How to Add Someone to a Photo on a Phone, by Hand or With AI

The fastest way to add someone to a photo is to fix it before the group walks away: on a Pixel 9 or later, Add Me merges two shots so the person holding the phone ends up in the picture. For a photo that already exists, you need a clear photo of the missing person and an editor that can place them into the scene. The sections below give the steps for Pixel, Samsung and iPhone, the layer method by hand, AI tools that take both photos, and the checks that make an added person look like they were there.

5 ways to add someone to a photo

Camera tricks only work while everyone is still together. Once the group has left, the choice is a Galaxy AI tool, layers by hand, or a browser tool built for the job. As of September 2026:

How to add the photographer with Add Me on a Pixel

Add Me is a photo mode in the Pixel Camera app on the Pixel 9 and later, including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. You take the group shot, trade places with someone, and the camera stitches both frames together so nobody is left out.

1. Open the Camera app and pick Add Me from the photo modes.
2. Pan slowly across the scene so the phone can scan it, and leave an open spot in the frame where you'll stand.
3. Take the first photo of the group.
4. Hand the phone to someone in the group and step into the open spot.
5. The new photographer lines the phone up with the on-screen frame. A red frame means it isn't aligned yet.
6. When the frame turns white, they take the second photo, and the camera combines the two.

On an unfolded Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Add Me turns on the dual screen preview so you can watch yourself get into position. Add Me is a capture mode, so it can't add anyone to a photo taken earlier.

How to add someone on a Samsung Galaxy

On some Galaxy phones and tablets with Android 14 and One UI 6.1 or higher, the Create option in Photo assist adds something from another image, such as the person who missed the shot. It only works online, with your Samsung account signed in.

1. In Gallery, open the group photo and press the pencil icon to edit.
2. Tap Photo assist, the blue circle with stars.
3. Tap Create, then the Add from image icon, and choose the photo that has the missing person.
4. Tap Generate, then look closely at the new person's face, hands and feet.
5. Tap Save as copy; the group photo itself stays as it was.

Samsung notes that a Generative Edit copy is resized to 12MP at most, and that AI-generated images carry a Galaxy AI watermark. Before you keep the copy, compare the added person's face with the photo you pulled them from.

How to add someone to a photo on iPhone

On an iPhone, you add someone by lifting them out of their own photo and pasting them over the group shot in an app with layers. The Photos app in iOS 27 has Apple Intelligence tools that reframe a picture, extend its borders and remove distracting objects, but none of them adds a person. The cutout is the part the iPhone does well.

1. Open the photo of the missing person in Photos.
2. Touch and hold them until an outline appears around them.
3. Tap Copy or Copy Subject.
4. In an editing app with layers, open the group photo and paste the person over it.
5. Resize and blend the cutout using the manual steps for scale, color and shadow.

On a Mac, Preview's Remove Background button makes the same kind of cutout, and Preview can also extract part of an image: Apple's own example is pulling one person's face out of a group photo to paste somewhere else. For the next group photo, the iPhone Camera app has a timer: lean the phone against something steady and join the shot.

How to put someone in a picture by hand

To edit a photo to add a person by hand, you stack them on top of the group photo as a separate layer and adjust them until they fit. It takes longer than AI, but their face stays exactly as it was in their photo, because nothing gets redrawn.

1. Choose a source photo of the person taken in similar light, from a similar camera height, and at least as sharp as the group photo.
2. Cut the person out with the editor's subject selection, with Copy Subject on an iPhone, or with Preview's Remove Background on a Mac.
3. Paste them onto the group photo as a new layer.
4. Scale them against someone standing at the same distance from the camera, so the two heads come out close in size.
5. Match brightness, contrast and warmth to the people right next to them.
6. Paint a soft shadow on the ground under their feet and anywhere they touch something.
7. Soften the cutout's edge by a pixel or two so it doesn't look like a sticker.
8. Save the result as a new file and keep both originals.

Put the new person on the outer edge of a row or just behind someone. Standing them in front of others means inventing whatever they would cover.

