembg-nvidia-cuda-cudnn-gpu i -m birefnet-general input.png output.png
    
    • Trick 1: Actually you can also make up a nvidia-cuda-cudnn-gpu image and install rembg[gpu, cli] in it.
    • Trick 2: Try param -v /somewhereYouStoresModelFiles/:/root/.u2net so to download/store model files out of docker images. You can even comment the line RUN rembg d u2net so when building the image, it download will no models, so you can download the specific model you want even without the default u2net model.

    Models

    All models are downloaded and saved in the user home folder in the .u2net directory.

    The available models are:

    • u2net (download, source): A pre-trained model for general use cases.
    • u2netp (download, source): A lightweight version of u2net model.
    • u2net_human_seg (download, source): A pre-trained model for human segmentation.
    • u2net_cloth_seg (download, source): A pre-trained model for Cloths Parsing from human portrait. Here clothes are parsed into 3 category: Upper body, Lower body and Full body.
    • silueta (download, source): Same as u2net but the size is reduced to 43Mb.
    • isnet-general-use (download, source): A new pre-trained model for general use cases.
    • isnet-anime (download, source): A high-accuracy segmentation for anime character.
    • sam (download encoder, download decoder, source): A pre-trained model for any use cases.
    • birefnet-general (download, source): A pre-trained model for general use cases.
    • birefnet-general-lite (download, source): A light pre-trained model for general use cases.
    • birefnet-portrait (download, source): A pre-trained model for human portraits.
    • birefnet-dis (download, source): A pre-trained model for dichotomous image segmentation (DIS).
    • birefnet-hrsod (download, source): A pre-trained model for high-resolution salient object detection (HRSOD).
    • birefnet-cod (download, source): A pre-trained model for concealed object detection (COD).
    • birefnet-massive (download, source): A pre-trained model with massive dataset.

    How to train your own model

    If You need more fine tuned models try this: https://github.com/danielgatis/rembg/issues/193#issuecomment-1055534289

    Some video tutorials

    References

    FAQ

    When will this library provide support for Python version 3.xx?

    This library directly depends on the onnxruntime library. Therefore, we can only update the Python version when onnxruntime provides support for that specific version.

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    License

    Copyright (c) 2020-present Daniel Gatis

    Licensed under MIT License

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