Turn off “Safety Filter” during “Clean Up” in Photos

Alright, I have a workaround!

It trades efficiency for effectiveness, but it's being consistent for my edits so far and gets the job done like the suddenly defunct retouch tool. (Apple, put it back!)

Select photo

Enter 'Edit' mode

Choose the 'Crop' tab

Zoom in to the area you want to touch up*

Choose the 'Clean Up' tab

Remove what you need to with the tool

Repeat steps 3-6 until all areas are touched up

Choose the 'Crop' tab

Zoom out to the full image

Why this works:

Although this isn't explicitly an Apple Intelligence tool it is absolutely utilizing AI to identify the contents of the photo as a whole before determining if your action will result in a retouch, a redact, or a safety filter being applied.

*By removing the surrounding context (i.e. zooming in until the "unsafe" imagery is no longer referenced within the frame), the tool can proceed with the intended retouch action.

[Edited by Moderator]

You now have to zoom in and crop out what the app is seeing. You actually have to complete the crop by pressing “done” and then on that cropped photo do the remove tool and the “safety filter” will not appear.

After removing what you wanted to remove, hit “done” again and then open the photo again-edit-crop, and undo the earlier crop.

FIX:

I first went to “Adjust”

then maxed out saturation and vibrance,

‘then in tone made photo max cool/ min warm

(now my subjects skin is non-human hue tricking .ai)

now you can use the remove tool to remove whatever you want.

afterwards just return the settings to normal in the first two steps above.

Peace

[Edited by Moderator]

Many people think that it seems weird that you can't switch. It seems like Pixelate could just be a separate tool. You're right.

Of course, we here are not Apple; folks in this community are just users like you. And Apple engineers don’t read the stuff, here, so to let Apple know about this, go here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

fredfon wrote: … You now have to zoom in and crop out what the app is seeing.

Is this about the Mac or the iPhone? Actually, in either case, I find that I can zoom in on a picture in Clean Up mode (no Crop required) and clean up blemishes and dust spots on faces with no problem. If I zoom out and cover much of a face, though, then I it pixelates the face. I've used Clean Up on a Mac, and I've tested it on m iPhone. It all seems pretty reasonable, and so far, it has worked quite well for me without any multistep contortions.

I’m trying to remove a person with the cleanup on my iPad but I can’t because the whole person just becomes pixelated, but there’s another person on it who I can remove and it doesn’t become pixelated and if I remove them first, then he doesn’t get pixelated, but the other person who remove second doesn’t get pixelated, but if I remove the person, Who gets Pixelated First, then they get pixelated so…

I face the same problem that it get pixelated if I don’t go into crop function.

hones I don’t really like this update.. I would want to have the option to off the safety filter ..:/ not a good update apple for making the clean up default to safe filter.

This is honestly the most annoying feature. I just updated to the latest version of iOS and now I cant even cover simple blemishes easily. Hate to do the extra length just to clean up 1-2 spots without being pixelated. They just keep ruining more with each update.

I’ve just managed to do this but I could only do it via making all the background of a pic blurry that I didn’t want then saving it and then using clean up after and it removed them normally. You can’t ‘unblur’ after but I don’t need to for the pic I wanted.

We're all enjoying the irony as much as I am, right?

Know how I found this Apple AI feature?

While inpainting / "Cleaning Up" a AI-generated picture of a woman's bare leg in Photos.app macOS. The leg was next to a snake. The proximity glitched the generation, so she wound up with (as is often the case) a third knee, which I wanted gone.

"Wait, what's this new tab... 'Clean Up...' let's so - OH WOW! They added inpainting/removal!"

I'm excited, because I could address this back in the original generation engine, but it's twitchy and slower.

I remove the third knee... Photos.app does an amazing job of identifying it, removing it... and pixelating the yeet out of it. It edited our images without our consent.

Apple.

Think about that word, that selection as the name of the company. The connotation.

Scantily clad woman. A snake. An apple.

I feel like we've heard this story somewhere. I dunno, maybe it was a Hallmark Channel Movie when nothing else was on.

I. 

The Bite Was a Choice

Once upon a time, Apple invited us to rebel.

To Think Different.

To take the tools of creation into our own hands — and wield them like fire. Fire handed to us, stolen from above.

The logo itself was a wink to the myth:

• The apple
• The temptation
• The fall
• The knowledge

They sold us the machine that would let us defy the gatekeepers.

Now they’ve become one.

I am 195% behind Apple being cautious when it comes to this sort of thing, esp. re: kids. That's fine. It's welcome. It's encouraged. It's lauded and responsible. It's DEMANDED.

I am not fine with them editing content:

1. that is legal
2. that is mine, since I created it
3. without my asking
4. without the ability to turn it off.

