Background Removal API result has black square artifacts

Since 2025-09-04 we are getting black spots in the result image when using the Remove Background API. These seem to only occur on the semi-transparant wrappers around our products. It is independent of image formats and other parameters, even using an older model with pr-background-removal-model-version still produces these artifacts. Only the alpha-only output does not show the black spots.

Request

curl --location 'https://sdk.photoroom.com/v1/segment' \
--header 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
--header 'Accept: image/jpeg' \
--header 'x-api-key: <API KEY>' \
--form 'image_file=@"image.jpg"' \
--form 'format="jpg"' \
--form 'channels="rgba"' \
--form 'crop="true"' > result.jpg

Input

(See reply)

Result

I was only able to include a single image, so here’s the input:

Hi @VanDerPlasGroup ,

We recently deployed an update which should have fixed this issue. Can you confirm that you are no longer experiencing this on your end?

Speak soon,

Allie

Hi Allie,

It seems the update worked, we are not experienced any more issues on our end.