Lift the Subject From the Background Of a Photo In iOS 16

A new feature in iOS 16 is the ability to easily select only the subject of a photo and drag it to another app or copy and paste it. You can use this to send just the subject of a photo without the background in a message or place it in a layer of an image editing app.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to lift the subject from a photo on your iPhone.
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So a new feature in iOS 16 is the ability to easily lift the subject of a photo out of the photo and use it elsewhere. Let's take a look at how it works first using the Photos App. So we go into the Photos App and we'll select a photo that has a subject. It could be a person, it could be an animal, it will work in all sorts of different cases. Let's choose this photo here. Now if I want to choose the person all I need to do is tap and hold somewhere on the person. So I'll tap and hold right here and notice that little effect there that shows it is selecting the person. Now still holding down with my finger if I start moving notice how it lifts up the subject out of the photo. So if you're good with dragging and dropping on the iPhone you can now use this and drag and drop to another app. So I'm going to swipe up from the bottom here, while still holding the subject, so I'm using two fingers now, and I'm going to go into another app. For instance let's go into Notes. Now let's create a new note by tapping on the button at the bottom right. Now I'll drop the image in there. You can see it is a regular image in here. I can select it again and move it around. It's just in there without the background at all. 
Now let's do the same thing but in a Mail message. So let's grab this image of me here. I'll tap and hold and you can see now I can move me around like that. Let's swipe up from the bottom. Let's go into Mail and then I'm going to create a new message here and drag and drop. Now if you're not good with Drag and Drop there's another option. You can go to a photo like this. Let's grab this image of Jack here and you can see how it selects everything. But I'm just going to release. Now you can see I've got Copy and Share. So let's use Copy here. Then I'm going to go to the Home Screen and then go to, say, Messages and then I'm going to tap in here and Paste. Now you can see I can Paste an image of Jack without the background.  
This works in any app where you can paste an image or you can drag an image to it. So, for instance, I could select this image here, tap and hold, now I'm dragging. Let's go into Contacts. In the Contacts App I can actually drag this into the image here at the top and you could see it will add it. 
Now it is important to note that this is a System-wide function. It's not just in the Photos App. So I want to go into the Files App here and I've got an image file right there. I can tap and hold on the subject and you can see how I can grab that and drag it somewhere or tap and hold and release and then Copy. Notice also you have Share. You saw that in the Photos App as well. So if I want, instead of copying I can actually just create a new message, a new email, a new note, and all that using the Share menu. 
Here's an example of using it in the Mail App. So I get an email. It's got a photo in it and I can tap and hold on the photo and it doesn't do that little highlight thing. But notice when I tap and hold on the photo then Copy Subject is one of the options. Mail also lets you tap on a photo to just view that photo in kind of an internal photo viewer. Now I can actually tap and hold. I also want to use this image to show you something about how this works. So if I tap on Jack's blue backpack here look how it tries to grab the backpack as the subject. But if I tap on Jack's head or body or somewhere it will know to get all of him. 
You could use the Camera App for this as well. So I'm going to use the Camera App here. I'm going to take a photo. Then tap on the photo there at the bottom. I can tap and hold and grab myself like that. So you could do it with a picture that you just took. Now if you have an image editing app, something like PhotoShop or Pixelmator on your phone, something that will allow you to do multiple layers and copy and paste sections, you could use this feature with it. So I'm going to go back into Photos here. Just going to go to this photo here, tap here, select Copy. Then I'm going to go to Pixelmator where I'm already working on a blank image here and I will tap in there and Paste and now I've got that image there. Go back into Photos and let me select one that has something in it. A subject like this right here. I'll tap and grab that subject there. I could do the Copy but I'm going to actually just switch to the Home Screen. Go to Pixelmator and I can just drop it right into this image here. Resize. So it is just an example how you can use this in conjunction with third party apps.
Now I should mention this is definitely not a pro-level tool. It's using machine learning to guess what the subject of a photo is and try to pick that out for you automatically. There's no way to adjust, to add a little more or take away some, or anything like that. If you want that level of control then you'd have to use a third party image editing app so you can pick out exactly the pixels that you want to take from the photo. This is just a quick way to select the subject of a photo that works most of the time. It's handy for sending that subject in a message or email or using it in some quick way like in an icon or upload to a website. Results are mixed if you're doing something that is not a human or animal. It's not easy to pick out. You can try to pick this flower out and it works pretty well. There's this flower here and it works a little bit better. Here's a bird. You see it grabs both of them. Does a pretty good job there. Here's another flower where it doesn't seem to work at all. Works pretty well right here. Here's another case where it works pretty well. Here's another good one. It doesn't grab the stem of this mushroom here. It works pretty good right here. 
This feature is also coming to the iPad in iPad OS16 and to the Mac in macOS Ventura. It's a fun feature to play with so try it out with some of your photos and see how well it works for you. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Lift the Subject From the Background Of a Photo In iOS 16”

Bill

1 year ago

Hi Gary, Is this supposed to work on an iPhone X?

Gary Rosenzweig

Bill: No. It requires an A12 Bionic processor or newer.

Louise Kienast

9 months ago

I took a screenshot from the Pages User Guide for iPad to see if I could find the name of the image used in the shortcut bar above the built-in keyboard when in Pages. this is a + sign combined with the list symbol. It looks similar to the insert symbol. When I selected and drug it into Notes it was the sign for Section. I can see a connection between the two signs but this was a surprise seeing a different image from the one I selected and drug into Notes.

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Lift the Subject From the Background Of a Photo In iOS 16

Comments: 3 Responses to “Lift the Subject From the Background Of a Photo In iOS 16”

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