Category
Technical Deep Dives
18 posts
- Technical Deep Dives··7 min read
Non-Destructive Editing: How Undo Actually Works in a Layer-Based Editor
Filters, slider adjustments, mask edits, and layers each need their own history. Here is how a single undo stack reverts a grade without touching your cut-out — and why that matters.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
Why Our Best-Quality Background Remover Runs on WASM, Not WebGPU
WebGPU guarantees only 8 storage buffers per shader stage. BiRefNet's graph wants 33–65. That single number decides where our best-quality model runs — and why "just use the GPU" isn't an option.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
We Run the Model in Your Browser Instead of Our Server. Here's the Real Tradeoff.
Client-side background removal is a set of concrete engineering tradeoffs, not just a privacy slogan. What you gain (privacy, zero marginal cost, offline) and what we pay (download size, device variance) and how we manage each.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
The Math Behind Upscaling a 176px Thumbnail to 2048px
A fixed "2×" turns 176px into a still-tiny 352px. Real upscaling of small inputs needs a pre-scale plan and cascaded passes. The arithmetic we use to get a thumbnail to a usable size.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
The "White Flash" Bug: What Running Out of RAM Looks Like in a Browser Tab
Process a long video, the tab flashes white and reloads, your work is gone. That's not a crash you can catch — it's the renderer being killed for OOM. Why it happens and how streaming frames fixes it.
- Technical Deep Dives··5 min read
One Bug, Seven Queues: How a Copy-Pasted State Machine Made Us Refresh the Page
"Cancel a job, and you can't add another without refreshing." The same bug lived in seven separate queue stores because each had its own copy of one flawed line. The fix, and why deriving state beats tracking it.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
No "Bring Your Own Model": How We Source Client-Side AI Models
Plenty of browser AI tools punt the hard part to you — "paste a model URL." We don't. Our rule for sourcing self-hostable, permissively-licensed ONNX models so every tool works out of the box.
- Technical Deep Dives··5 min read
How We Finally Proved Which GPU Path Our Models Actually Use
For dozens of update rounds we debated whether a slowdown meant our models silently fell back to WASM. We never knew — because nothing logged it. The one small telemetry probe that changed how we diagnose performance.
- Technical Deep Dives··5 min read
"Session Has No Input Names": The Anatomy of a Truncated Model Download
ONNX Runtime doesn't throw when you hand it a half-downloaded model. It builds a broken session that fails cryptically three tools later. The failure chain and the two checks that make it fail at the source.
- Technical Deep Dives··5 min read
Grayscale, Sepia, and Invert: Classic Photo Effects in Your Browser
How grayscale conversion (luminance weighting), sepia tone (matrix transform), and invert effects work at the pixel level — and when to use each for product photography, branding, and art.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
How to Create a Multi-Size Favicon .ICO from a PNG (Free, No Photoshop)
The ICO format explained, why favicons need multiple embedded sizes (16×16 to 256×256), and how to generate a proper .ico file directly in your browser from any logo or icon PNG.
- Technical Deep Dives··8 min read
AI Image Upscaling: Lanczos vs. Swin2SR vs. Real-ESRGAN — Which Is Best?
A practical comparison of three upscaling approaches — classic Lanczos interpolation, transformer-based Swin2SR, and GAN-based Real-ESRGAN. When each method wins, what to expect on different content types, and how to choose.
- Technical Deep Dives··8 min read
How to Remove Backgrounds from Photos with Hair and Fur
Hair, fur, and fine strands are the hardest subjects for background removal AI. This guide covers why it's difficult, how RMBG-1.4 and BiRefNet handle it, and how to get the cleanest results using edge refinement.
- Technical Deep Dives··6 min read
Sky Replacement vs Background Removal: Which Does Your Photo Need?
Sky replacement and background removal sound similar but serve different purposes. Here's when to use each technique, how they work differently, and where a browser-based tool fits in.
- Technical Deep Dives··9 min read
The Difference Between Straight Alpha and Premultiplied Alpha (And Why It Matters)
A clear technical explanation of straight alpha vs premultiplied alpha — what each means, why premultiplied alpha causes the "black fringe" problem, and how to tell which one your tool produces.
- Technical Deep Dives··8 min read
Best Color Spaces for Product Photography (sRGB vs Display P3 vs Adobe RGB)
Which color space should you use for product photos going online? sRGB, Display P3, and Adobe RGB compared — with specific advice for e-commerce, print, and background removal.
- Technical Deep Dives··8 min read
Why Your Transparent PNG Shows Black in Photoshop (And How to Fix It)
The premultiplied alpha problem explained: why most free background removers produce PNGs that show black in Photoshop, and what to look for in a tool that gets it right.
- Technical Deep Dives··10 min read
How AI Background Removal Actually Works
What's really happening when an AI model removes a background — segmentation models, ONNX, WebGPU, and why running in the browser is better than a cloud API for privacy.