Portrait Mode Photos on a Mac

[adebookpro]

According to this:

Change the lighting of a portrait in Photos on Mac

In Photos on your Mac, apply lighting effects to a portrait photo.

support.apple.com

I should be able to edit portrait mode photos in "Photos" on my Mac running Catalina.

But I can't figure it out for the life of me. I do not see the "lighting effect" menu shown in the guide. Worse still, if I do any edits at all, it turns off portrait mode, and I have to open the photo again on my iPhone (12) to turn portrait mode back on for that photo.

Weirdly, Photos on the mac does show the "portrait" label on the photos in the gallery, but when i select one to edit it seems to know nothing about it...

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? It's not a hardware issue is it? I am on a 2016 12" MacBook - does this feature require some minimum hardware specs that I don't have?

 

[Solenoid289]

I don't know this is a bug or normal, but you can't edit portrait photo that taken by 12 series iPhone unless your mac is Big Sur.
Same for HDR video.

See the attached screenshots.
Big Sur on the left, Catalina on the right.

 

[Fishrrman]

Solenoid:

What is the file format of the photo you showed us in reply 2 above?
Could it be a "new" format that is not recognized by Photos in Catalina, but IS recognized by an updated version of Photos in Big Sur?

Does an iPhone let you set the file format that photos will be saved in?
(don't know, I've never owned an iPhone nor any other kind of "smartphone")

 

[Solenoid289]

Solenoid:

What is the file format of the photo you showed us in reply 2 above?
Could it be a "new" format that is not recognized by Photos in Catalina, but IS recognized by an updated version of Photos in Big Sur?

Both HEIC (High Efficiency Image file format) which is introduced with iOS 11 I think.

Could it be a "new" format that is not recognized by Photos in Catalina, but IS recognized by an updated version of Photos in Big Sur?

HEIC format is nothing new but it's very likely macOS reads its meta information and restricts editing.

Does an iPhone let you set the file format that photos will be saved in?

You can set the file format in Settings > Camera > Format.
I don't think this would solve the problem though.
If this is just a bug or not you need Big Sur to edit portrait photo at this time.

 

[adebookpro]

I don't know this is a bug or normal, but you can't edit portrait photo that taken by 12 series iPhone unless your mac is Big Sur.
Same for HDR video.

See the attached screenshots.
Big Sur on the left, Catalina on the right.

Ok, I guess that explains it then. Thanks!