One of the most fun random additions to iOS 16. Can’t believe how close to perfect the roses and glass vase are lifted from the original picture. I know there is a lot of hate around but Apple really nailed it with this new feature.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 14 Pro iOS 16’s lift subjects from background feature is pretty epic
- Thread starter Eldaerenth Faexidor
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Id say the result is better than some people using Photoshop doing this day in day out. It’s truly breathtaking how good this feature actually can produce.
@Eldaerenth Faexidor
Is the background transparent or is it a solid white? The examples I have seen seem to suggest the background is not transparent.
Is the background transparent or is it a solid white? The examples I have seen seem to suggest the background is not transparent.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean with transparant or solid white background. However, I took the picture in my living room at night with artificial lighting. This feature just cut out the bouquet of roses and the glass vase. That’s it, I hope this answers your question
Transparent as in .png files where you could overlay the cutout over another image without the background appearing. Just the cutout with nothing else.
This is an example:
That would make it super useful. 🙂
This is an example:
That would make it super useful. 🙂
Just read up about this and yes, indeed… transparency is an option. But not as obvious as it should be.
Long-Press on Files
Open your image in Files or another supported app. In Files, head to the directory where the photo lives, but don't open the picture. Instead, long-press the file to open up its quick actions menu. In the menu, you should see an option for "Quick Actions" — tap that to see more options. Then, select "Remove Background."
As soon as you tap "Remove Background," the extracted subject from the image will save as a PNG file in the same directory.
This is going to be very helpful…
Long-Press on Files
Open your image in Files or another supported app. In Files, head to the directory where the photo lives, but don't open the picture. Instead, long-press the file to open up its quick actions menu. In the menu, you should see an option for "Quick Actions" — tap that to see more options. Then, select "Remove Background."
As soon as you tap "Remove Background," the extracted subject from the image will save as a PNG file in the same directory.
This is going to be very helpful…
Ah I now understand what you meant. This is very nice, thanks for sharing this with us. I hope they integrate this hidden option into the photo library!
It doesn’t look to me like you’ve got to go through all that. I go to a photo, long-press in the subject and watch it lift from the background. Then let go, and when the Copy option appears tap to copy.
I can then paste it anywhere with what looks like transparency. I tested this by pasting it into Meassages once in Dark Mide and one in Light Mode, and in each case the background was the appropriate color.
I agree this feature is way cool!
It’s pretty good but not perfect.
I did one of me holding my pistol with an attachment item attached and it did a 85% job. Left a lot of background image around the trigger area and I think around my forearm and something else that made a triangle shape in the middle.
But it is an awesome thing!
I did one of me holding my pistol with an attachment item attached and it did a 85% job. Left a lot of background image around the trigger area and I think around my forearm and something else that made a triangle shape in the middle.
But it is an awesome thing!
This one isn’t perfect, the very tip of the beak was left behind. BUT it’s pretty good…and it was not originally shot with my iPhone. It does its magic no matter what source, if it can identify a subject.
(BTW, just copied-and-pasted, I think it has a transparent background)
(BTW, just copied-and-pasted, I think it has a transparent background)
Last edited:
Hmmmm…
I think the challenge is when you want to put it in a document where the workflow goes through Files? Mine have been, go to photo, press-and-hold, copy, come to forum, start post, paste.
I wish they had an option to turn this off, I sometimes enable it by accident.
OK, I did a test...
I copied a photo lift on my iPhone, and then on my Mac (where I have Handoff turned on), I opened a Pixelmator document and pasted...and it did NOT come in transparent. But then...still on my Mac and not my iPhone, I came here and did a paste, and the transparency WAS there. Perhaps the resulting clipboard entity from the lift is in a proprietary format that either only Apple apps (including Safari) can recognize the transparency, or apps that have taken advantage of an API?
Last edited:
I actually used it to help a friend the other day with a last second sales presentation change he needed. I was able to quickly grab a beer can out of photo and paste it over another can. Good enough for a quick edit with no time for a desktop with photoshop.
One impressive (or frustrating if you are trying to get a single subject) feature I’ve found is that it will pull multiple subjects if they are all similar focus level. The subjects don’t have to be physically touching in the photo.
I'm pretty impressed by this. The quality of the cutout is pretty comparable to what you get using some of Photoshop's quick tools. Adobe's aren't perfect either, and I think may have even produced a worse result with an example like these roses.
I wonder if Apple would ever bother to create a software suite to compete with Adobe 🤔
I wonder if Apple would ever bother to create a software suite to compete with Adobe 🤔
Hope this doesn’t freak anyone out, but here is my example I was referring to above. I cropped a lot out to avoid showing the full image for sensitive viewers. But the whole outside was done perfectly, but this part you see was still left untouched. I wish it would know to do the whole thing.
Attachments
It's a transparent png and it even works with online images. It's awesome but it won't work for whatsapp since it doesn't support png's
