How to lift objects from a photo on a Samsung Galaxy phone

Have you ever taken a picture and thought how amazing it would look without whatever is behind the person in it? Maybe you just want a clean picture of your pet or are trying to show someone a clean image of something you found in a store without any distracting backgrounds? One UI 5.1 on the Galaxy S23 lets you do just that, and all it takes is a quick tap.

How to use the Image Clipper tool on a Samsung Galaxy phone

The new Image Clipper launched with the Galaxy S23 series on devices like the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (opens in new tab). However, it doesn't appear to work on all Samsung phones, even those running One UI 5.1 (opens in new tab) and up, at least not yet. That said, if you have one of Samsung's latest flagship phones, you can follow these steps to get it to work:

1. Open up the Samsung Gallery app. When you open your app drawer, it's the one called Gallery that has a flower icon.
2. Find the photo you want to edit. This trick only works with photos at this time.
3. Press and hold on the subject you want to "lift" from the photo.
4. Select Copy to send it to your clipboard so you can paste it in another photo or in your favorite app.
5. Select Share to open the share system dialog and send it directly to another app, like a social media app for posting.
6. Select Save as image to save the lifted portion of the photo as its own image with a black background.

(Image credit: Android Central)

And that's it! Simple as pie. Just make sure you're using Samsung's own Gallery app that ships with Samsung Galaxy phones when trying this trick. It won't work on any other photo app as of this writing.

We've also reached out to see if this awesome feature will be available on older Samsung phones. It's rumored that the tool may eventually arrive on a slew of phones and will likely require One UI 5.1, but for now, it's seemingly exclusive to the S23 series. We'll also update this if the feature appears on older Galaxy phones.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

If you want the fastest mobile processor ever in an Android phone, an impressive 200MP camera, the power of the S Pen, and more features than you can shake a stick at, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is the phone for you.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect that the tool is not yet available on older Samsung devices.