Portrait mode on the iPhone does a very serviceable job of blurring out a distracting background. A new app makes it easy to remove the background entirely.
Depth Background Eraser, made for iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus and the soon-to-be-released iPhone X, uses the depth data stored in a photo to let your inner artist easily remove any background.
Two simple slider bars let the user select the cutoff point and a kind of checkerboard masking covers the background and other elements you want to remove.
Photo: Jon Colverson
Photo: Jon Colverson
Why would you want to eliminate the background? Artists and illustrators often create compelling photo composites for digital collage or for branding and advertising clients. A skilled practitioner of Adobe Photoshop can use a number of tools to pull different subjects and backgrounds from many photos and seamlessly mash them together for an entirely new image.
App developer Jon Colverson came up with the idea while watching this years WWDC, while Apple was showing off the new depth camera APIs in iOS 11.
“I figured there will be lots of apps using that for fun Snapchat-style filters and such, but I wanted to make an app that’s ore for pros or enthusiasts (that) takes the background out quickly and exports the images so you can do whatever you with it in Photoshop or another image editor” Colverson, who describes himself as a “very amateur photographer,” told Cult of Mac.
Colverson said the app works best when a photo is made in brightly lit settings, like outdoor daylight. He also advises the photo be composed so the ground is not visible underneath the element subject to isolation.
The app debuted in the App Store on Monday.
Users also have the option to purchase an upgrade that lets them export the remaining foreground of the image to a transparent PNG file.
