danielgatis/rembg

Rembg is a tool to remove image backgrounds. It can be used as a CLI, Python library, HTTP server, or Docker container.

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python: >=3.11, <3.14

Choose one of the following backends based on your hardware:

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

First, check if your system supports onnxruntime-gpu by visiting onnxruntime.ai and reviewing the installation matrix.

If your system is compatible, run:

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

Note: NVIDIA GPUs may require onnxruntime-gpu, CUDA, and cudnn-devel. See #668 for details. If rembg[gpu] doesn't work and you can't install CUDA or cudnn-devel, use rembg[cpu] with onnxruntime instead.

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

Once onnxruntime-rocm is installed and working, install rembg with ROCm support:

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

After installation, you can use rembg by typing rembg in your terminal.

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

• i - single files
• p - folders (batch processing)
• s - HTTP server
• b - RGB24 pixel binary stream

You can get help about the main command using:

rembg --help

You can also get help for any subcommand:

rembg <COMMAND> --help

Used for processing single files.

Remove background from a remote image:

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

Remove background from a local file:

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

Specify a model:

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

Return only the mask:

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

Apply alpha matting:

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

Pass extra 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

Pass extra parameters (custom model):

rembg i -m u2net_custom -x '{"model_path": "~/.u2net/u2net.onnx"}' path/to/input.png path/to/output.png

Used for batch processing entire folders.

Process all images in a folder:

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

Watch mode (process new/changed files automatically):

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

Used to start an HTTP server.

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

For complete API documentation, visit: http://localhost:7000/api

Remove background from an image URL:

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

Remove background from an uploaded image:

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

Process a sequence of RGB24 images from stdin. This is intended to be used with programs like FFmpeg that output RGB24 pixel data to stdout.

rembg b <width> <height> -o <output_specifier>

Arguments:

Example 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

Note: The width and height must match FFmpeg's output dimensions. The flags -an -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 pipe:1 are required for FFmpeg compatibility.

Input and output as bytes:

from rembg import remove

with open('input.png', 'rb') as i:
    with open('output.png', '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 = Image.open('input.png')
output = remove(input)
output.save('output.png')

Input and output as a NumPy array:

from rembg import remove
import cv2

input = cv2.imread('input.png')
output = remove(input)
cv2.imwrite('output.png', output)

Force output as bytes:

from rembg import remove

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

Batch processing with session reuse (recommended for performance):

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)

For more examples, see the examples page.

Replace the rembg command with docker run danielgatis/rembg:

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

Requirements: Your host must have the NVIDIA Container Toolkit installed.

CUDA acceleration requires cudnn-devel, so you need to build the Docker image yourself. See #668 for details.

Build the image:

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

Note: This image requires ~11GB of disk space (CPU version is ~1.6GB). Models are not included.

Run the container:

sudo docker run --rm -it --gpus all -v /dev/dri:/dev/dri -v $PWD:/data rembg-nvidia-cuda-cudnn-gpu i -m birefnet-general /data/input.png /data/output.png

Tips:

• You can create your own NVIDIA CUDA image and install rembg[gpu,cli] in it.
• Use -v /path/to/models/:/root/.u2net to store model files outside the container, avoiding re-downloads.

All models are automatically downloaded and saved to ~/.u2net/ on first use.

• 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.
• bria-rmbg (download, source): A state-of-the-art background removal model by BRIA AI.

If you need to use a modified version of a model (e.g. converted to a different ONNX IR version for compatibility with an older CUDA toolkit), you can prevent rembg from overwriting it:

1. Set MODEL_CHECKSUM_DISABLED=1
2. Place your custom .onnx file in the models directory (~/.u2net/ by default) with the expected filename (e.g. u2net.onnx)
3. Rembg will detect the file exists and use it without re-downloading

This library depends on onnxruntime. Python version support is determined by onnxruntime's compatibility.

If you find this project useful, consider buying me a coffee (or a beer):

Copyright (c) 2020-present Daniel Gatis

Licensed under the MIT License.