An iPhone 3D portrait image is amazing to see, and it can be even more mind blowing as a hologram. That’s the promise of Looking Glass Portrait.

This is not a single-use hologram. Users can send their own 3D images to the 7.9-inch display.

iPhones can automatically blur the backgrounds of still images but not video. Enter Focos Live, a recently released application that brings to iPhone video the effect Apple calls Portrait mode (and everyone else calls “bokeh”). The effect gives photographers the ability to unfocus the background to draw attention to what’s going on in the foreground.

The 2020 iPhone SE is the first Apple smartphone to offer Portrait Mode photos created entirely with software techniques rather than hardware. That’s not true of any previous iOS device, not even the one you think it is.

Lux Optics, maker of Halide, examined how Apple’s new budget phone adds the bokeh effect to 2D pictures.

Apple continued its run of bokeh-related iPhone ads over the weekend. In its new “Depth Control” ad, a jealous partner blurs a handsome male co-worker out of a photo of his girlfriend/wife, using the depth of field function.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot less funny in writing than it comes across on screen. As a slice of everyday iPhone use, though, it certainly raised a smile. Check it out below.

The serious photographer has made peace with the iPhone and how it has turned everyone into a photographer.

But Apple’s introduction of bokeh to the photographic novice has caused some heartburn, thanks to an ad featuring two mothers who turn bokeh into a verb.

The iPhone XS camera is pretty incredible. The device uses its two rear cameras, plus the A12 chip’s Neural Engine, to record such an accurate 3D map of the scene that you can adjust the background blur with a slider. But that depth map is useful for more than just blurring backgrounds. It can be used by other apps to:

• Add realistic lights to a scene.
• Choose any subject to be in focus, not just the one you picked when shooting.
• Add custom background blurs.
• Remove and replace backgrounds, like movie green-screen effects.

The iPhone XS is the gold standard for iOS cameras, but the XR manages some excellent tricks of its own. Despite having only one rear camera, the XR can still recognise people, and then use AI and the super-powerful A12 Neural Engine to separate out the person form the background. While this portrait matte isn’t as detailed as an iPhone XS depth map, it can in theory still be used to do many of the same tricks.

Today we’ll look at the best depth apps for the new iPhone XS, XR, and XS Max.

Bokeh images look sort of three dimensional, with their subjects in focus and their backgrounds blurry. Facebook took this idea and ran with it. The social networking service created tech to turn bokeh pictures into 3D images.

Thanks to Apple, virtually everyone with an iPhone understands the Japanese word and photo term known as bokeh.

Thanks to Apple, virtually everyone mispronounces the word.

Thanks to a software feature on the iPhone 7 camera, Apple fans are getting familiar with a term once heard in a language only spoken by photographers – bokeh.

It’s a Japanese word that means blur and the bokeh in a photograph refers to the areas that are not in focus. Creamy and dream are the effects when perfectly executed, especially with portraits, where a tack-sharp face pops against a background swirled in colors, light and distorted shapes

Before there was even an iPhone, the art optics company Lensbaby was producing lenses that gave photographers an affordable option to bring maximum bokeh to their work. On Wednesday, Lensbaby introduced a 3-in-1 lens for mirrorless cameras.

A photo editor friend of mine will often say, “It’s getting harder and harder to make a bad picture.”

It sounds absurd but he is partially referring to technology and how it can remove some of the thinking from photography. Cameras can be set to figure out aperture, shutter speed and, with the touch of a button, do the focusing. You can massage a bad exposure with software or, if you snap photos with your phone, choose apps and filters to effect a variety of looks and feels.

So it’s not uncommon for serious photographers to occasionally reach back for a piece of analog gear to challenge their thinking and reinvigorate creativity.

This summer I reached back to 1840. Well, sort of.