TouchRetouch

One–touch object removal for photos

$1.99 From ADVA Soft, adva-soft.com

Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 12 or later

Removing objects from images used to be a lengthy and complex process carried out by graphics professionals, but the advent of algorithms and machine learning has meant it’s now available on your Mac and iOS devices. TouchRetouch is an affordable app that runs on all recent iPhones and iPads and aims to make object removal and repair simple.

Load up an image from your Camera Roll to see your options. The first is the Object Removal tool, which sets your brush size. You can use a lasso tool and erase unwanted parts of the green mask if you’ve gone too far. When you hit Go, the app works its magic analyzing the area around your selection, and makes its guess as to how to fill the mask and remove the object.

It is extremely effective at doing

this. However, an object on a uniform background will always be easier to remove than something on a busy background. You are able to zoom in, which makes more precise selection much easier and the results even more accurate. A before and after button is a helpful inclusion. The larger the object you want to remove, or the more cluttered the image around the object, the trickier it may be. The app does a very impressive job with its guesses and produces good results.

A Quick Repair tool works similarly but on blemishes and dust, removing those rather than whole areas of content. There’s also a Line Removal tool, where drawing over a line will remove it. Finally, a clone stamp tool lets you replicate sections of an image.

Any retouching of this kind has to be done carefully and strokes that are too broad will not work well, but you can undo and try again. With a little care it’s easy to completely remove unwanted elements with this app. Export options are good too, with solid format options for maintaining full resolution or shrinking down for email.

THE BOTTOM LINE. This is a highly effective and easy object removal tool for your photos. HOLLIN JONES

Object removal is performed by drawing with a brush or lasso around the object to be replaced.

Smaller details can also be removed — simply set the required brush size.