Remove objects from your photos with cleanup.pictures
Cleanup.pictures is a free online service that you may use to remove objects from photos and images that you upload to the service. While there are plenty of tools out there that support object removals in photos and images, most require you to download a program or application, and many are not easy to use.
Objects and people may be on photos when you take them, especially if you photograph something that is popular. The photo may not be ruined, but it may look prettier if people and objects do get removed.
Cleanup.pictures makes it as easy as possible. Drag & drop the image to the site, hold down the left mouse button over the part of the image that you want to be cleared of objects, and let go of the button once you are done. The online app does the rest.
The only options that you have are to change the brush size and to undo changes. The brush size defines the area that is marked for object removal. Unfortunately, there is no option to zoom in to improve the accuracy of the selection. Processed images can be downloaded to the local system.
An option to view the original directly on the screen is provided as well; this works by selecting the original button on the website, which activates a slider that displays the original image on the processed image.
The results are good, especially if you consider that it takes a few seconds to remove any object from the uploaded image. One downside to using Cleanup.pictures is that the processed images may have a smaller resolution than the original that has been uploaded. All downloaded images had a resolution of just 1024 pixels in tests.
Cleanup.pictures uses LaMa: Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions, a Samsung Research open source project that is available on GitHub.
Cleanup.pictures itself is also open source, available on GitHub. It has been created by the ClipDrop engineering team.
Closing Words
Cleanup.pictures is a handy online service to remove objects from images that you upload to it. It is simple to use and results are usually very good. The only downside to using the service is that the output images may have a reduced resolution. Then again, the online application is free to use.
Now You: do you use apps or software to remove objects from images?
Be nice if the website explicitly said that they don’t have any creative rights over the picture edits, no human gets to see the uploads, and that they don’t keep uploads longer than necessary for the procedure, auto-deleted after 1 hour regardless.
I must say I really hate this kind of “services” where you need to upload your personal files (be it images, or PDFs, or whatever) in order to have them edited online. Not only does this consume bandwidth, and can turn out to be slow if your file is big or your upload speed is low, but the most important thing is this: basically, you just give your own files away to someone else, to people you don’t even know. Whatever they may tell you about privacy or automation, this still is a big risk.
Generally it’s much safer to only use your own installed editor programs, offline on your own system. Even if this may mean a little more work. In this particular case, a good photo editor with the right plugins may well do the same job on your own desktop, without the need to just give your photos to others.
So don’t upload your personal stuff that don’t want to be seen in public. Its pretty str8 forward for a thinking human being, dont you think?
“Not only does this consume bandwidth” <– we are 2021, all developped countries have broadband internet
> Marc: “all developped countries have broadband internet”
There are many developed countries with rural regions where the wired internet access is via ADSL & copper-wire landline. Apparently, ADSL is the most common form of internet access in the UK as of 2020.
https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/guides/quick-guide-to-adsl
Having used ADSL for years, it is painfully slow. Something that takes 5 secs on fibre broadband to download easily requires 20-30 mins on ADSL.
Negative on this, man.
My photos stay on my system(s), not the cloud and not shit like this.
Seems to work OK for a freebie, only been in Github for two weeks, LaMa, too. Looks like a testbed for a Samsung camera image editor. Some of the test images processed very well, some left a blur; it’s new.
Rest is slightly OT, but…
AI image processors tend to go online to find a similar photo from their libraries to the one you’re attempting to enhance, upscale, whatever, even installed standalone programs, unless you install a number of local reference photos. Libraries get bigger and bigger and the learning models get better and better.
I don’t like this but the results can be spectacular. I guess we’re all contributing to development. Obviously, don’t upload anything but innocuous subjects. Doesn’t bug me too much, this is one area where digital tech really works well.
All the ad crap we’re bombarded with? Digital tech gone severely bad!
Trial Gigapixel if you’ve never seen what can be done with a lower res photo.
“Free online” is an oxymoron, to put it politely.
Stated bluntly, they are decieving you and collecting your data to sell for thier profit.
I can’t speak for this particular site, but I’ve been involved in developing and running several free online services throughout the years, without collecting any user data or showing any ads, both as a hobby (running a smaller site can cost next to nothing) and for work. There are a lot of honest people out there. Not everything is big business and money.
There are exceptions to everything but generally speaking Dave is right. If a reputable source can be trusted & the user is aware of that then, go ahead if you wish. But you shouldn’t just assume any new source is trustworthy.
If the discussed solution does not meet your requirements, there is a trial version of Affinity Photo available, and this beginner instruction to see if it might be for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQn7Ol1z2Q
If you have Android TouchRetouch would work and be installed on your local device. Thanks Martin as always for finding tools that can be of use.
Another Service as a Software Substitute:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
I use Pixbim object remover AI which removes objects and fixes scrathes automatically. It is a standalone software to install – offline program. I am happy with it and I use it for my photoediting work.
I hope this helps others who have issue with privacy.