docs(ops): setup notes for the rembg background-removal sidecar #279

2026-09-03T09:05:37-05:00

bermudalamb commented

2026-09-03 09:05:37 -05:00

Measured rather than described. Everything in here was run against danielgatis/rembg:latest on 2026-09-02 and the numbers are from those runs, with the caveat recorded that a dev box under Docker Desktop is not the NAS.

The finding that matters is the default model. This image downloads bria-rmbg on first use, and BRIA's RMBG models are licensed for non-commercial use — the same trap that ruled out @imgly/background-removal-node, reached silently by making one request. Sending model=u2net explicitly is both the licensing answer and ten times faster: 1.1-2.3s against 14-20s for a 2000x1500 image, and 168MB on disk against 977MB. That speed difference decides the interaction on its own, because a click can wait two seconds and cannot wait twenty.

Also records the volume path, which most documentation online gets wrong for this image: models land in /root/.rembg, not /root/.u2net, and mounting the old path silently re-downloads 168MB on every start.

The output was verified rather than assumed — PNG, four channels, alpha spanning 0 to 255, dimensions preserved, 1.7x the input JPEG's bytes.

Marked as evaluated rather than adopted, since the engine choice is still open, and the three things not established are listed: quality on a real photograph, behaviour on the NAS, and concurrency. The test input was a generated rectangle on a flat ground, which says nothing about a chipped vase on a patterned rug.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 noreply@anthropic.com

Measured rather than described. Everything in here was run against danielgatis/rembg:latest on 2026-09-02 and the numbers are from those runs, with the caveat recorded that a dev box under Docker Desktop is not the NAS. The finding that matters is the default model. This image downloads bria-rmbg on first use, and BRIA's RMBG models are licensed for non-commercial use — the same trap that ruled out @imgly/background-removal-node, reached silently by making one request. Sending model=u2net explicitly is both the licensing answer and ten times faster: 1.1-2.3s against 14-20s for a 2000x1500 image, and 168MB on disk against 977MB. That speed difference decides the interaction on its own, because a click can wait two seconds and cannot wait twenty. Also records the volume path, which most documentation online gets wrong for this image: models land in /root/.rembg, not /root/.u2net, and mounting the old path silently re-downloads 168MB on every start. The output was verified rather than assumed — PNG, four channels, alpha spanning 0 to 255, dimensions preserved, 1.7x the input JPEG's bytes. Marked as evaluated rather than adopted, since the engine choice is still open, and the three things not established are listed: quality on a real photograph, behaviour on the NAS, and concurrency. The test input was a generated rectangle on a flat ground, which says nothing about a chipped vase on a patterned rug. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

bermudalamb added 1 commit 2026-09-03 09:05:38 -05:00

docs(ops): setup notes for the rembg background-removal sidecar

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Measured rather than described. Everything in here was run against danielgatis/rembg:latest on 2026-09-02 and the numbers are from those runs, with the caveat recorded that a dev box under Docker Desktop is not the NAS.

The finding that matters is the default model. This image downloads bria-rmbg on first use, and BRIA's RMBG models are licensed for non-commercial use — the same trap that ruled out @imgly/background-removal-node, reached silently by making one request. Sending model=u2net explicitly is both the licensing answer and ten times faster: 1.1-2.3s against 14-20s for a 2000x1500 image, and 168MB on disk against 977MB. That speed difference decides the interaction on its own, because a click can wait two seconds and cannot wait twenty.

Also records the volume path, which most documentation online gets wrong for this image: models land in /root/.rembg, not /root/.u2net, and mounting the old path silently re-downloads 168MB on every start.

The output was verified rather than assumed — PNG, four channels, alpha spanning 0 to 255, dimensions preserved, 1.7x the input JPEG's bytes.

Marked as evaluated rather than adopted, since the engine choice is still open, and the three things not established are listed: quality on a real photograph, behaviour on the NAS, and concurrency. The test input was a generated rectangle on a flat ground, which says nothing about a chipped vase on a patterned rug.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

bermudalamb merged commit e36e61880e into main

2026-09-03 09:05:45 -05:00

bermudalamb deleted branch docs/background-removal-stack

2026-09-03 09:05:46 -05:00

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Reference: bermudalamb/redefined-designs#279