Apple loves to talk about magic, and iOS 16 has a massive dose of magic in a new feature that I can’t stop playing with. But this is the kind of feature you need to see for yourself. Especially if you’re a bit exhausted tech reporter like me.
I’ve seen enough keynote speeches to know that the features promised on stage don’t always live up to what you get on your hands. There’s a reason that “mileage may vary” is one of my favorites.
But, then, I actually downloaded iOS 16 and remembered a neat little feature from the Photos app that was shown at WWDC. It’s a really cool little feature that will get better once it’s in macOS Ventura later this fall. It has the most boring name in the world Apple Ventura review (Opens in a new tab): “Removing the topic from the background”.
So, let me explain an iOS 16 feature that could easily fly under your radar — but it shouldn’t.
iOS 16 makes it really easy to create your own memes
After iOS 15 added Live Text in Photos, where you can select, copy and paste text within photos, iOS 16 introduces a similar feature to extract a subject from a photo. Apple can’t call Live Photos (they already have that). They could have called it a “live topic”, but that probably sounds a lot like you’re Dr. Frankenstein.
But in iOS 16, and soon on macOS Ventura, you can tap a person (or people, I found out) in a photo, and watch as a slight filter moves through the subject. Now, you can copy that person, or save that part of the photo as a new photo. And because I love creating silly memes, I love this more than anything else in iOS 16 (sorry, lock screen widgets). Just look at this picture of baffling UFC president Dana White, which gets even more hilarious when he doesn’t have a background.
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Its confused look is simply more entertaining if you delete its background. I still find this feature amusing.
Coming back to the magic at hand, I have to give credit to Apple. This feature works so well that it continues to shock and surprise. Although it’s not always perfect – as you’ll see below, in the What We Do In The Shadows cast photo where Nadja’s arm is missing. Scroll there to see the remastered versions of Chris Pine in the “Don’t Worry Darling” promo tour, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper of The Live (filmed the movie on TV), Anderson Cooper of CNN and Donnie O’Sullivan and professional wrestlers Kenny Omega and Kota Iboshi.
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As someone with a Photoshop license, I will admit that this is not a new feature. And I’ll also admit that these are half cooked. All these things are ready to be pasted on other wallpapers, to make something new.
Unfortunately, the iOS 16 Photos app is not quite there So now to use layers and paste things around. Or at least I can’t find this job.
Outlook: This is fun, but iOS 16 could improve
So for now, if I want something that looks better and less obvious, I need to get my own laptop. There, I can use an image editor (Photoshop and Pixelmator both work easily) to layer in separate layers.
Inspired by a joke my friend Mike Andronico had about how some wrestlers used the same last name (Xavier Woods, which Austin Creed uses when hosting gaming content and Julius and Brutus, The Creed Brothers), it made the following super easy. I just saved the pictures from these (Opens in a new tab) three (Opens in a new tab) Pages (Opens in a new tab) and place them in Pixelmator layers.
Which is well worth the time and effort, for a little laughter and posting online, when I’m bored watching TV. But if Photos in iOS 16 (or iOS 17, more likely) could let you paste those extracted themes into other photos and resize them? Without downloading a third party app?
This will make me totally immersed in making silly jokes in a new way.
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