iOS 16 users are getting creative with the new background removal feature for photos

The new background removal and image cutout feature is the most fun thing to come out of the new version of the operating system. You aren't likely to tinker with Lock Screen customizations every day.

If you don't know about this feature, you can "pick" any object from a photo and save it as a transparent image. The feature is present in the system in a variety of ways.

Apple’s image cutout feature in iOS 16 is the most fun thing to come out of WWDC 2022

They are putting the feature to different uses now that it is widely used.

An interesting use case is that of an Apple user who is cataloging his daily outfits in the Notes app. A user on TikTok named macaulay_flower used the background removal feature to grab a clip out of himself whenever he changed outfits and put it in a note to show his different looks.

Matthew Cassinelli, an ex-Apple employee, automated the process using a Siri Shortcut.

You can find the fit of the day option in the share sheet after you install this shortcut. The cutout will be saved to an eponymous note if you hit this button from the Share Sheet.

Best part is… you can automate this entire experience with Apple’s Shortcuts app too!

There’s a new “Remove Background from Image” step that you can tie to any other action in Shortcuts.

I built this into an “Outfit of the Day” shortcut here: https://t.co/b3L5LEiVMm pic.twitter.com/eK24qB57Ba

— Matthew Cassinelli (@mattcassinelli) September 14, 2022

Users are exploring this feature in many other ways.

There are more use cases for the background removal tool, such as food photography and even making meme.

One of our favorite uses for this feature is to automatically catalog images into different folders for different things.

We created a nifty way to remove the background from an image and put it into a folder. The remove image background option is available from the share sheet. You will need to manually create the folder before you can use the shortcut. You can just copy the shortcut and rename it.

Even though the background removal feature is great, it only picks up objects that are in the focus area of the photo, and there are many of them. We would like to see more advanced object separation and editing tools in the Photos app in the future.