qwen-zimage becomes the default and sdxl-zimage the only alternative. The
controlnet, sdxl, qwen and default profiles are gone, and with them the CPU and
MPS paths for invisible-watermark removal: neither matched the two-stage
recipe's face preservation, so keeping them advertised a quality this library no
longer delivers. Visible-mark removal and every identify command still run
anywhere.
Retired names are rejected rather than remapped. Silently routing --pipeline
sdxl onward would run an old script at a different strength, on a different
model, at a different quality, and report success.
CUDA is now checked when the remover is constructed instead of when the model
loads. Auto-detection cheerfully returned mps on a Mac, so the failure arrived
several layers down, after the dependency check and the pipeline import, in a
message naming whichever internal pipeline happened to raise. _DEVICES collapses
to {"cuda"} and the cpu/mps float32 branch goes with it.
resolve_strength stays total. It briefly returned None for qwen-zimage, meaning
"ask the resolution curve", which pushed a branch onto both callers and left one
of the two strength policies outside the strength module; the CLI copy had
already grown an `or 0.0` guarding a path its own comment called unreachable. It
now takes the image size and answers for both profiles, so the displayed value
cannot drift from the executed one.
Deletion fallout removed with it: img2img_runner and progress.py (the MPS
recovery path and its progress monitor had no callers left), viable_steps, the
fp16 degenerate-output retry, the fp16 VAE fix, and the Qwen img2img call
builders. try_empty_device_cache moved into watermark_remover rather than
leaving a module whose docstring outlived its code. _HAS_DIFFUSERS routes
through optional_deps.module_available, which is what the rest of the library
uses and what correctly rejects a pruned namespace remnant.
--steps, --guidance-scale and --model now have exactly one legal value each and
are still accepted at parse time, then rejected in remove(). Their help text
says so, but validating them beside the option would be better.
Not addressed, and worth its own decision: invisible_engine forces
min_resolution to 0 for both profiles, so the --min-resolution floor, --upscaler,
_esrgan_upscale, upscaler.py and the esrgan extra are all unreachable.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Bug fixes (each with a regression test):
- metadata strip parity across every marker placement: IPTC digitalSourceType
in XMP, the Samsung post-EOI trailer, the China TC260 AIGC block in EXIF
UserComment, a bare AIGC block in a non-standard APP segment, and the ISOBMFF
EXIF path (AIGC + xAI) are all now stripped -- anything a scanner flags, the
strip reaches
- Samsung genAIType detected when its trailer sits past the 512 KB scan window
(file-tail read on large photos)
- crashes on edge inputs: Gemini detector on images with a short side < 16px,
footprint_mask on a zero-size ndarray, the humanizer on chromatic_shift >=
width, and the CLI on unreadable/corrupt/empty input (clean error, not a
traceback)
- WebP written losslessly (cv2 quality 101), not lossy at 100
- the IPTC digitalSourceType algorithmicMedia (procedural, not trained on
sampled data) is no longer flagged as AI-generated, so clean procedural
content is not scrubbed
- c2pa source-type: compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia is checked before the
bare algorithmicMedia token, so an AI-enhanced composite is not misclassified
Detection:
- integrity-clash coverage now normalizes ByteDance / Canva / ElevenLabs /
Black Forest Labs, so a transplanted manifest next to an independent
conflicting stamp is caught; the generic China TC260 AIGC label is attributed
to a co-present TC260 vendor, so a legit Doubao image (its own C2PA + TC260
label) does not clash (corpus-validated: 0 new clashes on 5000 carriers)
CLI:
- batch exits non-zero (with a warning) when any image errors or a GPU-missing
SynthID scrub is skipped, and copies the input through so the output dir stays
complete -- it used to always exit 0 and could silently drop files
Perf:
- GeminiEngine reused as a process-wide singleton with a precomputed template
ladder: -24% on the identify sparkle path, detection byte-identical
Internal: one shared _ai_exif_targets rule set feeds both EXIF scrubbers so
their coverage cannot drift; docs synced; maintain.sh hardened so the uv-secure
internal teardown crash no longer aborts the gate (still fails on a real finding).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three content-quality features for the invisible/all/batch pipeline.
DBNet text detector (auto_config): replace the MSER text heuristic with
PP-OCRv3 differentiable-binarization via cv2.dnn.TextDetectionModel_DB,
using a bundled 2.4 MB Apache-2.0 model (en/cn detection nets are
byte-identical, so it ships language-neutral). cv2.dnn is core OpenCV, so
no new pip dep. MSER stays as the fallback when the model can't load.
Validated on real images: matches MSER everywhere and additionally catches
the Doubao CJK mark MSER missed; routing decisions unchanged otherwise.
Real-ESRGAN upscaler (new upscaler.py, esrgan extra): optional
pre-diffusion super-resolution for the min-resolution floor upscale, loaded
via spandrel (MIT, no basicsr) with BSD-3-Clause weights downloaded on
first use. New --upscaler {lanczos,esrgan} on invisible/all/batch; default
stays lanczos and the engine falls back to lanczos when the extra is absent
or the model errors (never breaks removal). It is a manual opt-in knob (the
auto plan never selects it) -- as a generic GAN it sharpens photo/texture
content strongly but can degrade faces (the diffusion pass regenerates
them) and thin text, documented accordingly.
batch --auto: wire the content-adaptive --auto (+ --adaptive-polish) into
cmd_batch. The plan is recomputed per image and the invisible engine is
cached per resolved pipeline (default/controlnet), so a mixed directory
builds at most one engine of each kind. Verified end-to-end: 3 mixed
images routed correctly with only 2 pipeline loads (controlnet reused).
ruff + strict pyright(src/) clean; 558 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two quality knobs for the SDXL invisible pass:
- min_resolution floor (default 1024, --min-resolution): small inputs are
upscaled to a 1024px long-side floor before diffusion, since SDXL img2img
distorts on a tiny latent (a 381x512 portrait wrecks at native). The output
is restored to the original input size, so it is a transparent quality boost;
it adds time/memory on small inputs. 0 disables. Extends the pure _target_size
helper (now cap-or-floor-or-native, min skipped on a min>max misconfig),
unit-tested without a model.
