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Show HN: Fully-automatic image background removal tool

640 pointsby groeover 6 years ago

52 comments

groeover 6 years ago
Hey HN! We originally built this as part of a bigger app but since removing backgrounds of images can be a tiresome task in itself we thought why not release it as a standalone tool? Feedback appreciated!
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crucialfelixover 6 years ago
We once had to get photos taken in Mumbai. The shop had two guys working Photoshop to remove the dirt marks from the wall behind us. Why did they not just paint the wall ? Because the Photoshop artists were part of the service, so they could charge us for it.<p>You, sir, are going to put Photoshop wallahs out of work !
djsumdogover 6 years ago
&gt; We process them, and temporarily store the results so you can download them. After that (about an hour later) we delete your files. We do not share your images or use them for any other purpose than removing the background and letting you download the result.<p>Glad they respect your rights on the image and delete their temp files after a reasonable amount of time.
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valbacaover 6 years ago
Works perfectly with people! Such a well done and simple tool.<p>Of course I&#x27;m biased, but I think putting in the effort to have this work with pets would be well worth the time.<p>There&#x27;s services that allow you to turn photos with transparent backgrounds into stickers.<p>Hook this up with that, and you may have a source of revenue.
vesinisaover 6 years ago
At last, an actually useful application of AI!<p>I am not even kidding. This is probably the first time I have seen a truly useful application of AI that automates a normally labor-intensive and menial task. Kudos!
mrburkinsover 6 years ago
Around 2008, one of my first jobs out of college was working as a photo retoucher for a retail fashion company. One of our main tasks was placing 3rd party product shots on a neutral background so that the photography would look consistent. I was pretty good with it and had a few tricks up my sleeve (Photoshop Actions FTW!) but it was still pretty time intensive.<p>Even back then, I was fearful of making a career out of that job. At worst, my company could have offshored a lot of that work rather than paying full time benefits in NYC. And while there were a few plugins back then, they weren&#x27;t this good.<p>I&#x27;m fortunate I was able to move my career in another direction, but I did work with some amazing people who knew PS&#x2F;photography inside and out. A part of me is sad that these skills are increasingly obsolete.
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snazzover 6 years ago
This works really well! It would be nice if it told you it only works on images with people before you upload an image.
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codepleaover 6 years ago
Care to explain more about how it works?<p>Your about page says &quot;sophisticated AI technology to detect foreground layers and separate them from the background&quot; but that&#x27;s pretty vague.<p>What kind of AI?
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gaara87over 6 years ago
Is there an open source underlying library as part of your service? Would love to start using it in smaller projects :) great job BTW
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andreyazimovover 6 years ago
Thanks for doing this! This is an awesome app! I have a lot of pain trying to remove the background. How long did it take to build this particular app?
Kyeover 6 years ago
This worked surprisingly well on a picture of a fursuiter with several people (no suits) in the background. I didn&#x27;t expect it to work at all.
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andrewstuartover 6 years ago
Worked superbly. I spent hours yesterday manually removing backgrounds from family pics to have tshirts printed. This did it in a second.
sirwittiover 6 years ago
The demos look awesome, but unfortunately it works neither in FF 64 nor Chromium 71 even without adblocker: It keeps saying: &quot;Removing background ...&quot; and does not show an edited version of the uploaded image.
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gardaaniover 6 years ago
Spektral, a Danish company, has been doing this in real-time on iPhone for live video. No surprise, Apple bought them for more than $30 million: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&#x2F;photography&#x2F;apple-spektral-aquisition&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&#x2F;photography&#x2F;apple-spektral-aqu...</a>
KaiserProover 6 years ago
Ooo now this _is_ impressive.<p>I used to work in VFX, where I did my fair share of pain and roto.(before moving to tech) Cutting out hair was my single biggest dread. However this appears to do a stella job automatically.
tambourine_manover 6 years ago
It&#x27;s amazing that this can be done automatically, major kudos to the team. The breadth of what current AI can do is already astounding.<p>However, as someone who&#x27;s been doing this kind of work professionally for decades, I find the demo results rather poor.<p>I have mixed feelings about what I think is a trend, such as fake software bokeh, for instance. Even though it makes pro techniques available to the masses, quality takes such a plunge that I fear we may not recover, setting the “good enough” bar way too low.
ereyes01over 6 years ago
It would be so awesome if I could something like this at a much smaller scale in a darktable module for cleaning up images and for doing artistic types of portrait editing. Nice work!
ultrasounderover 6 years ago
Looks good. I got a Unable to upload image when I pasted a URL. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.barcablaugranes.com&#x2F;platform&#x2F;amp&#x2F;barcelona-la-liga&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;17&#x2F;18144280&#x2F;ernest-valverde-says-we-just-have-to-enjoy-lionel-messi-after-barcelona-hat-trick" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.barcablaugranes.com&#x2F;platfor...</a> May I ask what Your Tech stack is?
Hoasiover 6 years ago
&gt; for performance reasons the output image is limited to 500 × 500 pixels. We are currently looking into ways to increase this limit (...)<p>Curious to see how this tool will evolve. Already impressive, with many potential use cases: products, animals, photomontages.<p>Besides resolution, how the app will handle super thin elements like hair will be key. A lot of tedious work is still required to cut out figures properly with Photoshop even though their selection tools got better over the years.
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jansanover 6 years ago