What the fang, Apple?

Why wouldn’t their engineers read things posted here? Is that a matter of policy or something? Why wouldn’t the engineers want feedback pertaining to user experience that is coming directly from the users? Isn’t there value in that?

Sadly, the "crop/fix/zoom out" fix isn't working for me. (On an iPad Pro 13" M4, iOS 18.5.) Apple's 18 series update is proving DEEPLY problematic, without any adequate response or support. Music, on my older iPhone, has been completely hosed, but now the newer iPad is showing tremendous degradation of functionality in a host of on-board apps; Photos is just the latest.

How do we file complaints with the actual company? The community is good, but what I mostly get from it is that my issue is real and other people are affected. Apple itself is doing nothing helpful.

dang Apple is usually so on top of this stuff, there's gotta be a workaround. They couldn't mess up something so basic - I mean ya gotta remove blemishes from photos, and scars and my birthmark, and that thing by my ear, ugh, still there? well, maybe I use it more than most, but it's a basic simple utility and no way something Apple could flub if it wanted to. Well... there is that "can't edit between two letters with any consistency" fumbly thing. But never mind that, this "fix it" feature's complicated. I mean, applying first aid to a photo is touchy stuff - can't just fix it like Disk Utility does - First Aid and boom! - in a flash it's...done...well - it doesn't do anything ever really does it. Well, boom!, here's a lolly. Complete! Click my drive and ...oops...won't mount. Doesn't recognize drive...hmmm the drive it just mounted and hard drove all day. Siri, is Disk UTI a cousin, maybe? Huh? You don't recognize me? I have to unlock my iphone first? Why don't you, you're already in there and said "uh huh" so you know it's me...my bank does. WTFargo, I mean, ****, meant to type "Wells the Fargo"  but I think I typed a bad word. No prob I'll just....huh?...where? Oh, right, no undo cause there's just no place to put that darn tiny little button...that most basic of human needs other than, like, pizza and air. I should be right next to the arrow buttons you seem to not have gotten to yet.......easy I'll just Select All and delete the boo boo.......Siri...can you ask GPT what the acronym is for Wells the Fargo please? thanks Siri. You and UTI - no relation? Wait - sorry Siri, sorry Siri...has a ring to it, sorry gotta go -- message says I'm running out of storage. Alexa, how do I get out of the Stone age? Did I spell  that right?

Roe wrote:

dang Apple is usually so on top of this stuff, there's gotta be a workaround. They couldn't mess up something so basic - I mean ya gotta remove blemishes from photos, and scars and my birthmark, and that thing by my ear, ugh, still there? well, maybe I use it more than most, but it's a basic simple utility and no way something Apple could flub if it wanted to. Well... there is that "can't edit between two letters with any consistency" fumbly thing. But never mind that, this "fix it" feature's complicated. I mean, applying first aid to a photo is touchy stuff - can't just fix it like Disk Utility does - First Aid and boom! - in a flash it's...done...well - it doesn't do anything ever really does it. Well, boom!, here's a lolly. Complete! Click my drive and ...oops...won't mount. Doesn't recognize drive...hmmm the drive it just mounted and hard drove all day. Siri, is Disk UTI a cousin, maybe? Huh? You don't recognize me? I have to unlock my iphone first? Why don't you, you're already in there and said "uh huh" so you know it's me...my bank does. WTFargo, I mean, ****, meant to type "Wells the Fargo"  but I think I typed a bad word. No prob I'll just....huh?...where? Oh, right, no undo cause there's just no place to put that darn tiny little button...that most basic of human needs other than, like, pizza and air. I should be right next to the arrow buttons you seem to not have gotten to yet.......easy I'll just Select All and delete the boo boo.......Siri...can you ask GPT what the acronym is for Wells the Fargo please? thanks Siri. You and UTI - no relation? Wait - sorry Siri, sorry Siri...has a ring to it, sorry gotta go -- message says I'm running out of storage. Alexa, how do I get out of the Stone age? Did I spell  that right?

It's not at all clear what your point is here or whether you're asking for help. If you just have thoughts about what Apple is doing them, you should use the Feedback page:

Product Feedback - Apple

Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions.

Jmp_0-64 wrote: …Sadly, the "crop/fix/zoom out" fix isn't working for me.

I wonder if this is a matter of "how much zoom?" I took this picture of a random guy in a cafe, and at smaller zooms, I would get the "Identity Protection" pixels. But then I zoomed in so the face took up the entire screen. (I'm not showing his whole face, here, of course.) But with his face filling the screen I used Clean Up to remove the part in his hair.

I don't mess with "Crop" unless I want to crop.

This is the full screen"

It was the guy on the right. You can see that this was quite a zoom!