Better Ways To Lift Subject On Your Mac

The new Lift Subject feature in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura is a great quick way to grab a subject from an image. But for better, more customized results you need to use an app like Photoshop or Pixelmator Pro where you can modify the selection.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you something better than Apple's Lift Subject Out of the Image feature.
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Now a big new feature in iOS 16, iPad OS 16, and macOS Ventura is the ability to lift the subject out of a photo. So, for instance, here on the Mac you can Control Click, Copy Subject, and then get the subject right there, and then paste the subject into various different things. You can also Drag and Drop and do all sorts of other things and it works across all Apple devices with the new Operating Systems. A lot of people love this feature. But this isn't actually anything new. It's new as a built-in part of macOS. But many image editing apps have allowed you to do this for a long time. So if you really like this feature but want to go to the next level and have a more professional result here are two ways to do that. 
First let's closely add the example here. Notice how it grabs a little bit too much of the background. So it's not a clean grab of just the subject. Now the problem with doing this with the macOS built-in tool is there is no way to edit it. You have to bring it into another image editing app. You can actually bring it into Preview. Here I can bring it into Preview and I can use the Markup Tools. Go in and change the selection a little bit. So I can work with it a little bit in Preview. But some image editing apps have allowed you to select the subject for a while now and since they are image editing apps you can modify the selection right there in the app. 
 
Let's start off here in Photoshop. Now I'm going to show you this using the full Photoshop, the current version. But you also have this functionality available in Photoshop Elements and this is a cheaper tool without a subscription. It has the same selection option. So here I have the same image open in Photoshop. I can go to Select and then Subject and basically it is doing the same thing that Apple Software is doing. Notice how it even makes the same mistake. It grabs a little bit too much in some areas. But the difference is in an app like Photoshop I can now Modify this. I can zoom in on an area and I can use a variety of tools. For instance I can use the Lasso tool here. Hold the option key down and circle the part that I want to be removed and now that is not part of the selection anymore. I can use more sophisticated tools like the Object Selection or Quick Selection tool. So with the Object Selection tool I can hover over an area and I try to select the object behind it and I can Option and then click to remove that segment. The Quick Selection tool works a little bit better. You just brush over an area and you have to use Shift to Add or Option to Subtract. So shift to Add. I brush over this area and grab  more and then Option to Subtract and remove and I can change the brush size for that right here to get more precision. Like that. You can zoom in as much as you want and get as precise as you want. So then the idea being when you're done you can just Copy and you can Paste it somewhere just like you can with Apple's tool. 
Another tool you can use for this is Pixelmator Pro which is considerably cheaper. Right now it is $40 to get the full app from The App Store. So you can go to Edit, and then Select Subject. Then it will do, what I think is a little bit better job. Here you notice it still grabs some of the background but not as much. It really easy to edit this. I like to use the Quick Selection Tool. You can just hit the letter Q on your keyboard and then you can use Shift to Add or Option to Remove. So you can kind of paint around and remove things. Then you can go down and do it in other areas as well like that. You can see I did a better job here. I can easily add more here. Remove some. You can use all the other selection tools as well. Then you can Copy and Paste this anywhere you want. 
Another advantage to using Photoshop or Pixelmator Pro for this is they are multi-layer  editing systems. So if your goal is to take the subject out of one photo and put them in another, well you can do that easily in those apps. Whereas with the built-in system functionality there is really no way to do that. You have to go to one of these apps anyway. So here, for instance, I can copy Jack and then go to another document I have open and paste Jack in here and then modify as I like. I can do that all without having to go somewhere else. I can just Save or Export this new image. 
So while the built-in functionality is really cool and has some really good uses like adding images to your Contacts. Sending a message with a photo that doesn't have the background, thing like that. If you're looking to go to the next level and actually edit images that will appear in documents and for other professional reasons then you definitely want to move to a pro image editing app like Photoshop or Pixelmator Pro or such. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Better Ways To Lift Subject On Your Mac

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