What makes an added person look real

Check light and scale first, then the face. Go through each of these before you share the result:

• Light from the same side. If sunlight falls on everyone's left cheek, the added person needs light on the left too. Flip their photo horizontally only when nothing on them reads backward, like lettering on a shirt.
• Camera height. A selfie taken from above looks wrong next to people photographed at eye level, even at the right size.
• Size by distance. Compare the new person's head with someone at the same depth in the scene, not with whoever stands closest to the camera.
• Shadows and contact. People cast shadows and touch things: feet on grass, a hand on a chair back. Someone with no shadow looks like they're floating.
• Focus and grain. A razor-sharp person in front of a slightly soft scene stands apart. Match the blur and noise of the people around them.
• Color temperature. A daylight selfie looks blue next to a group lit by warm indoor bulbs. Warm or cool the added person until the skin tones sit together.
• Clothes and season. A T-shirt in a snowy December photo reads as pasted in, so pick a source photo with similar clothing when you have one.
• Pose and expression. Choose a photo where they face roughly the same way as the group, with an expression that fits the moment.

Adding a loved one who has died

Placing a parent or grandparent who has died into a wedding or holiday photo needs extra care. Talk to close family before you make one, then:

• Use their clearest photo. A sharp, well-lit, front-facing picture keeps more of their real face. With AI tools, any detail the photo doesn't show has to be made up.
• Pick a photo from a fitting time. A picture from their later years usually sits better beside grown grandchildren than a portrait from decades earlier.
• Give them their own space. The edge of the group, or just behind someone, avoids inventing an embrace, with arms and hands the camera never captured.
• Label it. Say it's a composite before you frame, print or post it, and keep the original photos unedited.

Consent and honest composites

Add living people only with their permission. Toybox's Terms of Service rule out making a picture of any real person who hasn't explicitly agreed to it. Don't use a composite to suggest someone was at an event, in a place, or beside a person when they weren't, and keep everyone out of scenes they'd object to. If a composite leaves the family group chat, say it's edited.

Troubleshooting

How to add someone to a photo with Room Guest

Room Guest in Toybox is an AI photo editor to add people, pets or things to a scene. To put someone in a picture with AI, you give it the photo you want to change plus one subject, as a photo or a written description, and it places them in the scene. It works in your phone's browser or on a computer.

1. Open Room Guest and log in with a free account. The first time, confirm your email address.
2. Under "Your room", upload the photo you want to add someone to. The label says room, but the upload box takes any room or scene, such as a backyard or a restaurant table. Use a JPG or PNG up to 10 MB.
3. Under "Who or what to add", leave "Upload a photo" selected and add a clear, front-facing photo of the person. Choose "Describe it" instead for a pet or object you don't have a photo of.
4. Open "More options" and fill in "Where should they go?", for example "standing at the right end of the back row, just behind the woman in the red sweater, about as tall as the man next to her". If you picked "Describe it", write where they go into that same description.
5. On a Pro plan, switch on "Enhanced blending", which the app describes as giving cleaner edges and a better match in lighting and size.
6. Tap "Create photo". While Room Guest works, the screen reads "Usually about 30 seconds".
7. Check the face, the size and the shadow. On a Pro plan, you can ask for a correction in "Want to change something?", like "add a soft shadow on the grass under her feet". Free plan users can rerun it with a clearer placement note.

Each Room Guest run places a single subject, so for two missing people, feed the first result back in as the scene and add the second person. A run currently costs 75 credits on the Free plan, or 95 with Enhanced blending on Pro, so a new account's 20 free credits fall short of a single run (current prices). The added person is made by AI, not pasted in pixel for pixel, so compare their face with the photo you uploaded before you share the result.

To make a brand-new picture of two or three people from separate photos instead, Image Generator works from as many as 3 reference photos, as the page on combining two photos into one explains. The reverse job has its own guide, on taking a person out of a photo, and to move the whole group somewhere new, read about changing a photo's background.