This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s full coverage from and about Apple’s annual developer conference.
Apple’s iOS 16 will include many new features for the iPhone, such as editable messages and a customizable lock screen. But there was one feature that really caught my eye during WWDC 2022, even though it took up less than 15 seconds of the event.
The function has not been named, but below shows how it works: Touch and hold a photo to separate the subject of an image, such as a person, from the background. And if you keep pressing, you can “lift” the photo crop and drag it to another app to post, share, or make a collage, for example.
Technically, the touch and lift photography feature is part of Visual Lookup, which was first launched with iOS 15 and can recognize objects in your photos, such as plants, food, landmarks, and even pets. In iOS 16, Visual Lookup allows you to remove this object from a photo or PDF without doing anything other than touching and holding.
During WWDC, Apple showed someone touching and holding the dog in a photo to lift it from the background and share it in a message.
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Robby Walker, senior director of Siri Language and Technologies at Apple, demonstrated the new tool for lifting and tapping on a photo of a French bulldog. The dog was “cropped” from the photo and then dragged and dropped into the text field of a message.
“It sounds like magic,” Walker said.
Sometimes Apple makes excessive use of the word “magic,” but this tool looks awesome. Walker quickly noted that the effect was the result of an advanced machine learning model, which is accelerated with Apple’s basic machine learning and neural engine to perform 40 billion operations in a second.
Knowing how much processing and machine learning it takes to cut a dog from a photo excites me endlessly. Many times the new features of the phone have to be revolutionary or solve a serious problem. I guess you could say that the touch and hold tool solves the problem of removing the background of a photo, which for at least for some could be a serious problem.
I couldn’t help but notice the similarity with another iOS 16 photo feature. On the lock screen, the photo editor separates the foreground theme from the background of the photo used for the wallpaper. This allows lock screen items such as time and date to be layered behind the wallpaper theme but in front of the photo background. It makes it look like the cover of a magazine.
I’ve tried the new visual search feature in the public beta for iOS 16. I’m still impressed with how quickly and reliable it works. If you have a spare iPhone to test, a developer beta for iOS 16 is now available and a public beta of iOS 16 will be out in July.
For more information, see everything Apple announced at WWDC 2022, including the new MacBook Air M2.