I wasn’t among the first to install the iOS 27 developer beta, but once I did, I began appreciating the changes Apple has made. The Photos app, in particular, has received one of its most substantial upgrades, adding an improved Clean Up tool, Spatial Reframing, and the new Extend feature, the one I was most eager to try.
After spending some time with it on my iPhone 17, here’s how the tool has performed so far. Spoiler alert: it’s one of the most substantial additions to Apple’s previously slim lineup of AI features. I’ve tried the feature on several different photos, including a selfie I took in front of a dam in northern India, photos of food items on a table, and shots taken indoors and outdoors.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
How to use the new Extend tool?
To use the new Extend feature, open the desired picture in the Photos app, tap the hamburger menu at the bottom of the screen, select Tools, then tap Extend (marked with an arrow below). From there, you can pinch to zoom out, adjust the crop, and reposition the frame to extend the image in any direction or aspect ratio.
I really like how the Extend feature is also built into the Crop tool. This way, the feature feels much more intuitive, especially because most iPhone users are already familiar with cropping photos. Once you’re in the Crop tool, pinch to zoom out or adjust the frame however you like, and the Extend option should appear at the bottom. In my experience, the feature takes about 10 to 15 seconds to generate a new picture.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
It’s a bit rough around the edges
Depending on how much of the frame you ask it to generate, it can produce multiple versions of the same picture, as you can see with my mango pastry. I’ve added an orange gradient so that you can easily tell which part of the image was expanded.
In the first result, for instance, the pastry on the other side of the table never existed, nor did the person in the background. The last picture shows the edge of another plate on the left that wasn’t there in the original. While the extensions of existing objects are great (like the plastic spoon), you may be able to spot the ones Apple Intelligence adds.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
Take this picture as an example. I shrank it to the center of the frame so that Extend’s AI would work across the entire frame, and the result, well, was telling. Look at the tables and chairs at the top of the frame: they look quite blurry and almost dreamy. To be honest, the bags (gray and black ones) don’t look good to me either. The AI-generated plates on the left are a slightly different color as well.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
Yet another example of how weird and AI-like a picture can look. It’s extended from all sides, which is probably why the shrubs at the top, the flower toward the left, the added long leaves at the bottom, and the additional flowers on the right look, well, a bit funny or goofy. Of the four people I sent this picture to, only one said it was real, and three could easily pick up on the hints.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
Some results, however, were better than I expected
I did come across a few pictures for which the tool denied expansion in particular directions. Some of the pictures had human subjects in the direction of expansion, so that could be an intentional restriction, but I couldn’t figure out why the others did. The feature also requires an active internet connection and may not work over low-speed wireless networks.
However, if I set such examples aside, I have several others where Extend did a great job. Take a look at the picture of my friend below (from her birthday in May).
Original picture Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
Extended with Apple Photos Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
I captured this with a Nikon mirrorless camera. The quality of generative expansion is quite good in this one, so much so that even she couldn’t tell the difference. The shrubs at the bottom left do lose their texture in the expanded area, but everything else seems fine.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
The silhouette toward the bottom of the tree and the plants in the foreground are very well generated. The leaves at the top, however, gave away the illusion.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
This is an equally impressive edit. Apple Intelligence has generated the person in the background with just the right amount of detail (he was already blurred due to the lens’s shallow depth of field), so that he looks realistic, and so do the reflections in the mirror on the right side.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
This is one of my favorite pictures from the Extend feature. The way it fills in the texture from the water bed (toward the left) to the mountains in the background and the canopy stand is simply outstanding. It did add a car on the right and made my arm appear slightly odd, but otherwise, it works fine for a social media post.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
The same goes for this one. Those who weren’t there can’t tell whether the gift box at the bottom or the lamp in front of the wall hanging on the left is real. The door to the right and the partially visible chair behind me weren’t there at all. In fact, if you notice the ceiling, you’ll see how Apple Intelligence has slightly bent it to replicate a fish-eye or wide-angle lens effect.
Shikhar Mehrotra / Digital Trends
This is one of the cleanest Extend edits I could achieve. There aren’t many subjects in the picture, which could be why it’s so good, but even so, it’s clean and accurate.
Overall, I’ve had a good experience with Extend so far. It’s not perfect, as certain results still show clear AI artifacts, but many results hold up surprisingly well. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I might rely on it for casual edits, especially when I need to add an ultrawide perspective to the pictures. The edited pictures show up with a tag in the Photos app (once you swipe up to view the metadata), so that’s good as well.
