The iPhone XR’s camera offers many of the same features as its more expensive siblings, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, but it falls a bit short in the Portrait mode department. The XR’s Portrait mode is limited to people, and doesn’t work for animals or inanimate objects. However, help could be on the way from the developers of popular iPhone camera app Halide.
In a post on Reddit, however, the Halide developers revealed that they currently have Portrait mode working on pets through their app. They go on to explain that “with some more tooling,” they’ll likely be able to release a version of the Halide app that enables iPhone XR Portrait mode on all sorts of subjects.
The developers are apparently working out a couple of bugs, as Halide developers say the iPhone XR’s Portrait mode is “more temperamental in some settings” than the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.
And would you know it, we have Portrait Mode working on pets! We think with some more tooling, we’ll be able to ship a version of our app that enables portrait mode for all sorts of things. It seems it’ll be a bit more ‘temperamental’; in some settings it won’t work if there’s not enough variance in relative distance of objects, but a can of soda water on my desk worked just fine.
This means third party apps should be able to enable a form of Portrait mode for more than people, which is exciting! Note that the depth map is way lower resolution than the dual camera setup, but it seems usable.
We’ll keep you posted on developments with the Halide app, which is available in it’s current version for $5.99, in the App Store. [GET IT HERE]