- unsharp post-filter (humanizer.unsharp_mask, --unsharp, opt-in default 0):
applied LAST, after the GFPGAN face pass (a pre-GFPGAN sharpen would be
smoothed back over), to counter the soft/over-smoothed look that diffusion +
restoration leave behind (an AI tell). Pairs with --humanize (grain).
Both threaded through invisible/all/batch + the module-level helper. Verified
end-to-end on a 381x512 portrait: upscaled to 1024, sharpened, restored to
381x512.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add `--pipeline controlnet` (SDXL base + xinsir canny ControlNet via
StableDiffusionXLControlNetImg2ImgPipeline): the canny edge map conditions the
img2img regeneration so text and face STRUCTURE stay sharp, while the watermark
is still removed by the regeneration (`strength`) -- no original pixels are
copied or frozen, so SynthID does not survive. Oracle-verified clean on OpenAI
with better text/structure fidelity than plain img2img at equal strength.
`--controlnet-scale` tunes structure preservation; fp32 on mps/cpu (fp16-fixed
VAE on cuda/xpu). Shares the img2img runner (live progress + MPS->CPU fallback)
and the fp16-VAE-fix / device-move helpers with the default pipeline.
Remove the superseded subsystems -- ctrlregen (SD1.5 clean-noise),
text-protection (differential / region-hires) and face-protection: they either
destroyed real content or shielded the watermark by re-using original pixels.
controlnet replaces them by regenerating everything under edge conditioning.
Canny preserves face structure but not identity; face IDENTITY is a separate
face-restoration post-pass (CodeFormer/GFPGAN), researched + prototyped but not
yet shipped. An IP-Adapter FaceID attempt was built and removed (footgun: needs
high strength, corrupts faces at removal strength).
Docs: docs/controlnet-removal-pipeline-research.md, scripts/controlnet_sweep.py.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Add cross-platform CI test matrix, PyPI classifiers
CI: new test.yml runs lint (ubuntu) + a test matrix (ubuntu/macos/windows
x py3.10/3.12, core+dev, GPU tests skip) on push to main and PRs, closing the
gap where only the release publish.yml ran (ubuntu, no tests). Add PyPI
classifiers (OS/Python/topic). README Tests badge, CLAUDE.md CI note.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Make availability tests reflect installed deps, not assume gpu extra
The new core+dev CI matrix has no diffusers, so the invisible-engine
availability tests (asserting is_available() is True unconditionally) and the
two mocked invisible CLI tests (whose command gates on is_available before the
mock) failed. Assert availability == actual importability of torch+diffusers,
and patch the CLI availability gate so the mocked-engine tests run regardless of
the gpu extra.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The native-vs-downscale decision in InvisibleEngine.remove_watermark (the
issue #10/#15 fix: max_resolution=0 must not pre-downscale, since any
downscale both loses quality and lets SynthID survive) had no test. Extract
it into a pure helper invisible_engine._target_size(w, h, max_resolution)
and cover it with tests/test_invisible_engine.py::TestTargetSize so a
re-introduced forced downscale fails CI instead of silently regressing #15.
Also:
- Clamp the short side to >=1 in _target_size: extreme aspect ratios (e.g.
5000x3 with --max-resolution 1024) truncated it to 0 and crashed
image.resize(). Pre-existing in the inline math; fixed now that it is a
named, tested function.
- Consolidate the two duplicated temp-file save blocks into one
unconditional save (behavior unchanged: the EXIF-transposed image is
still always persisted before WatermarkRemover reloads it by path), and
drop the now-redundant `_tmp_path is not None` guard in finally.
- Bump version 0.5.3 -> 0.5.4 (pyproject, __init__, uv.lock); document the
helper as the regression guard in CLAUDE.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
SD-1.5 dreamshaper at 768 px did not defeat SynthID v2 on Gemini 3 Pro
outputs (verified May 2026 via Gemini app's "Verify with SynthID"). Switch
the default invisible engine to SDXL at 1024 px, matching the raiw-app
production config (strength 0.05, steps 50). Drop the SD-1.5 pipeline.
Metadata layer: add C2PA UUID and IPTC AI marker byte-scan detection
across all formats, plus an ISOBMFF box walker (noai/isobmff.py) that
strips top-level C2PA uuid and JUMBF jumb boxes from AVIF/HEIF/JPEG-XL
containers without re-encoding.
README gets a Legal table and a Threat-model section about SynthID v2's
136-bit payload. CLAUDE.md tracks the SD-1.5 regression as historical
context.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- CLI with visible, invisible, all, metadata, and batch commands
- Gemini watermark removal via reverse alpha blending
- Invisible watermark removal via diffusion regeneration (SynthID, TreeRing)
- AI metadata stripping (EXIF, PNG text, C2PA)
- Face protection (YOLO/Haar) and analog humanizer
- 137 tests covering all CLI modes and core engines
- Ruff and Pyright clean
