Watch this app copy a real-world object, paste it on PC

Computer vision and augmented reality technology has made amazing strides in the last few years. One of the coolest examples is Google Lens’s ability to copy real-world text and paste it into an app.

Now, a new AR Cut and Pasteapp by programmer Cyril Diagne (h/t: PhoneArena) shows the ability to take a snap of a real-world object, have it cut out of its background, and pasted into Photoshop.

The video shows the programmer taking a snap of various objects (such as books and plants) and then adding it into a project he’s working on. It’s not exactly instantaneous, as Diagne says it takes roughly 2.5 seconds to cut and four seconds to paste. But he adds that there are plenty of ways to speed things up and that the project took place over a weekend.

It all makes for an extremely slick demonstration anyway, but it does come with other caveats. For one, this is merely a prototype right now rather than a commercially available app. It also requires Photoshop on your PC and the creation of a local server to link the app to Photoshop on your computer. However, Diagne notes that it might support more than just Photoshop in the future.

In any event, AR Cut and Paste is still an impressive use of machine learning and computer vision. And this could be handy for presentations and image editing, taking a ton of manual work out of the process.

You can check out the instructions and more via the GitHub page for the project over here. Otherwise, you can also check out more AR stories via our list below.