When I try to edit photos in the photos app of my naturist pictures to remove blemishes a pop up says safe filter applied and the area is blurred but with huge pixels. I’ve tried turning off the relevant security features but to no avail.
is there any way to disable this annoying feature?
i didn’t have this issue before updating to latest version.
iPad Air, iPadOS 18
I second the question. This is obnoxious. I should have the option to pixilate if I want and not have Apple make the decision for me. I should not have turned on Clean Up and just left Retouch working. Now, how can I go back?
I second the question. This is obnoxious. I should have the option to pixilate if I want and not have Apple make the decision for me. I should not have turned on Clean Up and just left Retouch working. Now, how can I go back?
Why has Apple introduced this "Safety Feature" to photos? The previous retouch function was excellent and I used to use it virtually every day. I regret up grading to Sequoia 15.1 because of this. I have been a very loyal Apple customer but I'm going to have to assess whether to continue supporting them after this.
Thanks for this advice. I tried this and it worked to some extent but not always. My gripe is that Apple has introduced this safety filter without giving us any choice. If I could I would revert to the earlier Sequoia prior to 15.1 which had the retouch tool which was excellent and which I used frequently to remove blemishs, spots and flaws on historic black & white photos. AI has certainly not been helpful to me so far.
The way one person who deals with photography for a living explained it was that Apple is worried that their clean up tool would be used to "clean up" more than just random water bottles and back ground tourists. He then downloaded a picture from Facebook (totally random one) and was able to remove enough to make clothing look "skimpy" - although it had tended towards that to begin with.
He also showed EXIF data was modified to indicate the photo was edited with Apple Clean Up but I can see what Apple is scared of. I'm not supporting Apple's aggressive safety filter, necessarily but given how skittish they are with stuff like this, it may be best to simply opt for a third party editor.
People should also remember - anything posted online is gonna be fair game, like it or not. There are even ways to pull instagram pictures - even when you don't have an account yourself. We need to take our own privacy more seriously and stop relying on corporations like Apple.
I wholeheartedly concur. Why does Apple have the authority to modify my photographs? I should be the sole decision-maker regarding whether a filter is applied or not. The presence of the option in the software is rendered meaningless if I am unable to utilize it. This situation is highly frustrating.
Some users have requested a tool to blur a face before sharing photos. It is a useful addition, to be able to pixellate a face, but a bad idea to combine it with the clean-up tool, as it is preventing us from removing blemishes from a face. It should be a separate tool, in addition to a precise retouche and clone brush.
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!)
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.
After a week of nonsense I was about to downgrade my macOS because of this stupid Clean Up feature, so I have my last minute desperation to thank. LOL I hope this helps!
[Edited by Moderator]
I called AppleCare and it is definitely an AI issue, 15.1, although not officially a Beta version, it is. Turned AI off and Photos did not revert back to Retouch so that was not written into macOS when toggling between turning AI on and off. At this time, appears there is no way to turn Safety Filter Applied off unless Sequoia is reloaded and AI is not turned on, and that is my guess.
This is driving me insane. I live at the beach. People go naked at the beach. They are often friends of mine. They ask me to take a photo of them. They ask me to edit the ugly trash out of the photo without it pixelating. It's my photo, taken with permission, of friends of mine. Sometimes the only naked person in the photo is me. Sometimes there are many of us. It's a nude beach for chrissakes. Worse still is that sometimes there are zero naked people and it still pixelates!
any recommendations?
Use a free third party editing app and you’ll be fine.
Snapseed is probably the most popular free editor.
Where are you getting the advice from? I can see other people saying they have same problem but I can’t see an answer other that use third party software?
I have also encountered a problem with this feature. I was trying to remove some background distractions from a picture that I took of my HAND to track a suspicious spot that I was going to send to my dermatologist. But unfortunately I had to just delete the picture and retake it. I get the whole “explicit image monitoring” but this is ridiculous… and before anyone says anything to minimize or justify the issue, or place blame on me. It was a picture of My Hand no faces, no nudity. And it was for medical purposes.
Thanks. I'll try it out. I too am looking for something for the Mac as well.
stop photos using safe filter when editing photos
