Samsung takes a page from Apple’s book, adds ‘Image Clipping’ to S23 series

Apple introduced Visual Look-Up with iOS 15 back in 2021.

The feature allowed users to identify plants, flowers, landmarks and animals in their ‘Photos’ app or via the phone camera. Then, last year, the Cupertino-based company expanded the feature to allow users to virtually ‘pick up’ any object (person, animal, building plant, and more), then separate it from its background, kind of like the ‘Quick Selection Tool’ on Photoshop.

Now, Samsung is taking a page from Apple’s book and introducing ‘Image Clipping’ to its S23 series. This is one of the many features that wasn’t highlighted by Samsung during its Unpacked Event.

The feature works similarly to how it does on an iPhone and doesn’t require you to toggle any setting on. You simply click a photo or open an older one from Photos and long-tap the subject of the image; any object/person/animal/plant/etc. Once you long-tap, the subject will get highlighted and pop-out of the image. At this moment, you’re free to drag around the cropped-out subject.

Once you let go of the screen, you’ll see three prompts, namely ‘copy,’ ‘share’ and ‘save as image.’ Saving the image results in a new image creation in your Photos, with just the cropped-out subject without any background. Similarly, ‘copy’ allows you to paste the image into a different application, while ‘share’ would pull up the regular prompt asking you how you want to share the image.

Though not a groundbreaking new addition, it’s a cool little feature that’s nice to have up your sleeve.

Apart from Image Clipping, the S23 series also boasts other features to edit photos. Adobe and Samsung have partnered to utilize Adobe’s Lightroom software to exclusively handle editing RAW format photos. One of the main benefits of the RAW format is that it captures more data from the camera sensor, which gives photo editors more room to play with when editing. The process normally requires software like Adobe’s Camera Raw. But with support for Lightroom, S23 series owners can edit their RAW photos directly on their devices.

According to Samsung, once you shoot a photo using the Expert RAW camera app, you’ll be able to open the photo in Lightroom with just a tap. “We’re excited to see Samsung enhance the Expert RAW app as a native camera option, with Lightroom as the default and only photo editor,” Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president with Creative Cloud at Adobe, said.

The new Samsung S23 devices come with a free two-month Lightroom trial.

Learn more about the S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra here.

Image credit: Samsung