ClipDrop Lets You 'Copy-and-Paste' Real Life Objects Using Your Phone Camera Into Desktop Apps

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has boasted a lot about the AR capabilities of its new LiDAR equipped iPhone 12 Pro. It means that your new iPhone will be able to 'map' the room better to place objects. However, I hadn't found an AR app that I might use regularly -- until now. A few months ago, developer Cyril Diagne showed off a demo of an app called ClipDrop that lets you 'drop' real-life objects to your desktop. Now, the app has entered beta, and I already love it. The concept of the app is cool. You can take a picture of any object and the app with automatically remove the background and convert it into an image. You can then paste the image on your desktop and use it in your applications. In addition to objects and people, you can also extract text from a book or page that you have.

Cut and paste

[nospam007]

So as soon as I get the new sofa on my photo it disappears in real life?
Cool!

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[BAReFO0t]

According to the Imaginary Property Mafia, yes, it does! :)

But they got a good reason: Can't steal from fans and artists, by living in reality!
Gotta feed the prostitutes, and coke lines don't come from nothing! ;)
(Disclaimer: I worked in "the business".)

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[nospam007]

I see they removed the 'cut' and put 'copy' in, with the same software?

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[samwichse]

Finally a solution to the world's landfill problems!

Cut/paste the garbage into a bitmap, when it's full, put the bitmap into the recycle bin!

No it doesn't, stupid.

[drinkypoo]

Cut and paste removes an object from one place and puts it in another.

The phrase you want is "copy and paste"

However, it doesn't do that either. It's more like "paste photo of" since it's not going to actually copy any physical objects.

English, motherfucker. Do you speak it!?

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[omnichad]

Your brain is broken because of idioms. The object is being cut from the background (as in, trimmed around the edges of the photo taken). Cut and paste is appropriate even if it doesn't have the same meaning as the common idiom.

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[Baloroth]

If that's the case, the title should say cut and paste of photos. Saying explicitly it allows "cut-and-paste [of] real life objects" is quite simply wrong. And if you're going to use a common idiom, using it in a non-common way in a headline is really bad journalism, especially if your new usage is not only not common, but has never really been used that way before (cut-and-paste originally stemmed from manuscript editing of text, not of images).

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[nospam007]

"Cut and paste is appropriate even if it doesn't have the same meaning as the common idiom."

Think again, Sherlock. Look at the title NOW!

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[omnichad]

So....someone edited the title on the summary. Original article still remains the same. Unless your whole argument is that groupthink is always right.

that's called a knockout

[goombah99]

or a variety of other terms. It's not cut and paste per se.

Yes it does, insult troll.

[Joviex]

Your brain is broken because of idioms.

Yours seem broken from common sense of the definition. (to) "cut" means to remove in 3 of its 10 primary definitions of use as JUST a verb.
Be less obtuse.

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[omnichad]

Which it does. In pixels. It is removed from the background of the photo.

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[RandomUsername99]

https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]

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[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You're right, the article should convey the idea with more words.

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[drinkypoo]

"Copy and paste" is more words than "Cut and paste"?

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[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You said more than that.

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[BAReFO0t]

Also, computers are literally unable to cut, move or delete.
They only know reading and writing (apart from processing).

Copying is reading plus writing.
Deleting is writing to the place where the pointer is stored. And nowadays, writing the pointer to a special "recycle bin" directory.
Moving is copying plus "deleting".
And cutting is reading that pointer so pasting can do moving.

This skeuomorphic nonsense is half the basis of all imaginary property nonsense, DRM snake oil and "digital privacy" delusions.

Hint:

Uh oh!

[Tomahawk]

One hopes "copy and paste"...! eeek.

Slashvertisement

[UnresolvedExternal]

Ya it's kinda cool - I can totally see myself spending $40 on that - but then again, I am the kinda guy who comments on an ad.

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[fermion]

Until it is sued to oblivion. Someone somewhere is dreaming up a rights violation on this. It is like not being allowed to film at a football game. Someone is going to get their feeling hurt because there is too much duplication of their work.

What's so special about automatic cropping?

[BAReFO0t]

And why do you need an universal function for that?
Too stupid to code it yourself?

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[LifesABeach]

i was thinking of tensorflow with background removal

This was one of the the first VB6 programs I made

[raymorris]

This story reminds me of one of the first programs I wrote in Visual Basic 6. Automatic background removal / selection of a foreground object. It was horrendously slow because I updated the display with each pixel processed. It was also frustrating because often it would get almost done, having found 90% of the border between the object and the background, then it would mess up and start removing parts of the foreground object.

