Why removing a person is harder than removing a bin
People are rarely isolated. They overlap the horizon, cast shadows that run across the ground, stand in front of railings and crowds, and are often cut by the edge of the frame. A good removal has to rebuild all of what they covered — the sand and the sea behind a beach walker, the paving and the wall behind a tourist — and it has to do it without disturbing the people you want to keep.
That is why EraseObject treats each selected person as a separate edit. Removing two strangers at opposite sides of a photo as one giant hole would force the AI to invent a single enormous region with almost no context; removing them one at a time lets each be rebuilt from the scene immediately around it.
What People mode does — and what it does not
People mode runs a person-segmentation model inside your browser. It answers one question for every pixel: is this part of a person? Separate people become separate, clickable outlines labelled Person 1, Person 2 and so on. There is no face detection, no recognition and no attempt to work out who anyone is. The model never sees anything but the pixels of the photo you opened, and those never leave your device.
Two people who touch in the picture — a couple holding hands, a group shoulder to shoulder — come out as one outline. Separate them with the brush in Subtract mode before you erase, or click the person you want with Smart Select instead, which works per object.
Shadows give removals away
The commonest tell of a removed person is a shadow with nobody attached to it. After you select someone, EraseObject looks next to them for an area that is darker than the ground around it but keeps its colour — which is what a cast shadow is — and that touches the person. It is outlined in amber and offered with an “Include shadow” button. It is never added silently, because in strong side-light a shadow can be much larger than a person and you should see it before it is erased.
When to crop instead
If the person is half outside the frame, there is less real context to rebuild from on one side. EraseObject tells you when a removal touches the edge and offers a crop instead — often the cleanest answer for a figure walking out of the shot.