How to enable and use portrait mode on your
XDA Basics: How to enable and use Portrait mode on your Android or iPhone
Dual cameras have been around on Android since 2011, and devices like the HTC One M8 from 2014 popularized the idea of using the second camera for depth information. dual rear cameras a constraint with the launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in 2016.
What followed was probably every smartphone OEM jumping on the bandwagon and launching phones with dual cameras no matter what the secondary sensor did, it almost became mandatory for brands to include it to follow the trend.
Coming back to Apple, the secondary camera they used was a telephoto lens for zoom photography as we mentioned earlier, however, they used it for secondary purposes which set the tone for another widespread trend in the industry - portrait mode. Apple has cleverly used the two lenses of the iPhone 7 Plus to
semantic segmentation
which in simple terms means they used it to differentiate the background and foreground of an image. This was done to carefully blur the background to give it a fake effect of depth of field.
Portrait shot
Fast forward to 2021, nearly every smartphone, from
budget
to the
best camera phone
, no matter how many cameras it has, portrait mode is built into the camera app. We'll walk you through how to enable portrait mode on your phone and how you can use it to click great photos .
Navigate through this guide:
What is portrait mode?
Different implementations of portrait mode
Portrait mode using a telephoto lens
Portrait mode using the depth sensor
Portrait mode using software
How to enable portrait mode on your phone
Pixel Phones/Google Camera
Samsung
OnePlus
Oppo/Realme
Vivo/iQOO
Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco
iPhone/iPad
Any other Android smartphone
Third-party apps to enable portrait mode
Installing the Google Camera Port
Use a photo editor like PicsArt
What is portrait mode?
Let's start with the basics. Portrait mode is a commonly used term these days with every smartphone that has the feature built-in. But what does it mean?
To start, a
portrait
is usually an image of a person that consists mostly of the face, or at most the upper body. This gives you an idea that portrait mode is specifically for taking pictures of human subjects. But you can also click images of human subjects in normal mode on your smartphone, right? Why is there a specific mode for that then?
To answer this, consider a clicked portrait image using a professional DSLR or mirrorless camera. You will notice that while the person's face is crisp and clear, the background appears out of focus. This gives the image a nice (subjective) look since the full focus is on the subject and the background is not distracting. This is called
bokeh
.
Source:
This effect is because professional cameras are much larger than smartphones and therefore have larger sensors and a variable aperture. The aperture is the opening in the camera through which light passes.Read More aperture, the brighter the image, and if the aperture is narrow, there is less light entering the sensor so the image is less bright. A wider aperture also means that the natural blur behind -plan is more important. This is called the
depth of field
.This blurring is naturally achieved when clicking a portrait on a dedicated camera, as the sensor size is large and the aperture is wide.
On the other hand, smartphones have tiny sensors with relatively wider apertures, which makes it difficult to achieve this level of bokeh unless you're very close to the subject (although this is changing as some
high-end smartphones have excellent cameras with larger sensors
).If you click on small objects, bringing your phone very close to the subject will create that natural blur.However, when you click on a person's portrait, you obviously cannot get too close, which means the background and foreground will stay sharp. This is not ideal.
Pixel5 portrait mode
Accordingly, smartphone brands include a Portrait mode which, using a secondary camera sensor or magic software, differentiates between the background and the foreground and applies an effect of blur to the background, replicating the look you would get from a professional camera.While originally intended for human subjects, portrait mode on several phones can now be used to take photos of objects .There are different implementations of portrait mode which we will talk about next.
Different implementations of portrait mode
As mentioned earlier, Apple used the iPhone's secondary camera to implement portrait mode and many brands have been following this implementation ever since. 'Apple with a single camera. They used computational algorithms to detect and differentiate between background and foreground.
Apple itself went with this type of implementation on the iPhone XR which only had one camera. In fact, most OEMs have software implementations of portrait mode for the front camera. Even with a multi-camera implementation, there are different ways to implement portrait mode.
Portrait mode using a telephoto lens
This is the implementation that Apple had in place on the iPhone 7 Plus and is still present on the latest iPhone 12 Pro Max. of the iPhone to zoom in and reproduce the equivalent of the 50mm or 65mm focal length of a portrait lens that you would use on a camera.
By doing this, the phones use the other cameras to determine other settings like the difference between background and foreground. You can also choose to use the primary wide-angle camera for portraits.
