🎨 sanana

Turn your photos into Ghibli-style illustrations in one command

English | 🌐 中文文档

sanana is a local, privacy-first image editor that transforms ordinary photos into cartoon-style illustrations — think Studio Ghibli, anime, or hand-drawn aesthetics. It runs entirely on your own machine using CPU only, with no image ever leaving your computer.

⚠️ Disclaimer: sanana is a third-party, community-driven Python wrapper — it is not an official product of Alibaba or the MNN team. The underlying inference engine (MNN) and the diffusion model (MNN-Sana-Edit-V2) are developed by Alibaba; this repository only provides a convenient CLI and Python API around them.

📝 Prompt limitation: The model was trained with a fixed prompt, so custom --prompt values have no effect on the output style. The model only knows one style (cartoon/Ghibli-like), and changing the prompt will not switch to a different aesthetic.

Under the hood, sanana is powered by Alibaba MNN, a high-performance deep-learning inference engine, and the MNN-Sana-Edit-V2 diffusion model. The model is distilled to produce high-quality results in just 10 inference steps, making it fast enough for everyday use on regular laptops and desktops. On first run, the ~1.2GB model is downloaded automatically from ModelScope — after that, everything works offline.

sanana is also the Python desktop companion to the official MNN Chat mobile apps: the same Sana model runs on both Android and iOS, so you can edit photos on your phone or computer with identical results.

# One-shot — run without installing anything (requires uv)
uvx sanana photo.jpg

# Or install permanently with uv
uv tool install sanana
sanana photo.jpg

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✨ Showcase

Original	🪄 sanana Magic

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🚀 Quick Start

# Run once without installing (requires uv)
uvx sanana photo.jpg

# Or install permanently
uv tool install sanana
sanana photo.jpg

The model (~1.2GB) will be downloaded automatically on first run.

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🔥 Highlights

🎨	Cartoon Style Transfer	Photos → Ghibli/anime illustrations in one command
🏠	Fully Local	No internet, no cloud upload, absolute privacy
🐍	Python Native	pybind11 C++ extension, inference inside Python process
💻	CPU-only	MNN high-performance engine, runs on ordinary machines
⚡	10 Steps	MNN-Sana-Edit-V2 knowledge-distilled model, high quality with few steps
📝	Fixed Prompt	Model trained on a single style; custom prompts do not change the output

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📱 Mobile Apps

The same MNN-Sana-Edit-V2 model also runs on mobile devices:

• Android: Download MNN Chat APK or Google Play, then download the Sana model from the in-app model market
• iOS: MNN LLM Chat — build from source or check the App Store for "MNN Chat"

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📦 Installation

Option 1: uv (Recommended)

# Run once without installing
uvx sanana photo.jpg

# Or install permanently
uv tool install sanana

Option 2: pip

pip install sanana

This automatically clones and builds MNN (requires git, cmake, C++ compiler).

Option 3: From Source

git clone https://github.com/vra/sanana.git
cd sanana
uv sync
source .venv/bin/activate
sanana photo.jpg

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🎮 Usage

CLI

# Minimal
sanana photo.jpg

# Custom output
sanana photo.jpg -o output.jpg

# Custom prompt (note: has no effect on output style)
sanana photo.jpg --prompt "Ghibli style"

# Full args
sanana photo.jpg \
  -o out.jpg \
  --prompt "Convert to Ghibli style" \
  --steps 10 \
  --seed 42 \
  --width 512 \
  --height 512

Argument	Description	Default
input	Input image path	Required
-o, --output	Output path	input_stem_cartoon.jpg
--prompt	Style prompt	Convert to a cartoon-style illustration
--steps	Inference steps	10
--seed	Random seed	42
--width/--height	Output size	512x512

Python API

from sanana import edit_image

# One-shot
edit_image("./photo.jpg", steps=10, seed=42)

from sanana import SanaEditor

# Advanced: reuse model for batch processing
editor = SanaEditor(backend="cpu", memory_mode=2)
editor.load()

for img in ["a.jpg", "b.jpg", "c.jpg"]:
    editor.run(
        input_image=img,
        output_image=img.replace(".jpg", "_cartoon.jpg"),
        steps=10,
    )

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⚙️ Architecture

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  🐍 Python Layer                            │
│     sanana (CLI / API)                      │
│            ↓ import                         │
│     sanana._sana_diffusion                  │
│     (pybind11 C++ Extension)                │
└────────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                     │
┌────────────────────▼───────────────────────┐
│  🔧 C++ Layer (MNN)                         │
│     SanaLlm ──→ SanaDiffusion ──→ Image     │
│     (Text Encode) (Flow Matching Denoise)   │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Text Encoding: Qwen3-0.6B LLM processes the prompt
• Feature Bridging: Connector → Projector maps to DiT space
• VAE Encode: Input image → Latent (img2img)
• DiT Denoise: Euler sampling + Flow Shift, 10 steps
• VAE Decode: Latent → Final image

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🖥️ Performance

Apple MacBook Pro M3 (CPU, 512×512, 10 steps):

Stage	Time
LLM Text Encoding	~1.5 s
VAE Encode	~3 s
DiT Denoise (10 steps)	~22 s
VAE Decode	~5 s
Total	~32 s

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🧩 Requirements

Platform	Status	Notes
macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel)	✅ Supported	Best performance on M1/M2/M3
Linux (x86_64 / ARM64)	✅ Supported	Tested on Ubuntu 22.04+
Windows (x86_64)	⚠️ Experimental	Requires Visual Studio + OpenCV, CI unstable

• Python: 3.10+
• Compiler: Clang/GCC/MSVC (C++17)
• Tools: git, cmake

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❓ FAQ

Q: MNN not found during install?
A: setup.py auto-clones and builds MNN. Just ensure git, cmake, and a C++ compiler are installed.

Q: First run is slow?
A: The model (~1.2GB) is downloaded on first use. Subsequent runs are fast.

Q: GPU support?
A: CPU by default. Use backend="metal" for Metal (macOS), requires MNN built with GPU flags.

Q: Commercial use?
A: Code is Apache-2.0. Model files follow the original publisher's license.

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🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md.

📜 Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

📄 License

Code: Apache-2.0.
Model: MNN-Sana-Edit-V2 belongs to its original publisher.

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