Forget Apple Clean Up! Adobe Express Remove Object is much better at removing objects from photos

Like most of Apple's intelligence features, Apple's Clean Up tool misses the mark. Luckily, there are plenty of AI tools that do exactly the same thing, just better. Among them all, there's one that never disappoints.

Adobe Express's Remove Object tool is the AI ​​removal tool you need.

One of Adobe Express' AI features is Remove Object , which works very similarly to Apple's Clean Up tool . Aside from the end result, one of Clean Up's biggest limitations is that it's limited to Apple devices that are compatible with Apple Intelligence. That means you'll need an iPhone 15 Pro or later to use the feature.

Adobe Express's Remove Object tool doesn't have those limitations, making it a great Clean Up alternative for older iPhones. The best part is that it's completely free and you don't even need an Adobe Express Premium subscription .

Here's how to remove distracting objects using the Remove Object tool:

1. Open Adobe Express and click the plus (+) icon.
2. Tap Upload media and choose from Photo Library , Take Photo or Choose File to upload the image you want to remove unwanted objects from.
3. Select Remove object from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and manually draw over the distracting object you want to remove.
4. When ready, click the Remove button .
5. Adobe Express will then automatically create 3 versions of the edited image in the Results section .

Tip : For best results, you should adjust the brush size. You can do this by dragging the slider under Brush size left or right.

If you're happy with the results, just tap Keep . If none of the results match what you're looking for, you can create more options by swiping right through the results and tapping More .

Compare results between Remove Object and Clean Up

As mentioned earlier, Adobe Express's Remove Object tool works much better than Apple's Clean Up tool. If you don't believe me, see for yourself!

For example, I want to remove the AirPods case from the image below:

Here are the results. The first image (left) is the image obtained using Apple's Clean Up, and the second image is the image obtained using Adobe's Remove Object.

Clearly, Clean Up's results aren't as impressive as those obtained using Adobe Express. It's certainly not perfect, and you'll still need to do some tweaking to fix the discoloration. But even after several attempts to clean up the object more neatly with Clean Up, nothing seems to work. The reason is simple.

Unlike the Remove Object tool, Clean Up doesn't let you adjust the brush size. Instead, it first tries to automatically identify objects you might want to remove, allowing you to tap to remove them.

Otherwise, you have to manually tap, swipe, or circle the distracting part you want to remove. But this doesn't offer the same level of precision as Adobe Express, where you can increase or decrease the brush size to carefully paint over the object you want to remove.

So until Clean Up upgrades, you should probably stick with Adobe Express!

Micah Soto

Update 26 May 2025