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 a second camera for in-depth information. But it was Apple who really cemented the concept of dual rear cameras with the launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus back in 2016. What followed was probably every single smartphone OEM jumping on the bandwagon and releasing phones with dual cameras. No matter what the secondary sensor did, it became almost mandatory for brands to include it to keep up with the trend.


Back at Apple, the secondary camera they used was a telephoto lens for telephoto. However, they used it for a secondary purpose that set the tone for another widespread trend in the industry: portrait mode. Apple cleverly used both lenses on the iPhone 7 Plus to Semantic segmentation Which means, in simple terms, that they used it to distinguish between the background and the foreground in an image. This was done to carefully blur the background to create the illusion of a shallow depth of field AKA the bokeh effect.

Portrait shot

Fast forward to 2022 and almost every smartphone, from the budget to the best camera phone, has a portrait mode built into the camera app. In this guide, we will show you how to enable portrait mode on your phone and take great photos.


What is vertical position?

For starters, a photo is an image that focuses primarily on a person’s face or upper body. So, Portrait mode is a dedicated camera mode designed to take pictures of human bodies. But you can take pictures of human bodies in normal mode on your smartphone too, right? Why is there a specific situation for that then?

Canon DSLR camera on a table
Photo by Hanson Low on Unsplash

To answer that, let’s consider a photo of a photo clicked with a professional DSLR or mirrorless camera. You’ll notice that while a person’s face is sharp and in focus, the background appears blurred. This gives the image a nice look because the focus is on the subject and the background is not a distraction. This is called peach.

vertical shooting mode
Source: The Google

This effect is due to the fact that professional cameras are much larger than smartphones and therefore have larger sensors and variable aperture. The aperture is the hole in the camera that light passes through. The wider the aperture, the brighter the image, and if the aperture is narrow, less light enters the sensor, so the image becomes less bright. A wider aperture also translates to a more pronounced background blur effect. This is referred to as depth of field. This blur is naturally achieved when clicking a photo on a dedicated camera, since the sensor size is large and the aperture is wide.

On the other hand, smartphones have small sensors with relatively wider apertures which makes it difficult to achieve this level of bokeh unless you are very close to the subject (although this is changing because some smartphones in the upper segment have great cameras with sensors Larger ). If you’re clicking small objects, bringing your phone too close to the subject will create this natural blur. However, while clicking a photo of a person, you obviously can’t get too close which means the background and foreground will stay in focus. This is not ideal.

An inanimate object selfie taken by Pixel 5.
Pixel 5 Portrait Mode

As a result, smartphone brands include a dedicated portrait mode that, with the help of a secondary camera sensor or magic software, distinguishes between the background and the subject and applies a blur effect to the background, replicating the look you’d get from a professional camera. While it was initially intended for human subjects, portrait mode can now be used on many phones to take pictures of objects as well. There are many applications for portrait mode which we will discuss next.


Various applications of portrait mode

Depth sensor

As mentioned earlier, Apple used the secondary camera on the iPhone to implement portrait mode and a lot of brands have been following this implementation ever since. However, with the Pixel 2 Google has made a better portrait mode version of Apple with just one camera. They used computational algorithms to detect and distinguish between the background and the subject.

Apple itself went with this kind of implementation on the iPhone XR which only had a single camera. In fact, most OEMs have software-based portrait mode apps for the front camera. Even with the multi-camera implementation, there are different ways in which portrait mode can be implemented.

Portrait mode using the telephoto camera

This is the app that Apple implemented on the iPhone 7 Plus and is still present on the latest iPhone 12 Pro Max. Since portraits are generally intended to only include the face, Apple uses the iPhone’s telephoto camera to zoom in and duplicate the 50mm or 65mm focal length of the portrait lens you’d use on the camera.

By doing this, the phones use other cameras to determine other parameters such as the difference between the background and the foreground. You can also choose to use the wide-angle primary camera to take selfies.

Portrait mode with depth sensor

Depth sensors have become a convenient way for OEMs to push dual cameras on their smartphones. Depth sensors are much cheaper compared to an actual functional camera such as an ultra wide or telephoto camera and so brands have started including them even in very cheap phones just to market them as Dual camera phones.

