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Apple Shares Behind the Scenes Look at How the Portrait Lighting Feature Was Created

It's a shame the results haven't been as successful as the bokeh of Portrait mode, but I'd bet this will improve over time. One thing Apple has always struggled with is skin tone as their photos generally lean towards yellow, especially when using the flash.
 
Not good enough but getting close. Come September, with the new hardware and a boatload of data on this beta version, i believe it could be up to snuff.
 
KiwiAdventure said:
This is great as another over priced industry is gone.
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Obviously you don't understand what constitutes good photography, let alone a quality portrait. Why do you think Apple's corporate headshots are taken by a professional, not an iPhone? Ponder that and get back to us in a few hours when you're finished.
marco114 said:
I think Apple is putting WAY to much hype into something that is not that exciting. There's tons of filters out there. The snapchat filters are way better and more exciting. I don't get it.
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Yup. This is nothing but an overhyped Photoshop filter.
elmughrabi said:
why attacking professional photographers!
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Many people are not familiar with quality photography, all they know is what they see on their Facebook and Instagram feeds - mediocre snapshots laden with overcooked filters. At the end of the day, they are the ones I feel sorry for, not talented photographers who do amazing things every day.
 
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It is OK if 1. your subject has hair that is plastered to their head, anything frizzy and the effect is laughable. 2. You gotta be at the right distance every time or else it is horrible. 3. The background needs to be neutral if not dark, for it to work ok.

I have had good results under tightly controlled conditions. If you randomly take a picture without planning it out, the results are miserable at best.

Apple really needs to improve this trickery. The potential is there, just the execution is lacking.

My 2 cents. Take it as it is.
 
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I too am a professional photographer. This camera is great for blurred-background selfies and such. But it's way too slow in operation to actually do a proper portrait session of someone else. Even on the X. Too Damn Slow. If they can fix the slow operation and slow shot-to-shot times, then it becomes way more useful IMO.
Meanwhile, for casual portraits, it's pretty damn good. (not talking about the stupid lighting effects, but the background blur helps in many situations!)
 
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Mine always look like someone has cut round a photo of my face on MS paint really badly and then pasted it on a black background, I think this add is stretching the truth somewhat!
 
The Portrait Selfie leaves a lot to be desired, IMHO.

It squeezes my head like a grape. It seems it freaks out over glasses, and cuts off my ears. Weird.
 
Neat. Lighting is one of the most difficult thing to get right, and one that really matters in an image. After all, Photography is "Painting with light".
 
But that Portrait Lighting photo at the end looks comical! (and yeah, as other comments pointed out, that rig in the left is an exaggeration to get a shot like this)
 

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meaning-matters said:
I absolutely disagree. There's a big difference between one amazing image and a million nice ones. Most iPhone images are crap anyway because of the small sensor and crappy lenses.

DISCLAIMER: I've done paid photography work, invested $15k in equipment, but stopped. Reason was that it didn't pay enough. Only the happy few make these, what you call, 'over-priced' amounts.
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Who prints photos anymore and who looks at a photo for more than a few seconds.
 
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polterbyte said:
Not user data, if that's what you're asking. But still, they've had one entire year with the tech, and I believe several photographers (Austin Mann comes to mind) and amateur users are actively and constantly (and, of course, willingly) contributing photos to their beta program.
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Yeah, I thought you meant User Data, didn't think about the points you make in your original post.


KiwiAdventure said:
Who prints photos anymore and who looks at a photo for more than a few seconds.
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That's what I said once and got flamed.
 
The one thing that hasn't been addressed... focal length. A good portrait lens (35mm format) is anywhere from 85mm to 180mm (or more) longer focal lengths compress the features of the face... a wide angle lens like the front facing camera held at an arms distance makes the face look bulbous and more spherical. They would need to employ some filters to de-spherize the face in processing to really make it look like a professional portrait.
 
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KiwiAdventure said:
Who prints photos anymore and who looks at a photo for more than a few seconds.
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i print all my photos....wife loves to scrapbook...and Shutterfly has unlimited prints for free with their App..just pay shipping. Comes up to about 5 cents a picture. Reasonable.
 
driver111 said:
I pretty much signed up on here just to post about this..

But how does google pixel 2 beat the iPhone in portrait mode? Google can do a better job with machine learning.
The portrait mode on phone is always too blurry around the edge of whatever is in focus, making it look very unprofessional.

https://mashable.com/2017/11/09/app...note-8-portrait-mode-comparison/#WcAzNVUXtmq3
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Bokeh is the term for having the background unfocused (or blurred as you called it) while the subject is in focus. It helps to delineate the background from the foreground.

The Pixel side of your face is underexposed but the background is perfectly exposed. The iPhone side of your face is perfectly exposed and the background is overexposed.
 
Junk Gimmicks and bloatware.

It seems Apple have replaced their innovation, research and development and marketing departments with machine learning too.

All you have to do is find a black background and you can have this look on any CRAP phone and it will look better anyway because the computer cutouts are so bad. This is what Apple have become pointless and stupid Gimmicks. It's all junk. The Fake Bokeh is terrible, it rarely even works properly.

These pictures and lighting are absolutely terrible too.

If it weren't so laughable it would be offensive.
 
jellyjeff said:
So, one light and a reflector then. Yes, revolutionary. I'm sure professional photographers throughout the land are terrified that their livelihood is now moot, killed by a chap or chapess turning up with a multi-use communications device that you can't even physically remove the file from.

The example of "studio-quality photos" being taken demonstrably in a studio is a peculiar one, even for Apple.
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I remove the files from my iPhone all the time. If you mean physically put the image on a disk or media and then remove the media to use elsewhere, WHY??? I can transfer all my photos quickly using many different methods ANDI don't have to remove them if I have synced my iPhone and Mac together. I can send them to dropbox if I like. I can even print them directly from the phone. What did you mean "ou can't even physically remove the file from"?
 
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