bgvanish 0.4.2

Remove image backgrounds locally - no uploads, no account, no fees

Background Remover

A small local utility for removing image backgrounds and exporting transparent PNGs. It runs as a lightweight Flask app and uses rembg with ONNX Runtime for the actual segmentation work.

Features

• Local browser UI for before/after previews
• Alpha matting for softer edges
• Mask-only export mode
• Disk-backed previews and direct PNG downloads
• Recent job metadata through /api/jobs
• Health and identity endpoints for local service checks
• Cross-platform Python install path for Linux, macOS, and Windows

Quick Start

The fastest path is the bootstrap script. It creates a local virtual environment, upgrades packaging tools, and installs the Python dependencies.

Linux and macOS:

python3 scripts/bootstrap.py
. .venv/bin/activate
background-remover

Windows PowerShell:

py scripts/bootstrap.py
.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
background-remover

Open http://localhost:5050 in your browser.

Manual Install

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
python -m pip install -e .
background-remover

Windows PowerShell:

py -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
python -m pip install -e .
background-remover

Runtime Dependencies

The Python package installs:

• Flask
• Pillow
• rembg
• onnxruntime

rembg fetches model assets on first use. The default model is u2net; override it with BACKGROUND_REMOVER_MODEL if you want to use another model supported by rembg.

See docs/DEPENDENCIES.md for platform notes and troubleshooting.

Configuration

Environment variables:

• HOST: bind host, defaults to 127.0.0.1
• PORT: bind port, defaults to 5050
• BACKGROUND_REMOVER_MODEL: rembg model name, defaults to u2net

Example:

HOST=127.0.0.1 PORT=7860 background-remover

Windows PowerShell:

$env:HOST = "127.0.0.1"
$env:PORT = "7860"
background-remover

Verify

python scripts/preflight.py
python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Project Status

This is intentionally small: one loopback-only local web app by default, local filesystem outputs, and no hosted service dependency. The main platform-sensitive dependency is onnxruntime, which must provide a wheel for the target OS and CPU architecture.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.