Cut out and upscale a product photo: $0.2225 per image on Sume

Removing the background ($0.0225) and upscaling ($0.20) one product photo on Sume costs $0.2225 in total, and the order of the two jobs does not change the price because both are flat per image. A 400-photo catalog is 400 x $0.2225 = $89.00, of which the upscale is $80.00 and the cutouts are $9.00.

Catalog totals

Both rates come from the Sume catalog. RMBG states that its price does not vary by image size, and Image Upscale reserves against about 16 megapixels of output at a flat $0.20.

Which job goes first

The price is symmetric, so the choice is about the image, not the bill. The docs for these two routes in the sources do not say which order gives a cleaner edge, and this post does not make that claim. A sensible test is ten photos each way, which costs $2.225 per order and tells you more than any rule of thumb.

• The upscale takes an upscale_factor from 1 to 4 and an output_format of png, jpg or webp.
• Keep an alpha-capable format between steps if you cut out first; test that your output keeps transparency.
• Each job needs its own Idempotency-Key, since a retry of one step must not queue a second.

Chained requests

Run the cutout, wait for the job, then pass the artifact URL to the upscale.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/rmbg-1.0/remove \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: sku-4411-rmbg" \
  -d '{"image_url": "https://example.com/sku-4411.jpg"}'

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/image-upscale-1.0/upscale \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: sku-4411-up" \
  -d '{"image_url": "$CUTOUT_URL", "upscale_factor": 2, "output_format": "png"}'

Reserve versus bill

At submit Sume reserves the estimate rounded up to whole cents: 3 cents for the cutout and 20 cents for the upscale. A 400-photo batch therefore holds up to $92.00 while it runs, then captures $89.00.

Upscale only the winners

If only one in four photos needs the enlargement, the blended cost is $0.0225 + $0.05 = $0.0725 per photo, so 400 photos are $29.00 instead of $89.00. Cutouts are cheap enough to run on every photo, and the $0.20 upscale is the line item to ration. Review the cutouts first, then upscale the ones that pass.