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How to view your Pixel portrait photos with bokeh off
Google Camera doesn't save two versions automatically anymore
Google Pixel smartphones take amazing pictures thanks to an excellent camera array and a powerful chipset. The Google Pixel 7, for example, has a 50-megapixel main camera, while the Pixel 7 Pro has the same, along with a 48-megapixel telephoto sensor. While that may not match up to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, it has the added benefit of being powered by the Google Tensor G2 chipset, which adds to the overall quality of the pictures you take.
The Pixel 6's selfie portrait mode can see individual strands of hair, and here's how it works
Stepping up from mere 'people pixels'
Google's Pixels have always taken incredible photos. Even if they once lagged behind in camera hardware, Google knew how to stretch every pixel to its limit. That's the science of computational photography, bringing us benefits like the Pixel 6's improved selfie portrait mode, which can even pick out individual strands of hair using the front-facing camera. According to Google, quite a lot of work went into it.
Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold3 is getting better at taking photos of pets
Capture your good boy's best side
Samsung’s portrait mode has improved a lot over the years, and while it doesn’t beat Google's solution found on Pixels, it’s become much better than it used to be. Now Samsung is further enhancing portrait mode, this time specifically for cats and dogs.
The Pixel 5's camera is so good that I've ditched my mirrorless cam while traveling
Reliably excellent photos in any condition are all I need
A few years ago, the only camera in my pocket/bag was my phone. Starting with the LG G2 and going up to the G3, G4, Galaxy S7 Edge, then Pixel 2 XL, all that I could rely on was my phone and nothing else. I took good photos, great even, but I wanted to learn, improve, and capture better ones, so I bought a mirrorless Olympus cam with several lenses. It accompanied me on my trips to Nepal, the UAE, Spain, and Greece, and I loved using it. But as I was packing for my most recent trip to Belgium, I looked at my Olympus then at my Pixel 5 and made the rash decision to skip the former and rely solely on the latter. I never regretted it.
The Pixel 5's camera blew me away during a Champagne cellar visit (Gallery)
Some wallpaper-worthy shots for you
This past weekend, my husband and I were celebrating our fourth wedding anniversary in Reims, a city in the Champagne region in France. Yes, that Champagne too. A 45-minute TGV ride from Paris and we were smack in the middle of one of the most notorious bubbly cities in the world, where flutes overflow with sparkling joy and where you can visit dozens upon dozens of Champagne houses, from the well-renowned names to the small local producers. We visited Taittinger's Gallo-Roman chalk pits, where the bottles rest during the multi-step process that transforms grapes into the effervescent liquid we all know.
Google built a rig with dozens of cameras and hundreds of LED lights to make Portrait Lighting possible on Pixels
It's not mad science
Google produces some of the best still photography with its Pixel phones, but its method is more than just magic. Instead, it's the result of hard technical labor and lots of machine learning models. When Google introduced a refined portrait mode on the Pixel 3, it utilized a wacky 5-phone case to train its ML models — but the rig the company created to enable its new Portrait Light mode might be even wilder.
Portrait photos on Pixel 4a 5G and 5 offer Night Sight and AI lighting editor
Portrait Light feature also coming to new Google Photos editor
With a new series of Pixel phones, one can expect a new batch of photographic trickery. Cinematic Pan, for example, uses high framerate video capture and digital cropping to make video clips pop. For stills, we've got two big bonuses to Portrait Mode: Night Sight and Portrait Lighting.
You might think on-boarding applications like Pixel Tips are annoying and don't bring much value to advanced users, but as it turns out, the app hides a few unannounced features in its code. A teardown brings to light Google's work on cards and passes support in the long-press power menu, automatic call screening in the Phone app, background blurring and auto-framing for Duo, and a post hoc Portrait Mode for Photos.
A much-requested feature is hiding inside the Android 10 update for the OnePlus 7 Pro. Starting with Developer Preview 5, the 7 Pro picked up the ability to capture video with all three cameras, including the wide-angle and telephoto. In fact, several of the camera modes now work with more of the device's cameras.
The V30 may be over a year old at this point, but the Verizon version was updated just yesterday with a handful of new features, including some camera functionality tweaks and additional always-on display modes inherited from the newer G7. The security patch level has also been bumped up to November 2018.
Don't use images taken from vastly more capable photography equipment and try to pass them off as phone camera samples — it's a pretty simple rule, yet Samsung just can't seem to get the hang of it. Earlier this year, its Brazilian marketing department tried to fool potential Galaxy A8 buyers with stock photography in lieu of actual samples, and now it's happened again.
We were pretty impressed with how the Pixel 2's portrait mode worked, and Google's deep dive into the technical details was easily one of my favorite reads of last year. The company must have recognized what a hit it was, as a new explanation for the enhanced technologies behind the Pixel 3's depth-sensing tech was just published. As always nowadays, a big chunk of the changes are a result of neural network magic, but Google also has a "Frankenphone" five-Pixel case to thank for the Pixel 3's portrait mode progress.
Google Photos version 3.23 just started making the rounds, but there doesn't appear to be anything immediately changing with the update. However, the traditional clues about upcoming features are certainly there to be seen. We can look forward to applying some of those smooth bokeh effects of portrait mode, and this time, we'll control the intensity of the blur. There will also be a new option to downgrade your already backed-up photos to high quality so you can get back some of that cloud storage. I've also included a couple of other teardown sections for earlier versions that were slated to appear in the next Update Notes post, but this is the better place for them.
What makes the camera on Google's Pixel phones so good has more to do with the software than the hardware. Google's image processing is far ahead of its rivals, which is why it can boast a competitive Portrait Mode with only a single camera. Thanks to the Camera NX mod, it's possible to get similar results on many other phones, including non-Google ones.
Portrait mode became one of the most popular features for cameras in 2017. Apple's iPhone lineup, the Galaxy Note8, the OnePlus 5T, and even the Essential Phone have it in their camera apps. However, owners of older phones were left out of the fun. Luckily, serial Google Camera modder Charles Chow has created a modded Google Camera APK with portrait mode on board for the first-generation Pixel and Pixel XL, the Nexus 6P, and the Nexus 5X.
In spite of its fancy dual camera setup, the Essential Phone did not take great photos at the time of our review. Since then, Essential has been working hard on updating various aspects of the phone, including the camera software. Amidst Andy Rubin's leave of absence, the company has just released a new version of its Essential Camera app that adds portrait mode, reduced compression, and some other things.
Portrait mode is one of the things I'm most looking forward to trying on my Panda Pixel 2 XL — at least, when it finally ships sometime around Christmas. But it would appear that it might be bugging out in some circumstances. For some, photos taken in portrait mode are inexplicably registering as burst photos without any of the portrait mode magic being applied to them.
The Portrait mode on the new Pixel 2 phones is impressive. With just a single camera, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are able to mimic a convincing depth of field effect, like that created by much larger hardware. It isn't quite as good as an SLR, but it's a reasonable approximation. And if you were interested in exactly how it works, we've put together an explanation.