Remove a Background from a Photo on iPad

One of the many new features built into our iPad Generation 9 devices is the ability to easily select the subject (person or object) in a photo (or paused video frame), copy it, and paste it into another app with the background of the photo removed. 

To try this yourself, open the Photos app on the iPad and find a photo with a prominent subject such as a person, pet, or object. You may also open a video and pause the video at any point.

Tap and hold on the subject of the photo and wait for an outline effect to animate the selection. Lift your finger.

Notice that when selected, the outer edge of the subject glows, the background becomes slightly darker, and a Copy | Share pop-up appears. 

Tap Copy.

Press the Home button on the iPad and tap to open any app that allows pasting of images. In this example, the Book Creator app is used.

Tap the screen on a page in the Book Creator app to display the Paste menu.

Tap Paste. The subject from the photo appears in Book Creator with the background removed.

Using an Apple app such as Keynote or Pages, the subject will retain its transparency and can be pasted over different colors, patterns, or backgrounds. This example shows the image pasted into a Keynote slide with a winter-themed background layer.

This feature is possible because of the built-in Neural Engine in the iPad Generation 9 that drives machine learning functions. In this case, machine learning allows the iPad to recognize and isolate the main subject of an image. 

With that in mind, you might find that this feature has a few limitations. I noticed that the machine learning algorithm makes the determination what the "subject" of the photo is and does not allow the user to select a different subject. In photos with multiple subjects, most of the time, subjects all are selected, requiring the use of cropping tools to remove unwanted parts of a selection. Also, the edges are not always selected perfectly, and sometimes part of the background is added to the subject—or part of the subject is omitted from the selection.

Taking the limitations into account, I still find this feature almost magical considering the amount of time and effort I have expended over the years to create this effect "by hand" with image editing software. 

Please note that this feature may also work on your personal iPhone and can be used on photos and videos you may have captured with previous devices.

For more information about this feature and others, check out the iPadOS 16 User Guide.