Enhance Your Images with Apple’s Clean Up Tool in Photos

[skorgb (George Bush)]

I have found over the years that there are many uses for a clean up or retouch tool to enhance my photos. I can even make a case for having two (or more) versions of a photo. For example, one of the runner only in Adam’s photo of Tanya as well as the one with all the runners.

I definitely feel that removing blemishes or “unnecessary” objects from many photos to direct the focus to a particular person or object can make a photo more memorable. I see it as somewhat analogous to some of the manipulations we used to employ in the darkroom decades ago. My method is to try to make the fewest such removals possible. In the end it’s your photo and your opinion is the one that counts.

Back to the new Clean Up tool, as far back as iPhoto, there has been an editing tool to remove objects. and other distractions, although I can no longer remember what it was initially called. It never worked well. The best app for removing objects or distracting items such as power lines or blemishes or even people has been in my opinion Pixelmator Pro Retouch which offered both Repair and Clone tools. Touch-Retouch was another reasonably good option, though with the addition of Apple’s new Clean Up tool I’ll definitely abandon Touch-Retouch. Affinity also includes a reasonably good Retouch tool.

I join Joaquin in hoping Apple keeps the Pixelmator apps, but I’m more prone to thinking they will perhaps be incorporated into Photos or just eliminated altogether.

[trilo]

@ace

You need Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, and then the Clean Up button appears at the top when you’re editing a photo in Photos. As someone else suggested, it may not be available outside the US yet either.

I’m in Australia and using Apple Intelligence but it requires you to change your language and location settings to US English. The only downside is getting warnings when I spell words the English/Australia way - it wants to correct them to US spelling (which I can happily ignore)

[cnjacobs (Charles Jacobs)]

Enhance Your Images with Apple’s Clean Up Tool in Photos

Too many hits on that. But if you try “old very fit dude in track shorts,” it would likely return Adam’s image.

Challenge accepted!

Honestly, I have way underestimated AI. This was as much fun as a lot of video games. It will be a big part of entertainment.

[mitch.barker]

Artifacts or not, removing the stuff on the bridge brings back the amazing fall foliage and makes it the star of the show (sorry Adam). And it brings back my fond memories of attending college up there in the mid 70’s. Who could study during the fall when you could go hiking around Beebe Lake (not to mention the parks all within a short drive of campus). I gotta get back up there some day…

[doug2 (douglerner)]

@ace

You need Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, and then the Clean Up button appears at the top when you’re editing a photo in Photos. As someone else suggested, it may not be available outside the US yet either.

I’ve been meaning to respond because after reading your message I saw the cause was simply that I had not updated my MBP to 15.1.1! I was still on 15.01. I always have to find a good time to do updates because I have so many windows open and many (e.g. Terminal windows) do not automatically return to where they were.

Anyway, I just updated and tried it and it worked. Pretty good on one photo. Not so great on another. And I tried it on my iPad 2021 M1 and it worked very well with the photo I tested.

Of course the feature is not available on my iPhone 13 Pro.

I saw the iPhone 16 Pro Max a couple of days ago and was impressed. It’s actually lighter than my 13 Pro! I might wait for the 17 Pro Max though since there is nothing broken with my 13 Pro.

Thanks.