Taking photos like a pro

You may be using Portrait Mode and not even know it.

One of the first techniques you learn as a photography student is Depth of Field. The effect that at certain lens settings you can preserve focus on a chosen subject while blurring everything in the image that is closer or farther away. By doing that you draw the viewer’s attention to the subject.

Depth of Field, or, Selective Focus, is a widely used technique in movies and in still portraits where someone is photographed against a distracting background. So sharp subjects and soft backgrounds have become one of the trademarks of professional photography. Partly because it takes a more sophisticated lens than the ones typically used by amateur photographers, and partly because professionals know to use it.

In fact, it should be impossible for the tiny lens on a mobile phone to offer any kind of selective focus.

But it does.

Digital magic

Apple introduced Portrait Mode in 2016 and has been fine tuning it ever since. Portrait Mode (and Cinematic Mode for video) delivers a digital version of Selective Focus by sensing the distance to each object in the photo and simulating the effect as it would be seen by a professional grade lens. Or your eye, for that matter. The way that looking at something near you will soften everything beyond it in your peripheral vision.

The iPhone uses either multiple lenses or LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) - depending on your model iPhone - to map the distance to objects in a photo. Then it applies the appropriate level of blurring to each part of the photo that’s not the subject.

In the end, you get a great portrait of your significant other that is nice and sharp against a softly blurred flower garden.

That would be cool enough, but the magic is that the effect can be edited - even deleted - after the fact. And Apple Photos offers several filters like Studio Light or High-Key Mono to add some additional pizzaz to the photo.

As with all images in Photos, edits and settings are non-destructive and can be changed up to the point that the photo is exported to another app or shared.

Portrait Mode isn’t always top of mind when you snap a picture.

The only hang up is that you have to choose Portrait Mode in the Camera App before taking the shot so that the depth mapping happens. Not always top of mind when you suddenly see the moment and whip out your iPhone for a quick snap of your loved one. It isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a lost opportunity.

Until now.

Smart Portrait Mode

Since 2023, the Camera App will watch for Portrait opportunities when you are in Photo Mode, have a person or pet about few feet away, and start to take a picture. You will see the f logo show up at the bottom of the Camera display prompting you to tap it and switch to Portrait. But the beauty is that if you take the shot as a regular photo, the App will still record that depth information and make it available when you go to edit the picture.

Welcome to Smart Portrait Mode.

If you tap the F logo, Camera App will pop into Selective Focus View. But if you don’t, Camera still captures the depth information and saves it for use when you edit the picture in Photos.

With iOS 17 or 18, Smart Portrait Mode will work on iPhones from 13 on, but is best on the latest models.

It also needs to detect a person or pet in the picture for the smartness to kick in, unlike choosing Portrait Mode manually, where any object is fair game for depth mapping.

iPhone has your back

It’s worth noting, too, that a nice portrait doesn’t always need Portrait Mode/Selective Focus. Often the background is as important as the subject. Capturing people in their natural surroundings or at a location adds context to the portrait and can enrich the composition. Street photography and environmental portraiture depend on it.

But having that depth information in your portraits just gives you the option to play with selective focus and see how it works with the images you make.

Smart Portrait Mode has your back.

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