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.

I’ve just gone in and turned off the Apple Intelligence toggle in settings and it appears to have gone back to how it was before. I guess if you like to use the AI you could switch it back on after you edited your photo. Give it a try!

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]

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’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.

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!

It does both- pixelates & removes (cleans up)

it’s all if the commands you give it depending upon the motion of your finger… go beyond the face if you want it removed… stay on the face if you want pixelated

[Edited by Moderator]

Have the same problem however none of the listed “solutions” work anymore. Apple has fixed all the work arounds and I can’t find one that does work right now. If you have a new one let us all know but the “safety filter” is absolute garbage to have on the phone.

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

The problem is the apple AI is just horribly broken for this. I tried to blur out a scab from a cut. It said “safety applied”.

tried to remove a mole on my face, “safety applied”.

like it’s just broken, please remove it.

SapphyKoala wrote: :I think it really depends on what the ai thinks is being edited. Since your was hair, it didn’t need to activate the safety filter. But if you tried it on something that is skin-colored or close to something like it, safety filter would definitely kick in.

I did the hair so I wouldn't be showing a face. But here's my long-dead great aunt (I think) without lips:

Oh, you're going to say it's because it's black and white. How about Superman?

I don't think it worked only because he's from Krypton…

austinbarrow wrote: …This doesn’t need a work around.

That's right. And, as all the screenshots I keep loading show, it seems to work fine if you're careful. But, the best thing to do if it doesn't work for your situation is to leave a message here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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.