This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice about Apple’s hottest product.
Apple’s iOS 16 software will have its public release on Monday, a week after the company debuted the new iPhone 14 lineup, and with the launch of iOS 16 comes one of the best ways to edit photos I’ve ever seen.
The feature hasn’t been named, but here’s how it works: Tap and hold a photo to separate the subject of an image, such as a person, from the background. And if you hold down, you can “lift” the photo cutout and drag it to another app to post, share, or make a collage, for example.
Technically, the tap-and-lift photo feature is part of Visual Look Up, which first launched with iOS 15 and can recognize objects in your photos, including plants, food, landmarks, and even pets . In iOS 16, Visual Look Up lets you remove that object from a photo or PDF without doing anything other than tap and hold.
During WWDC, Apple showed someone tapping and holding the dog in a photo to raise it from the background and share it in a message.
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Robby Walker, Apple’s senior director of Siri Language and Technologies, demonstrated the new lift-and-tap tool on a photo of a French bulldog during WWDC. The dog was “cropped” from the photo and then dragged and dropped into the text field of a message.
“It feels like magic,” Walker said.
Apple sometimes overuses the word “magic,” but this tool looks impressive. Walker was quick to point out that the effect was the result of an advanced machine learning model, which is accelerated by Apple’s core machine learning and neural engine to perform 40 billion operations in a second.
Knowing the amount of processing and machine learning required to crop a dog out of a photo excites me to no end. Many times new phone features have to be revolutionary or solve a serious problem. I guess you could say that the tap and hold tool solves the problem of removing the background from a photo, which at least for some could be a serious problem.
I couldn’t help but notice the similarity to another photo feature in iOS 16. On the lock screen, the photo editor separates the foreground subject from the background of the photo used for the wallpaper. This allows lock screen elements like the time and date to be layered behind the wallpaper theme but in front of the photo background. Makes it look like a magazine cover.
I’ve tested the new Visual Look Up feature in the public beta for iOS 16. I’m still impressed with how quickly and reliably it works.