Inside iOS 11: Apple's Portrait Mode in iPhone 7 Plus exits beta, allows effect to be turned off after the fact

In the latest iOS 11 beta, Apple has taken the Portrait Mode camera setting out of beta, and has altered how the camera roll handles the pictures to allow for the effect to be removed from a picture with it at any time.

First pointed out by ThinkApple, Portrait Mode not only has exited its beta status, but has seen some improvements as well. The procedure to take the shot is unmodified, but the Edit feature now allows for the effect to be removed at will, and non-destructively.

The effect still can't be applied retroactively if the image wasn't taken in Portrait Mode to begin with.

Apple's Portrait mode takes advantage of the twin cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus, using them to gauge the depth of a scene and blur the background. Apple announced the mode when it revealed the phone on September 7, but said it would only be available in a later software update.

The feature shipped with iOS 10.1 in beta mode on October 24. Apple made the feature the centrepoint of its "Shot on iPhone" advertising campaign, with several ads demonstrating it.

The ability to retain data about the picture, and still save space versus iOS 10 and earlier versions of the operating system are made possible by the addition of HEIC. The 2017 WWDC keynote saw the debut of HEIC for images, and HEVC for video in iOS 11.

For more on Apple's forthcoming operating system update, see AppleInsider's ongoing Inside iOS 11 series

12 Comments

Avieshek 7 Years · 100 comments

About 7 years ago

The front camera is where the Portrait camera fits.

fasterquieter 9 Years · 90 comments

I suspect this is good and bad news. It presumably means the HEIF container is storing both versions. Neater in the camera roll, but you won't be able to discard the unwanted version. Hence it's a waste of space. I know the HEIF images will occupy only 50% of the current JPEGS, but still, I don't like having valuable storage assigned to crap I don't want. Unless you can remove the alternate version from the HEIF container or elect not to generate one in the first place. If that is the case, then great.

polymnia 15 Years · 1080 comments

fasterquieter said:

I suspect this is good and bad news. It presumably means the HEIF container is storing both versions. Neater in the camera roll, but you won't be able to discard the unwanted version. Hence it's a waste of space. I know the HEIF images will occupy only 50% of the current JPEGS, but still, I don't like having valuable storage assigned to crap I don't want. Unless you can remove the alternate version from the HEIF container or elect not to generate one in the first place. If that is the case, then great.

Must be tough to find "good news" in your world where compromise made in the name of progress constitutes "bad news".

melgross 20 Years · 33622 comments

Avieshek said:

The front camera is where the Portrait camera fits.

No. The portrait camera is the telephoto camera on the rear, used in conjunction with the wide angle camera to determine out of focus blurring.

the front camera is a “selfie” camera. Big difference.