There are so many times when I’ve taken a photo and I’ve wanted to remove the background, just to get a cutout of the person or the animal, or whatever it is in the centre of my picture. Well, there’s a really simple way to do it that works on iPhone and iPad. I’ll show you on iPad, as you get the biggest screen benefit.

Here I’ve got a picture of myself and my friend Thomas. And all I’m going to do is long-press on myself in the image. And you’ll notice this kind of white glow around the edge. This works when Photos can really clearly identify a foreground subject of a picture. If it’s something far in the distance, it may not work. But with that glow around the edge, you can see it’s got myself highlighted.

Then on that pop-up menu, I can press Share. And you can see in the corner that there’s a little cutout there with no background, none of that beach behind me anymore. Then I can simply press onto Save Image.

But I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking, “Well, there are two people in that photo. What if you want both people cut out together?” And that’s a great point. I’m sure Thomas will let both of us cut out together.

Well, this time what I’ll do is long-press on Thomas. And on that pop-up menu in the middle, rather than pressing Share, I’m going to tap Select All. That’s then going to find anything in the foreground of the image. In this case, the two of us. And then you’ll see that white glow going around both of those figures. Then we can simply press Share and Save Image.

And if I jump back into my camera roll in the Photos app, you can see both of those photos there with no background.

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