Magic iPhone Photo Trick — Soften the Background, After the Shot!

“Oh, that’s an iPhone picture.”

Photographers like to mutter that under their breath as they browse through other people’s portraits.

The tipoff is the expansive depth of field resulting from that teeny-tiny camera sensor. Everything is in focus. I mean, everything. Sure, it’s helpful sometimes, but artistically speaking, for portraits, there’s just too. much. information.

Do you really want that tree in the distant background to be super sharp?

Creatives use shallow depth of field to direct the viewer’s eye to the main subject (keep that part nice and sharp) and downplay the distracting background elements (they’re better soft and fuzzy). The standard approach has been to put a fast-aperture optic on an interchangeable lens camera, open it up to f/1.4, and let the shallow depth of field take it from there.

Great, if you have all that stuff with you.

Or, we could use this magic iPhone trick that lets us change the depth of field to exactly what we want after the picture was captured.

I’m not kidding. It really works.

First, you need a current iPhone such as a 12 or 13. (My beloved iPhone X can’t accomplish this particular feat, even though it does have…