iPhone Portrait Mode, 10 Years In

Speaking of Johnnie Manzari, he wrote a post yesterday marking the 10 year anniversary of Portrait Mode: Initially, Portrait mode was seen as a giant math problem. You’d do disparity calculations on the two sensors and output a depth map. The problem was this approach feels and looks digital; it feels fake. In areas without texture, it’s impossible to do this calculation. In areas with ultra fine detail, a lower resolution depth map leads to terrible transitions and a full resolution depth map t