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Some of my favorite portraits over the years are those that I’ve taken with a narrow depth of field so that the subject is sharp and figural, while the area around the subject is a soft blur. That soft blur, or bokeh, tends to accentuate the subject’s face in a positive way and blurs elements that otherwise might distract the viewer.
When the iPhone 7 Plus came out last year, I was both excited and skeptical about the new Portrait feature with Depth Effect that was supposed to help create portraits with a blurred background. After a recent trip to Cuba where I used these features extensively, I’m a true believer! I love the performance of the iPhone 7 Plus and these effects for portraits, and when processed with SnapSeed’s Face filters, the results are remarkable.
Here’s how it works. First you want to make sure that you’re running at least the 10.1 operating system on the iPhone 7 Plus. The Portrait feature with Depth Effect was enabled with the iOS 10.1 release. These features are...

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Rad A. Drew (http://www.raddrewphotography.com) is a professional photographer who lives in historic Irvington on the east side of Indianapolis with his wife, metalsmith, Nancy Lee (http://www.ndesignsmetal.com). His creative iPhone images have received numerous international awards and have made their way into galleries and juried international shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Texas, Vermont, New York, Toronto, Collingwood, Seattle, and Melbourne. He is author of the fine art books, In Good Light, Images of the Circle City and Rural Indiana, A Beauty all its Own, and is a contributor to today’s most comprehensive volume of iPhone instruction, The Art of iPhone Photography: Creating Great Photos and Art on Your iPhone. Rad is a frequent speaker at photography conferences and camera clubs throughout the U.S. His destination workshops to Cuba, France, Ireland, and points throughout the U.S. including Fonthill Castle in Doylestown, PA, and Provincetown on Cape Cod, are great ways to learn while photographing beautiful areas of the world. In his popular webinar series, How I Did It!™ Rad demonstrates the apps and processes he uses to create award-winning images with the iPhone. As a webinar presenter for Topaz Labs, Rad shares his processing techniques using Topaz products to process digital images from traditional cameras as well as the iPhone. Contact Rad or visit his website for more information on art purchases, workshops, books, tours, exhibits, speaking engagements, and the How I Did It!™ webinar series. Rad, as an associate editor for Luminous-Landscape (https://luminous-landscape.com), writes a periodic iPhoneography column, covers special events, and writes product reviews.
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