Portrait mode using the depth sensor
Depth sensors have become a convenient way for OEMs to install two cameras on their smartphones.Depth sensors are much cheaper compared to an actual working camera like an ultra-wide or telephoto and so brands started including them even on ultra-cheap phones just to market them as
dual camera phones
.
This trend is still going strong to this day with brands integrating 2MP depth sensors on their smartphones. While they help with portrait mode, they are often just a gimmick anymore as the same (or even better) result ) can be obtained via software even without an additional lens.
Portrait mode using software
AI and computational photography have reached incredible heights in recent years and therefore portrait mode using only software is possible and also works wonders. The Google Pixel 4a, for example, has a single camera sensor at the back but clicks better portrait mode shots than the majority of phones with multi-camera setups.
In fact, most brands use software algorithms to click portrait selfies, which should tell you that a secondary camera isn't required to click good portrait mode images. Of course, a secondary camera can help in low light situations for better depth mapping, but it is not necessary.
How to enable portrait mode on your phone
As mentioned earlier, almost all phones released in recent years have built-in portrait mode. We will explain how you can enable it and use portrait mode to click images with the blurred background. If your smartphone does not There is no built-in portrait mode in the camera app, don't worry. We will also suggest ways to achieve the portrait mode effect using other ways.
Pixel Phones/Google Camera
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe right to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
You can now click pictures in Portrait mode. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the left of the shutter.
Samsung
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe left until you land on the
After
tongue.
Then select the
Portrait
option.You can switch to selfie camera if you want.
OnePlus
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe left to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
Select whether you want a magnified view or a wide view. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the left of the shutter.
Oppo/Realme
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe left to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
You can now click portraits. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.
Vivo/iQOO
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe right to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the lens you want to use for portraits. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.
Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe right to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
You can now click portraits. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.
iPhone/iPad
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe right to switch to
portrait-mode
or press the
Portrait
option at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the lens you want to use for portraits. If you want to click selfies, switch to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.
Any other Android smartphone
Launch the camera app on your phone.
Swipe to find the
portrait-mode
option or take a look at the bottom bar to see if you can find it.
Otherwise, head to the
After
section or tap any three-dot menu and see if you find the
portrait-mode
option there.
On some phones, Portrait mode is known by other names like
Live focus
,
Bokeh mode
,
Lens Blur
, etc. so you can search for those options as well.
Some smartphones have various portrait mode options like the ability to vary the blur intensity or certain portrait lighting effects. You can browse through these different effects and try them out to see which ones you like.
Third-party apps to enable portrait mode
If your smartphone does not have portrait mode built into the camera app, there are some methods to enable it on your smartphone. This can be achieved either through a third-party camera app that supports portrait mode, or through an app that lets you edit photos to give the appearance of portrait mode.
Installing a Google Camera Port
The Google Camera app uses Google's computational photography algorithms to click portrait mode photos that are some of the best in the business. All you have to do is grab the
Google camera port for your phone
, install it and follow the instructions we mentioned above to use portrait mode on Google Camera.
The app creates both normal and portrait pictures so you can choose which one to keep after clicking. You can differentiate the two by checking the
EXIF data
images.
Use a photo editor like PicsArt
PicturesArt
is one of
best photo editors for android
and offers a host of features, including the ability to blur the background of an image. Here's how you can do it.
Open PicsArt and select the
Edit a photo
option.
Select the photo you want to edit.
Go to
Effects
panel, then select
fall out
.
Now select the
fall out
option again and press the
gum
icon at the top of the screen.
To select
Nobody
Where
Confront
depending on the image, then select
Reverse
.The app will automatically blur the background.
Save the image and you are good to go.
To download
QR Code
Picsart Photo Editor: Photo, Video & Collage Maker
Developer:
PicsArt, Inc.
Price:
Release
+
Portrait mode is pretty easy to use, and you can try experimenting by clicking pictures of humans as well as various objects to see how it works. However, more often than not, you'll get better results with humans and pets like cats and dogs than with other inanimate objects. If you have an older phone that doesn't have this feature, you can use the app we suggested to make it look like a jack portrait mode view. Portrait mode has evolved and improved and become more accurate over the years. With multiple cameras and LIDAR sensors, brands are constantly striving to improve their algorithms.