Alert Gazette readers may recall my last iPhone Tips post<\/a>, although I seriously doubt it since it happened just over ten years ago. So, look for the next one in [let’s see…carry the one, and subtract the square root of the hypotenuse<\/em>] around 2034.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know, I know…every photo processing app in the world now purports to do this using AI. But what I like about this tip is that it’s built into the iPhone’s operating system. Now, it could be a bit more straightforward, but in my limited test, it works beautifully. Here’s the drill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s how effective it is. I had a photo of a black widow spider (creepy, I know) that seemed like a prime candidate for this feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s the result of the Quick Action to remove the background:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It did a pretty good job of identifying the main subject of the photo and erasing everything else. Couple of caveats, though. The newly-created image is in PNG format (if there’s a way to change that, I don’t know it), which might result in a bigger file…in this case, more than twice as big (49kb in the original vs. 113kb in the processed image). However, that depends a great deal on how “busy” the background is in the original photo. Some processed images will actually be much smaller once the background is removed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I think you lose a little resolution in the process; the new image doesn’t seem quite as sharp as the original, although that might be an optical illusion of sorts, since the background colors in the original might make the spider “pop” a bit more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another minor quirk is that the orientation of the processed image is unpredictable. I removed the background from a photo of a mushroom in portrait orientation, and the resulting image was in landscape, with the mushroom turned horizontally. Not a huge deal to correct…just a bit puzzling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, finally, like all of the applications that purport to make this kind of transformation, the success is going to depend greatly on how easy it is for the AI to identify precisely which part of the photo should remain once the background is removed. When it fails, it really<\/strong> fails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know how “they” say to never read the comments? I find that to usually be excellent advice, except if I had taken it, I wouldn’t know about this extremely cool little trick. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m typing something on my phone — say, a long text — and I decide I want to edit or correct something, I have a hard time tapping in just right spot to place the cursor to make the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Little did I know that if you hold down the space bar until you get a tiny haptic click<\/em>, you can then slide the cursor anywhere inside the body of the text you’re typing…no more need to point and tap and hope for the best. I’ve tried it with both native Apple and third-party applications and thus far, it’s worked with all of them that allow text entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many thanks to Bill Hochheiser, whoever and wherever he may be, for sharing this tip via the comment section of the article.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is another tip from a commenter. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds pretty useful. Here’s how a fellow named Peter Cohen describes it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can’t answer a call — say, you have your hands full with cooking or cleaning — you can ask Siri to “answer the phone” and the call is answered and the speaker is automatically activated.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest drawback to this tip, as far as I’m concerned, is that it results in my actually having to, you know, talk<\/em> to someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I sometimes — well, often — no, actually, always<\/em> — find myself fumbling with the controls on my phone’s camera when I’m trying to quickly open the app and take a photo or video. Here’s a series of tips that are easy to remember, and even easier to use, and may be life-changing for klutzes like me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between the Wirecutter newsletter itself and the associated comments, there were more than a dozen additional tips, including one that cryptically referred to apps that allow you to turn the iPhone’s compass app into a metal detector (without providing any specifics). I don’t consider that to be an iPhone tip since it’s not built into the operating system. Anyway, if you can access the newsletter linked at the top of the page, perhaps you’ll find some of the others useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Think you know everything there is to know about your iPhone’s features. OK, maybe you do. I didn’t, so humor me, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,79,18],"tags":[394,395],"class_list":["post-13773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-apple-mac-os","category-technology","tag-iphone","tag-tech-tips","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/steampunkapple_ai_header.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13773"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13785,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions\/13785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tip #1: Quickly remove backgrounds from Photos<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Photo:](\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/blackwidow.jpg\")
![\"Photo:](\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/blackwidow_nobackground.png\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/boblivingston_nobackground.jpg\")
Tip #2: Use the space bar as a touchpad<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Tip #3: Use Siri for hands-free call answering<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Tip #4: More camera shortcuts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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