Samsung’s Natural Portrait Mode: Ditching the Fake Look

For decades, if you wanted that out-of-focus background in your images, which photographers call the bokeh effect, you needed a physical aperture, basically a DSLR with a large sensor/lens. Smartphones tried to hop onto this trend, but let’s be honest, smartphones’ portrait mode often feels far from perfect. Samsung flagship phones are renowned for producing high-quality smartphone portrait photos.

But with the launch of the Galaxy S25 series last year, Samsung has moved beyond fake blur and introduced a new feature: Virtual Aperture, found inside the Expert RAW app. This feature renders traditional portrait modes unappealing. Here’s how.

Standard portrait mode shots are often a mess

Subject–background separation isn’t great due to computational bokeh

The portrait mode that you see and capture from your smartphone, be it from any brand, uses computational bokeh, which is basically a fancy way of saying that the phone makes use of all the processing power and, nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) for separating the subject from the background.

But here is where the problem begins. Don’t get me wrong. Smartphones are now well capable of capturing stunning portrait photos. However, when you take a picture of a complicated subject, phones usually cannot decide what to separate and what not to separate. In the image above, the phone was unable to separate the beargrass perfectly.

I’ve noticed it multiple times. On multiple occasions, in the standard portrait mode, the software wasn’t able to decide whether to keep my specs in focus or merge them in the background. The same was true of my hair. Not just me, I have seen this issue in several portraits that I have taken from my phone, where a part of the subject was de-focused.

When portrait shots or bokeh are taken from a DSLR, it applies a uniform layer of blur, making the image feel two-dimensional. On the other hand, standard portrait modes of a smartphone miss this gradient depth, sometimes making the portrait shot look like it was taken in front of a green screen.

Virtual Aperture is a key to professional smartphone bokeh

This feature should’ve been there by default, at least in the Pro mode

Samsung has a great set of features for its users. You can customize the look of the phone the way you want. In particular, the Good Lock module stores a plethora of customization features that otherwise aren’t available by default. With the launch of the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung introduced Virtual Aperture in the Expert RAW app available from the Galaxy Store.

For some reason, this feature isn’t available on devices before 2025. Meaning even the Galaxy S24 Ultra doesn’t support the Virtual Aperture feature. After you have installed the Expert RAW app on your phone, open the Camera app, head to the more section, and select Expert RAW.

Then tap on the Labs icon on the bottom right of the viewfinder and tap on the Virtual Aperture icon (denoted by “f”). Here, you will notice that instead of a traditional blur slider that usually ranges from 1 to 7, it gives you f-stops, ranging from f/1.4 to f/16 (in total, 22 sizes). The feature also supports continuous zoom from 1x to 3x, giving you the flexibility to shoot from any distance you want.

When you make use of Virtual Aperture, the depth of the field looks way better than the standard portrait mode. The technical reason why portrait shots from Virtual Aperture look better is that, as per Samsung’s moderator, “the virtual aperture uses dual camera-based depth map information for depth expression.”

This means that it doesn’t simply cut you out from the background or blur the background. Virtual Aperture actually builds a 3D map of the scene. The gradual fall-off is what makes the photo look as if it were taken from a professional camera.

Try different ranges and settle for a sweet spot

You need enough background to make the subject pop

In my testing, I’ve found that while the f/1.4 can sometimes look too dramatic and makes the background dreamy and soft. While there is no perfect calibration for what you are shooting, something between f/2.8 and f/4.0 gives you enough background that makes the subject stand out from the image and look professionally done.

One of the best things about Expert RAW is that you get the best of both worlds. When you click images with Virtual Aperture, the image gets saved as JPEG, along with a RAW file. With the RAW file, you can use your imagination and edit the image in Expert RAW however you like.

Is this the end of traditional portrait mode?

For most people, the point-and-shoot portrait mode is the way to go. They don’t have time to fiddle with the pro settings to capture professional images. I myself was not using the Pro mode, let alone the Expert RAW mode, until I got my hands on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Unfortunately, that is a device that my father uses, so I don’t get enough time with it. Hopefully, Samsung will roll out this variable aperture feature to the Galaxy S24 Ultra and older models.