Remove Unwanted People and Objects from Photos

With Apple Intelligence, the Photos app has now gained a new Clean Up feature that lets you remove unwanted people and distracting objects from your photos. Here, I’ve got a beautiful photo of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and I’m going to press Edit at the bottom to start cleaning up. I want to get rid of some of the people and boats in the water.

On the edit screen, you’ll now see the Clean Up option, which appears when you’ve got Apple Intelligence enabled. Tapping on this will automatically analyse the photo, and anything it thinks you might want to remove will be highlighted with a holographic, shimmery colour effect. You don’t have to remove any of these objects, but if you want to, simply tapping on them will run the Clean Up process on that part of the image. It’s using Apple Intelligence to figure out what should be in place of that object — it’s not just a basic fill from surrounding areas.

Of course, if you want to refine it more, you can do that too. As I zoom in, I can see there are still some artefacts on the water — someone on a stand-up paddleboard, in fact — and I can simply use my finger to brush over that. The object will be removed, and I can do this on any parts I want to clean up. If for any reason the cleanup doesn’t go as planned, you can always press the Undo button in the top left corner.

For larger objects, like this boat in the harbour, I can actually draw a circle around it, and Apple Intelligence will work out what part of the image I want to remove. You’ll see here it hasn’t removed the harbour wall or other surroundings — it’s figured out that it’s just the boat I want to get rid of, and now it’s gone! You’d never know it was there.

When you’re finished, just press Done as you normally would after editing a photo. And if you want to check if your picture has been altered using Apple Intelligence and the Clean Up tool, simply swipe up for information on the photo. At the bottom, it will tell you whether it’s been cleaned up with AI.

This is just one of many features that have come to your iPhone with Apple Intelligence on iOS 18.1. If you want to see what else is new, check out my channel below. As more Apple Intelligence features roll out in the future, you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss anything. And if you fancy some reading material to find out 100 Things That Are New on iOS 18, well, you’re in luck — I’ve written an eBook, and you can grab it at the link below.

That’s it for now. I’ll see you next time.