Apple has announced major updates to Image Playground and the Photos app. It has added new tools for image creation and photo editing across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The features were unveiled at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and form part of the latest Apple Intelligence rollout.
The updates focus on making image generation more realistic and photo editing more accessible without requiring third-party applications.
Image Playground has received a major overhaul since its launch. The app, which previously generated images in animation and illustration styles, can now create more realistic visuals from text prompts.
Users can generate images for invitations, presentations, messages, and other projects using simple descriptions. Apple also demonstrated the ability to combine people from a user's photo library into a single image and make changes to clothing, backgrounds, and objects through text-based instructions.
The company has retained existing artistic styles while expanding the app's capabilities to support a wider range of creative use cases.
Apple has announced the availability of three additional editing tools in the Photos app: Extend, Reframe, and Enhance.
Extend allows users to create content outside the boundaries of an image. It may help photographers balance the composition by moving important details away from the picture’s border.
Reframe suggests adjustments that may enhance the composition based on the photo’s contents. Lastly, Enhance helps increase the picture quality by improving the lighting and other parameters in one click.
Apple has also upgraded its Clean Up feature, which erases distracting elements in a photo. With better recognition of ‘what’ is distracting, the new feature removes unnecessary elements without losing any surrounding details. This upgrade is based on features previously seen in the Photos app in other iOS versions.
Also Read: Apple Unveils macOS Golden Gate, iPadOS 27 With AI-Powered Upgrades
The new image features represent a continuation of Apple’s software strategy in incorporating the power of Apple Intelligence in more software products. The tech giant will also open its models to developers, enabling them to build third-party applications with these capabilities.
The new features are also part of Apple’s efforts in entering the image editing and creation space, which has recently grown more competitive. With new realistic features and greater control in image editing, Apple is expanding its creative toolkit on its devices.
These updates were unveiled at WWDC 2026, where Apple is presenting its latest software innovations and Apple Intelligence enhancements.
Read more for live updates of the event!