Samsung brings its impressive Object Eraser to older Galaxy phones

One of the most annoying situations is when you’re trying to capture the perfect picture, only to have someone in the background. Previously, this could be remedied by loading the picture in something like Photoshop and manually removing the unwanted subjects. But now, Google and Samsung have different features built into their latest phones that can make things a whole lot easier.

With the Pixel 6 series, Google introduced Magic Eraser which allows you to just circle objects or subjects and let the AI work its magic. But Samsung actually introduced this feature first with its “Object Eraser” which was released alongside the Galaxy S21.

Fast forward to today, and the Galaxy S22 still retains its Object Eraser functionality, but Samsung has implemented a few changes as part of the One UI 4.1 update. Instead of only removing people or things, Object Eraser allows you to actually remove shadows or reflections.

Surprisingly, Samsung has started rolling out an update to its own Photo Editor app, that brings Object Eraser to older devices. As for compatibility, it seems that the only requirement is that you have a phone that is running One UI 4. This includes many phones in Samsung’s lineup, such as the Galaxy S10 and even mid-range phones.

• Samsung Photo Editor

In fact, as I was writing this article, I checked the Galaxy Store to see if there were any updates for my Galaxy Z Fold 3. Low and behold, the update is available now, with the changelog providing the following:

What’s New

• Erase unwanted shadows, reflected light, or objects from photos

After downloading the update, open the Photo Editor, and then you’ll be prompted that another update is available. This secondary update is one that includes the Object Eraser, Shadow Eraser, and Reflection Eraser functions. Once that is downloaded, you can fire up the Photo Editor app on your Samsung Galaxy phone of choice and start playing around with photo editing.

Depending on the device, this new feature may be part of Samsung Labs. But instead of finding the toggle for it in the traditional Settings app, you’ll need to enable it from within the Photo Editor app.

Nevertheless, it’s great to see Samsung bringing some of the cool new features to many older phones. Let us know what you think about Object Eraser and whether you prefer it to what Google offers with Magic Eraser.