How To

Apple introduced the first set of Apple Intelligence features for Mac, iPhone, and iPad in macOS Sequoia 15.1, iOS 18.1, and iPadOS 18.1. You can get these Apple Intelligence features now, as long as you have a compatible device. (We previously covered Writing Tools, a suite of text-enhancing Apple AI features.)

Another Apple Intelligence feature is “Clean Up,” a new option in Apple Photos. This feature—called “generative fill” in Adobe Photoshop and other apps—allows you to remove distracting people or objects from photos. When removing objects, this feature fills in the space they took up using AI to generate the replacement, so it appears as though the person or object had never been there.

In this article, I’ll explain how to use this tool, and when you might want to use it.

What the Clean Up is not: a clone tool

This is different from the clone tool that you may be familiar with in many photo editing tools. The clone tool replaces objects by copying pixels from another section of a photo. For example, if you want to remove a ball sitting on some grass, you use the clone tool to duplicate another area of the grass without the ball.

Generative fill goes much further, analyzing the area around the objects you remove and replacing them with an estimation of what the scene would look like without them.

How to use the Clean Up tool to remove people or large objects

I’m going to show you how to use the Clean Up tool on Mac, and the process is similar on iPhone and iPad. The main difference is that it’s easier to clean up small details on the Mac with a cursor than it is to tap on an iPhone or iPad. However, if you have an Apple Pencil, working on an iPad can be even more efficient than working with a cursor, since you can easily draw and tap on objects.

Here is a photo I shot in London recently, at Covent Garden. It’s a busy scene, with lots of people milling around, and one man sitting on the curb looking at his phone.

I used the Clean Up feature in Photos to get a better view of the scene, removing many of the people, along with the man on the curb, and the bits of trash in the gutter that look like napkins.

Removing a person from a photo using Clean Up

To show how this process works, I’ve cropped the photo to just show the man on the curb.

First, go into Edit mode; on Mac, press Return; on iPhone or iPad, tap the Edit button at the bottom of the screen, which looks like three lines with sliders.

In Edit mode, click or tap Clean Up. The first time you do this, your device will download some software, and this may take a couple of minutes. Your device then analyzes the photo, looking for items you might want to remove. If it finds any, it highlights them with glowing light.

Click one of the glowing items and, poof!, it disappears. If you want, click other glowing items, and they also disappear. Click Done when you’re finished to save the changes.

Note that you can always undo any changes by pressing Command-Z, or you can click Reset Clean Up to undo all changes if you’re not happy with the way your photo looks.

Retouching images with the Clean Up tool

Apple’s Photos app used to have a Retouch tool you could use from the Edit tab. This was essentially a simplified clone-and-replace tool that removed spots and blemishes; some photo editors call this a Healing Tool. This tool is no longer available, and you now use Clean Up for all retouching.

There are still some items I want to remove from the photo above. There are several bits of trash in the gutter, probably napkins, that stand out because they are white.

As you can see at the bottom of the screen, Photos tells you to, “Click, brush, or circle what you want to remove.” Do this for any small items that Photos hasn’t detected. You can use this process to remove things like dust spots on close-up photos, skin blemishes or stray strands of hair in portraits, and other things that get in the way.

Zoom in to select smaller objects

Depending on the photo and the objects you want to remove, you might want to zoom in on the photo (use the zoom slider at the top right of the window, or press Command-+). You can also change the size of the brush used by the Clean Up tool using the slider in the right sidebar. Then you can click and hold or tap and hold on small items, and Photos removes them.

Here’s the photo after removing all the small, white items in the gutter and on the cobblestones.

When to use the Clean Up tool in Photos

If you compare the photo above to the original, you can tell, by looking closely at the cobblestones, where the generative fill replaced the man on the curb. It’s much more difficult to spot the changes to the people in the restaurant behind him; if you look really close, you’ll see things that look odd, but they’re so far in the background that you don’t notice them.

Careful perusal of photos where you’ve used Clean Up will likely show imperfections. This tool isn’t designed for professionals; it’s for casual, everyday people who take photos of friends and family or when on vacation. The goal of this tool is not to “photoshop” photos, but to clear out objects and people who you’d rather not see.

A great option for casual photography

Say you’re taking a photo of friends on the beach; you might not want to see the couple walking a dog 50 feet behind them. Or if you’re taking a photo on vacation of a beautiful building or landscape, you might want to remove people who got in the way of an otherwise perfect shot. The point of these photos is to create memories, not necessarily to be totally faithful to the original scene.

Some photo editing apps can go much further, allowing users to make changes that are hard to detect. Such apps are designed more for professionals, for example who create photos for ad campaigns and websites. Apple’s Clean Up tool isn’t as powerful as that; it’s designed so all of us (well, those of us with new enough devices) can use a simple AI tool to remove distractions from our photos. Try it, and you may find that it helps make your memories a bit more memorable.

How can I learn more?

Each week on the Intego Mac Podcast, Intego’s Mac security experts discuss the latest Apple news, including security and privacy stories, and offer practical advice on getting the most out of your Apple devices. Be sure to follow the podcast to make sure you don’t miss any episodes.

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About Kirk McElhearn