Remove objects from a photo on iPhone

Vanish is PhotoTune's object remover, and it has four modes.

Brush, the default: paint over the thing you want gone, in small, medium or large strokes. The paint tells the model exactly what to remove, which is more reliable than letting it guess on a busy photo. Undo stroke and Clear fix a mark before you send it.

Object: removes the distracting object from the background without painting. Bystanders: removes the people in the background. Text: removes text or a sign from the background.

Use the Bystanders mode for strangers behind you in a travel photo or a crowded street. It asks for the people in the background to be removed and the space filled to match the scene.

If it takes the wrong person, or misses one, tap Undo at the top of the editor and switch to Brush to mark exactly who should go.

Text mode is for a shop sign, a slogan on a wall or a street name in the background. Object mode is for a bin, a cable or a bag in the corner of the frame. For anything in front of the subject, paint it with Brush instead, because the automatic modes are aimed at the background.

Object removal is an AI tool. It needs a generative model far too large to run on a phone, so when you tap it, that photo is sent to our editing service, which passes it to Google's Gemini and returns the result. We do not store the photo. Nothing is sent until you tap.

The edit is made on a copy of the photo up to 2048 pixels on its long side, so the result is not at your camera's full resolution. Each removal uses one AI edit: subscriptions include 30 a month and the free trial includes 5. An edit the service declines still counts.

After the object is gone, the on-device tools still apply on top: Heal for small spots, Lighting and colour, and skin retouching. Those run on the iPhone, without a connection.