This is part camera technique, part post-processing, and all the way cool. You take a person’s portrait and your iPhone extracts them from the background and puts them on a solid white background, like you shot in a studio on a roll of white seamless paper as your background all lit with studio lighting. Now, don’t get all excited yet because there are three things you need to make this work: (1) you need to shoot the portrait using your Camera app’s Portrait mode, (2) you need to be using an iPhone XR or later, and (3) you need to have iOS 13 or later. If you’ve got that going on, then take the photo, tap on it in the Photos (or Camera) app, tap Edit at the top right (or at the bottom), and you’ll see an additional icon appear at the bottom of the screen (to the right of Cancel; it looks like a 3D box). Tap-hold-and-swipe on the first icon beneath your photo and you’ll see a semi-circular list of lighting effects you can apply. Go to the very last one, High-Key Light Mono, and it creates that studio look for your shot, complete with that solid white background. The slider directly below the icons lets you make the effect more intense (swipe to the left) or less intense (swipe to the right), but to get the most realistic high-key look, I swipe to the left until my subject’s skin nearly turns solid white. High-key means “very bright,” so make sure you swipe until the shot is just that. Hard to believe this shot wasn’t taken in a studio, right?
Love shooting with your iPhone? The iPhone Photography Conference is back for another exciting year, and I’m thrilled to invite you to join us for two days of inspiration, learning, and community. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this. Get your ticket here.
By the way, if you aren’t able to join us virtually on those dates, no worries! Recorded sessions will be up 5-7 business days after the event. And, attendees can access those conference replays for up to one year after the event date.
This content was excerpted from The iPhone Photography Book by Scott Kelby.