This trend is still relevant today with brands including 2MP depth sensors on their smartphones. Although they help with portrait mode, they are often just a gimmick as the same (or even better) result can be achieved via software even without an additional lens.

Portrait mode using the software

Artificial intelligence and computational photography have reached incredible heights in recent years, and as a result, portrait mode using only software is possible and works great too. For example, the iPhone SE 3 (2022) has a single camera sensor on the back, but it still clicks really nice shots.

In fact, most brands use software algorithms to click good selfies which should tell you that the secondary camera is not mandatory for clicking good portrait mode photos. Of course, the secondary camera might help in low-light situations for better depth mapping, but it’s not essential.

How to enable portrait mode on your phone

As mentioned earlier, almost every phone launched in recent years has a portrait mode built in. We will tell you how you can enable it and use portrait mode to click photos with background blur. If your smartphone doesn’t have portrait mode built into the stock camera app, don’t worry. We’ll also suggest ways you can achieve the portrait effect using other means.

Pixel Phones / Google Camera

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe right or tap painting option at the bottom of the screen.
    Google Pixel Camera UI-1

  3. You can now click photos in portrait mode. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the left of the shutter.

samsung

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe left to land on more tab.
  3. Next, select a file painting to choose. You can switch to the selfie camera if you wish.

Portrait mode for Samsung camera

OnePlus

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe left to switch to portrait mode or click on painting option at the bottom of the screen.
    OnePlus Portrait Mode

  3. Decide if you want an enlarged view or a wide view. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the left of the shutter.

Oppo / Realme

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe left to switch to painting or click on painting option at the bottom of the screen.
    OnePlus Portrait Mode

  3. You can now click vertical shots. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.

vivo/iQOO

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe right to switch to portrait mode or click on painting option at the bottom of the screen.
  3. Choose the lens you want to use for portrait shots. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.
    Vivo FunouchOS UI-1 Camera

Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Click on painting option at the bottom of the screen or simply swipe right.
    Xiaomi Camera app

  3. You can now click vertical shots. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.

iPhone/iPad

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe right to switch to painting or click on painting option at the bottom of the screen.
    iPhone camera user interface

  3. Choose the lens you want to use for portrait shots. If you want to take selfies, go to the front camera by pressing the button to the right of the shutter.

Any other Android smartphone

  1. Launch the camera app on your phone.
  2. Swipe to find a file painting option or look at the bottom bar to see if you can find it.
  3. If not, head over to more Segment or click on any three-dot menus and see if you find the Portrait Mode option there.
  4. On some phones, portrait mode is known by other names like direct focusAnd the bokeh modeAnd the lens focusetc., so you can search for those options as well.

Some smartphones have different portrait mode options like the ability to change the intensity of the blur or some personal lighting effects. You can look at and experiment with these different effects to see which one you like best.

Third party apps to enable portrait mode

If your smartphone does not have portrait mode built into the camera app, there are certain ways to enable it on your smartphone. This can be achieved either with a third party camera app that supports portrait mode or via an app that allows you to edit photos to give the look of portrait mode.

Install google camera port

The Google Camera app uses Google’s computational photography algorithms to click portrait mode shots that are some of the best in the business. All you have to do is get 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 makes both normal and portrait photos so you can choose which one to keep after clicking. You can differentiate between the two by taking a look at the EXIF ​​data of the images.

Use an image editor like PicsArt

PicsArt It is one of the best photo editors for Android and offers a bunch of features including the ability to blur the background of an image. Here’s how you can do it.

  1. Open PicsArt and select a file Edit an image to choose.
  2. Select the photo you want to edit.
  3. go to the effects panel and then select blur.
  4. Now, select a file blur option again and press an eraser top of the screen.
  5. Choose person or Face according to the image and then select Reverse. The app will automatically blur the background.
  6. Save the image, and you’re good to go.


The portrait mode is fairly easy to use and you can use it not only on humans and pets but also on objects. When used correctly, it can give you professional-looking photos with beautifully blurred backgrounds. Keep in mind that portrait mode works best when you have a clear subject in the foreground and a relatively uniform background.

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