How to Create Distraction-Free Holiday Memories With Apple’s Photo Clean Up Tool
When you’re taking photos on vacation, one of your first considerations is probably whether there’s a subject in the viewfinder and whether there’s anything unpleasant getting in. Nothing ruins a good photo more than something you don’t want to see in it, such as an unwelcome guest or an awkward background situation.
But if it does happen, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Apple information Are there any you cover? All you have to do is use the cleanup feature in the Photos app iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoiathen you will be golden.
Clean Up analyzes the image, suggests items you might want to remove, such as people or vehicles in the background, and then fills in the removed areas. Sometimes the fix is invisible to most viewers, and sometimes the results are disastrous. After running multiple types of photos through the tool, I’ve come up with some general guidelines to help you get the best cleanup image possible.
Cleaning tools remove distractions.
Surprisingly, Photos on iPhone and iPad never had a tool like Cleanup to remove small distractions. The Mac version does include a basic retouching tool that can repair certain areas, which is replaced by Clean Up on compatible Macs.
But it’s important to remember that cleanup is a feature of Apple Intelligence, so you’ll only see it if you’re running a compatible device and have been granted access. Apple Smart Beta. These include iPhones running iOS 18.1, iPads with M-series processors running iPadOS 18.1 (and iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip), and Macs with M-series processors running MacOS Sequoia 15.1.
For more information about Apple Intelligence, see Which features do I think you use the most? and where it is Notifications need improvement.
How is Clean Up different from other grooming tools?
The repair tools in most photo editing apps fill the space to be repaired by copying nearby or similar pixels. For example, they’re great for removing lens flare or dust spots in the sky.
The cleaning tool uses generative artificial intelligence, which analyzes the entire scene and guesses what should fill the area you selected. For example, if you want to remove a dog standing in front of a tree, the generative AI will create a replacement based on its knowledge of the texture and foliage of the trees in the background, and will also take into account lighting levels and directions in the photo.
The “generative” part of generative AI comes from the way it creates images. The pixels that fill the area are literally made out of nothing: the software starts with a random pattern of dots and quickly iterates to create what it’s sure will appear in the same space.
Keep in mind that using generative AI’s grooming tools is the ultimate YMMV, “your mileage may vary.” I got good results in difficult compositions and poor results in areas I thought the app could handle with ease.
Look at this: Apple Intelligence Impressions: Don’t Expect Fundamental Changes
How to use Apple’s cleaning tools to eliminate distractions
The cleanup tool uses two methods to repair photos. Using machine learning, it will suggest items such as people or vehicles in the background as possible items to remove. Alternatively, you can drag the item you want to delete over the item you want to delete and then orient the photo to that area. The process breaks down as follows:
1. Open the photo and click edit button. (On MacOS, click the editor press the Enter key. )
2. tap clean up. The first time you use the tool, Photos will need to download cleaning resources, which will take a minute or so, depending on your internet connection. Photo analyzes the image and highlights any items that may be removed with a translucent shimmer.
Open the photo editing interface and click Clean. Photos provide suggestions for removing content.
3. To remove a suggested item, click it. Alternatively, draw a circle around any non-luminous items.
4. Don’t be surprised if the area doesn’t clean completely on the first try – you may need to paint the remaining area for more cleaning. If you are not satisfied with the fix, click Undo button.
If Clean doesn’t remove everything (note that the person’s legs are not highlighted in the image on the left), use the tool again to continue cleaning the area.
5. When finished, click complete. As with all edits in photos, if you want to start over, you can revert to the original state: Tap more (…) button and select Restore to original state.
Unexpectedly cool feature: Security filter
First, you’ll use the Cleanup tool to remove distracting elements from your scene, but it also has another trick available: You can hide someone’s identity in a photo.
Draw a circle around their face. You don’t have to fill it out—a general swipe will do the job. The photo has a blocky mosaic pattern applied in place of the face to blur it.
Safety filters are a clever use of cleaning tools.
Where You’ll See Clean Up’s Most Success
Certain scenes and areas work better with Clean Up, so it’s good to know where to focus your efforts.
In my testing, I’ve found the following general categories of fixes to be the most successful:
- Small distractions. It always works well on things like trash on the ground or dust and lint on clothes.
- Background texture. Areas such as leaves, grass, or stones can all be replicated well.
- Lens flare. As long as it’s not too large, light reflections between camera lens elements can cause lens flare
- bystanders or vehicles In a background that doesn’t take up much space.
- Areas with sparse detail or background.
Sometimes cleaning works well – original version at the top, edited version at the bottom.
In general, when dragging around an area, make sure to grab the reflection or shadow cast by the item you want to remove. Fortunately, photos often notice these and incorporate them into their selections.
Make sure Shadows and Reflections are selected (left). Clean Up detects content that should be removed based on a broad selection (medium). A bit of reflection is left (right), but this can be cleared by sliding the tool again.
Areas to avoid when trying to use Clean Up
Some cleaning targets can frustrate you when you try to remove them. For example:
- Very large area. If it’s too big, Photos will hesitate and tell you to mark a smaller area, which would otherwise clutter the area. It’s also inconsistent with what would reasonably appear in such a large space.
- A busy area with a clear identity. Distant foliage often works well, but not when there are identifiable structures or objects. For example, removing a protruding leaf from a pile, or removing a person from an identifiable landmark, doesn’t turn out well.
Deleting large objects in a frame turns them into a bunch of pixels.
Where cleanup needs more work
Keep in mind that Cleaning and other Apple Intelligence features are technically still in beta, although anyone with a compatible device and signed up for the beta program can use them. (I have some ideas Install beta software Generally speaking. )
While you can get some good results, there are some areas that I still expect Apple to improve in future versions. That said, the quality of the replacement areas varies, sometimes looking more like a non-AI repair tool. I would have expected Apple’s algorithm to do a better job of determining what’s in the scene and constructing replacement areas.
In terms of user experience, if you don’t like the deletion functionality provided by Clean Up, your only option is to undo or reset your edits. If you undo and then try again, you will get the same processed result. In contrast, Adobe Lightroom offers three possibilities for each fix, and if you don’t like what it has to offer you can choose to generate another set.
Lightroom (the iPhone app shown here) gives you three options for removing areas.
Clean Up – and other similar AI-based removal tools – are also influenced by the expectations they anticipate: we’ve seen it can do great things, which has raised the bar for what we think every edit should do. We wish the tool could do better when it gets cluttered and delivers a jumble of different pixels. Maybe in the next version.
For more information about what Apple Intelligence brings to your Apple devices, visit A look at visual intelligence features.
