5 helpful tips from Google will help you take better portrait mode photos

OP5 Portrait mode

These days, it's rare for a flagship smartphone to arrive without portrait mode.

For the unfamiliar, portrait mode is a camera feature that keeps the subject of the photo in focus and slightly blurs out the background — this is called "bokeh," in photography terms. The feature makes smartphone photos look a lot like those taken with a high-end DSLR.

The iPhone X has this feature, as do the iPhone 7 Plus and 8 Plus. The new Google Pixel 2 has a version of portrait mode on both sizes of the phone, and the new Galaxy Note 8, OnePlus 5, and Essential Phone all have it, too.

Portrait mode is getting so popular these days that Apple and Google have now added it on both the rear and front-facing cameras on their most recent phones, meaning you can now take portrait mode selfies.

While the feature is relatively intuitive, there's more to taking a nice portrait mode photo than pointing you camera at the subject. Thankfully, Google put together a helpful guide for taking great portrait mode photos. While Google's guide is geared toward Pixel 2 users, the tips and tricks apply to all smartphone cameras that have portrait mode.

Here are five of Google's top tips for taking great portrait mode photos:

1. Find great lighting.

In most cases, portrait mode refuses to work at all in low light, so you may not have a choice here. But either way, look for well-lit situations to test out the feature.

As you can see in my colleague Melia Robinson's photo, having bright, natural light made it a breeze to take a nice portrait mode photo. Even though Melia's face is in shadow, the camera easily blurred out the background because there was so much light to work with. The resulting photo is crisp and bright without any noise, or graininess.

2. Make sure the subject is actually in focus.

If your subject isn't sharp, it defeats the whole purpose of portrait mode.

To make sure it's in focus, tap on the screen where you want the photo to be its sharpest.

With phones that have a "live" version of portrait mode like the iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X — instead of one that's created by software, like the Pixel 2 — you'll be able to see where the camera is focused in real-time.

3. Don't stand too close to the background.

This tip applies to selfies and photos taken with the rear camera.

In the photo above, I'm standing a little bit away from the wall and the phone booth. It's hard to tell that from the original, non-blurred photo on the left, but it's clear from the photo on the right that there was some distance there. That's how the background was able to blur so nicely.

Portrait mode works best when the camera and the phone's software can easily differentiate between the foreground and the background. When those two things are too close together, or too similar, portrait mode doesn't work as well.

In my experience using portrait mode, it's best to have the subject stand about 1-2 feet away from the background.

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