Very impressive. Works even on Mona Lisa: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;thumb&#x2F;e&#x2F;ec&#x2F;Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg&#x2F;687px-Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;thumb&#x2F;e&#x2F;ec&#x2F;Mo...</a>
webmavenover 6 years ago
Pretty good, though it is not too hard to find images that confuse it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remove.bg&#x2F;system&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;image&#x2F;processed&#x2F;6aaacde8-1592-4997-a9d0-ffcdfea649b5&#x2F;b_2011-12-27-181003.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remove.bg&#x2F;system&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;image&#x2F;processed&#x2F;6aaacde...</a>
rasikjainover 6 years ago
Works perfect. Very easy to use and quick. Last week I was trying to remove background from image and it took a while to finish the task.<p>Great job :-)
fitzroyover 6 years ago
Nice work! Just curious, any reason that the output image is constrained to a lower resolution?<p>Also, any thought to handling video in the future?
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aantixover 6 years ago
This is awesome!<p>I uploaded a photo of myself as a kid with my sister and grandpa. Early 80&#x27;s, a washed out photo, where the lines were less definitive. Had some issues with that image.<p>This photo if you&#x27;re curious. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;a4jQ5y1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;a4jQ5y1</a>
chimeover 6 years ago
Even works with paintings!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remove.bg&#x2F;system&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;image&#x2F;processed&#x2F;c9ae8e58-a6d9-403e-9750-2c5ddaee9385&#x2F;b_041FA711-1239-408E-A494-FBF32B643726.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remove.bg&#x2F;system&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;image&#x2F;processed&#x2F;c9ae8e5...</a>
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michaelmiorover 6 years ago
I&#x27;m pleasantly surprised with how well this works. It would be awesome if you added the ability to pick a second photo to provide a new background. Of course this isn&#x27;t that hard to do on my own once I have the background removed, but saving another step would be great :)
matt_the_bassover 6 years ago
Nice service! I have. Couple ideas you might consider to make it even better:<p>1. Make a plug in for photoshop&#x2F;gimp&#x2F;[favorite editor]. You could charge for that service.<p>2. Figure out a way for users to manually fix any errors and use that data for further training.
piyush_soniover 6 years ago
Ok it just says &quot;Removing Background&quot;, and never finishes that. Is it HN Effect?
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CodeWriter23over 6 years ago
There some pretty major color shift in the photo I tried. A lot of red was missing from the resulting photo.<p>Also, it is possible to see the background through the lens of my glasses; that portion of the background was not removed.
imronover 6 years ago
&gt; and it&#x27;s FREE.<p>So how do you pay for it, and what does it cost me (in non-monetary form)?
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SonicSoulover 6 years ago
Really impressive! as a photographer this is the most time consuming part of any edit. Just curious, are you doing this with photoshop or something more low level? Any technical write up would be fascinating to read!
datasutraover 6 years ago
for people that want to try at home: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;d-grossman&#x2F;joojanta200" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;d-grossman&#x2F;joojanta200</a><p>The project utilizes CRF as RNN model to assign labels to pixels. The demo preserves pixels assigned to people while blacking out pixels associated with other labels. (Think of it as automating background removal around people)
kowdermeisterover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve just seen this research on this same subject: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QYIQbfnS9jA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QYIQbfnS9jA</a>
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switzover 6 years ago
I used to spend hours cutting &quot;renders&quot; of images a decade ago.. and while I found a few images that confused it, many worked with surprising effect! Color me impressed!
Procrastesover 6 years ago
Beautiful. Works great with portrait poses, less well with groups.
artur_maklyover 6 years ago
if you don&#x27;t bump up the resolution output for this service.. it will be mostly be constrained to basic website use.<p>&gt; I would pay a small usage fee for ultra-high-res that covers the additional server costs needed to offer this.
gesmanover 6 years ago
Pretty impressive.<p>Hard to judge because resulted image is tiny - but looked good.
brogrammer2019over 6 years ago
How does this background removal tool work? The removal and keeping the people is really good, far better than I have done in the past manually
Kryptoshiover 6 years ago
I&#x27;m interested to learn how was it done? Works as expected, great work OP. People like you make me always hungry for information
logicalleeover 6 years ago
Wow!! I only tried this because of the comments here, you guys have got to try it, this is amazing.
kevinsimperover 6 years ago
This works pretty well, thanks for sharing, this could be useful for thumbnails!
sophiaraphaelover 6 years ago
This is the best tool i&#x27;ve come across so far. Thanks a lottttt!
l0c0b0xover 6 years ago
This is impressively good!
WD-42over 6 years ago
I was not expecting this to work as well as it did. Great job!
ryantbrownover 6 years ago
Works amazingly well, and has an even better domain name.
jleover 6 years ago
Amazing! :D Any information on the tech behind this? :)
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usermacover 6 years ago
Wow. Fast and it did a good job on my test photo.
tobyhinloopenover 6 years ago
&quot;Without a single click&quot;<p>but... how do I select a photo!?
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mzehrerover 6 years ago
Does not work with cats.
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ps0305over 6 years ago
cool,let me try
y4miover 6 years ago
&gt; 100% automatically – in 5 seconds – without a single click<p>cant drag-n-drop images on the webpage... so the slogan is a lie<p>impressive service nonetheless
protomikronover 6 years ago
Nice work, but citing the FAQ:<p>&gt; How does it work?<p>&gt; We use sophisticated AI technology to detect foreground layers and separate them from the background.<p>You use &quot;sophisticated AI technology&quot;?<p>Why can&#x27;t you write, that you trained a CNN and do some image postprocessing? This kind of voodoo-language turns me as a potential technical customer completely off.
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