That was shortly after the success of a program I commissioned - the first thu

Not AR

[Dan East]

This is not AR. The only portion of it that could remotely be considered AR is the "dropping the image onto your desktop" part, which for all intents and purposes is clumsy and silly. It requires you to use your phone AND an entire PC at the same time. What is the point of this? Why would you try to construct an image consisting of other images by placing them with your phone camera on a PC monitor, with no precise control over placement or any other editing abilities? The only truly useful feature of this software is its ability to remove the background from behind an object, but that is purely a standard image processing thing and has nothing to do with AR. It would actually be far more useful to just let you hit a button and the object is saved to your photo gallery or cloud file storage as a PNG with a transparent background.

Automatic knock-out tool

[Arnonyrnous Covvard]

Removing the background around an object is not AR. It's an automatic "knock-out" or masking tool. It's easier to do that if you have the additional information from a depth sensor. Back when publishing with a computer was called DeskTop Publishing (DTP), knocking-out was a tedious process, but lots of tools have been developed which do a good job with just ordinary pictures. And now you can do it with a phone. Woohoo.

This could be true textured 3D scanning ... FAST!

[Seven Spirals]

Think about it. This tech is one of the first I've seen that does an actual 3D scan of the object using the LIDAR data to gather the Z-axis stuff. This is a lot better than algos that guess about depth based on interpolation or contrast. I haven't seen this implementation, but this seems intuitively like the "right" way to do this type of scanning. It's not yet well understood how awesome it's going to be and I can see really "big" implications coming. For one, it's going to be a helluva lot easier to creat

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[nightflameauto]

It'd be cooler if it created a 3D object rather than a "picture" of the 3D object. Those of us that futz around with 3D art programs like Blender or Maya would love to be able to snap a couple 3D 'pics' of real life objects to toss into our projects from time to time.

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[srg33]

That COULD be great, but it is not. The app does not use LIDAR / Z-axis data at all. From the website: "Incredibly accurate"; "We use state of the art vision AI to provide the best analysis & cut-out technology, no matter what you’re capturing." And, the demo makes it clear that it uses flat images.

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[Seven Spirals]

Aww man. What a let down. However, I have seen others working on the "real" stuff. I figure it's only a matter of time and if it can get stuffed into a smartphone so much the better. Lots of new 3D models will be out there when that day comes. It'll be great day for Blender and friends.

Not AR, another info sink for your info

[Pitawg]

This is a pile of things. This feeds pictures to their AI, allowing it to get better at identifying people/places/things from images, as new samples are always needed. It also adds the items to things of interest to you on your file. It will lead to ads being presented to you from many sources for items you seem to like/use, as if you always need more, or at least need their version of it.

Locations of the items and photographer are in the meta data. This is video, instead of static pictures to allow differe

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[srg33]

I more-or-less agree with point #1, but the video info. is wrong. The program does NOT use video.
From the website: "Incredibly accurate"; "We use state of the art vision AI to provide the best analysis & cut-out technology, no matter what you’re capturing." And, the demo makes it clear that it uses flat images (even downloaded from the web; check the fox).

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[Pitawg]

So it uses your own camera app to get that still shot? Did not appear so in the example video. AR is not still shot. It is enhanced live view. That means it has the current view from the lens at the time of the picture click, as well as before and after that click. The twinkle animation of the targeting three dots represents the AI processing time maybe the only time you seem to believe it is looking at something. Even the pasted image holds across the screen as you place it's final destination. My stock ca

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[srg33]

Interesting. Is that "example video" the one to the right that auto-plays? The demo that I referred to is below in the center (and does not auto-play):
Quick Demo
Discover key features of ClipDrop in this short demo

It seems to be their app on the phone -- I'm not sure. But, they are definitely using a flat downloaded image of a fox.
(The placement of the paste in Photoshop is kinda cool.)

BTW, it does not require an iPhone.
****
Requirements and Compatibility

Compatibility

ClipDrop supports Android, iOS, macOS and

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[Pitawg]

Someone may appreciate the details you gave, so they do not have to look at the articles or website.

I do not pay homage to the fruit under glass gods. A closed sourced application, using AI, on hardware running software from advertising businesses, is never doing only the parts they publish to you. You cannot say when the data collection starts or stops when it is running. It can change 100s of times in minor ways, with the unattended updates and any remote access for code or data, to validate and invalidat