With the arrival of pixel 6, Google introduced very interesting software tools. The one that most, and the one that I have used in recent years both in the Pixel 6 Pro as in the Pixel 7 Prois the magic eraser, the one that thanks to the Google Tensor processor allows you to eliminate people who “annoy” your photos.
The Tensor was not in charge of magic and if you have Google One you can use it even on an iPhone, something that I appreciate because it is a solution that I usually use. But hey, although I pay for Google One, and taking advantage of the fact that I just did the analysis of the Xiaomi 13I have wondered… How does the Xiaomi magic eraser work? The short answer is: pretty good. I leave the long answer below.
Erase objects, wires and people with the help of AI
This function has not arrived with MIUI 14 or with the launch of the Xiaomi 13. In fact, he has a couple of years behind him, but it has improved over time. It has gone from being a very rudimentary tool (with only a couple of options) to an eraser of people, lines and even shadows that works with some precision.
These last days I have been tinkering with the editor and the truth is that It has surprised me. For a quick fix it is correct, but if you dedicate some time to a photograph, the truth is that you can leave it very, very well.
First things first: to go to the Xiaomi editor you have to open a photo in the gallery, click on the lower icon of a square open by one of its angles and, there, select if you want the basic edition or the one assisted by artificial intelligence.
I honestly don’t know why something as basic and goofy as clipping or emoticons are in the AI section, but oh well. Within the AI section, you will see a lot of options appear.
The first is for you to erase manually, you have an object eraser (which is also manual surrounding the object you want, so I don’t know how it differs), a line eraser, a people eraser, and a shadow eraser.
When we choose the people eraser, automatically the application selects the subjects likely to be eliminated and, like Thanos in Infinity Warwe get to work.
Our target is the two girls on the right. It is a complicated photo because it is taken with the wide angle and, as we commented in the analysis, precisely at the ends is where it suffers the most due to a blurred finish.
But hey, on easy courses we all played well, so we’ve gone to the difficult. We select the person (no need to draw with your finger or anything), it is highlighted, we hit the X and… it disappeared.
Later I will show you the results and a comparison with the Google draft, which is interesting because they solve the situation in a different way.
If we keep looking at the editor, we have the section for erasing lines and objects. I took a picture of the cathedral and it has that unsightly wire, so all you have to do is click just above the wire and it removes it pretty well.
When I tried to delete the supports on the side, the eraser automatically selects the entire frieze, so I had to go to the manual editor to delete objects. It’s the same one I used on the vase on that bell tower. Or, hey, with a flat bottom, it’s very well behaved.
It allows you to put the sky that you like the most (and you can even freak out)
Since I started, I looked at the “heavens” section. I knew what I was going to find (something similar to that of AI Luminar) and the truth is that it does not disappoint. Here we already enter the topic that it is unethical and everything that involves changing a photograph so much, but look, they are still photos to upload to our Instagram, so what does it matter.
Of course, if they start to tell you that what happened to the photo, how did you do it, etc., don’t go saying you set the camera at a certain timethat you did a double exposure, that you later retouched in Photoshop… no, say that you went into the editor, you chose the sky and that’s it.
After the moraline paragraph, I continue with this option. Apart from finding a lot of options, you can easily regulate the intensity of the effect, since there are times when some elements (especially with starry night skies or sunsets) are very underexposed.
Original skies versus edited skies.
And something that I have loved is how well the application automatically adjusts certain parameters of the rest of the photograph to improve the simulation. The original sky was quite leaden and you can see in the second effect how the bluer sky makes the fountain have a different hue.
Google Magic Eraser vs Xiaomi Eraser
Pixel 6a
Pixel 6 Pro
Xiaomi 13
I have just given you some examples so you can see how the Xiaomi 13 solves the same situation, the Pixel 6a and the Pixel 6 Pro. The latter have the same SoC, but hey, since we have both in the newsroom, so you have one more example.
The two marks approach differently and I get the feeling that Google applies a blur effect that expands the background while Xiaomi removes the person first and then tries to expand the background.
None is perfect, of course, but if it is in zoom, and if it is to upload to social networks, the result is very good.
The rest of the editor is also quite complete
And well, in the end it’s a photo editor, so you have the normal settings for exposure, contrast, shadows, brightness, sharpness, tone, etc., but also a series of filters that you can easily download and apply and the LEICA frame that we have seen so many times in recent months on the Xiaomi networks.
In short, if you have a Xiaomi, and seeing how well the magic eraser of the native app works, I would not pay Google One exclusively for the ‘magic eraser’. If you want the service because of the storage or whatever, fine, but it’s clear that more and more companies are going to start implementing these AI-based editing options. And if they all work equally well, better for us.