How to import iPhone 15 Pro pictures with depth information into Lightroom Classic

Report · Feb 20, 2024

Dear community,

I am despairing ...

Recently I shoot a lot of photos with my iPhone 15 Pro. A lot if them in "portrait mode" with depth information. As you know it's possible to "change" the "aperture" afterwards to make the background more or less blurred. This can be done in the iPhone or in the Photos app on my MacBook.

I now imported the pictures into Lightroom Classic on my MacBook and expected that the picturres look 1:1 like the pictures on the iPhone as they were importet in the HEIC format. Unfortunatelly this is not happening. The blurred background is not shown in the preview nor in the editing mode.

I know about the possibility to modify the background with the Depth Range tool in "masks" but this does not help as the original file does not even contain/show the blurred background.

I expected to see the pictures like shown in the iPhone and than to be able to modify the blurr of the background. Tried to import different file versions. Directly from iPhone, or via "Photos". Nothing helped.

Could you give me a hint on how to effectively run my Lightroom workflow with iPhone pictures?

Best regards

Daniel

Report · Feb 20, 2024

What version of Lightroom Classic are you using?
Have you confirmed you are getting HEIC and not JPG files imported? While you can take photos in HEIC, it's the iPhone settings->Photo which determines if HEIC (original format) or JPG is used in any external transfer. This settings affect but direct iPhone as well as Photos access.

Report · Feb 20, 2024

Thanks for your reply.

I'm using version 13.1
Yes, files are HEIC. Export in "Photos" on iPhone is set to "original format". Just tried it again to directly import in Lightroom, no chance, still no background blurr visable. In Apple's "Photos" everything working fine. Unfortunatelly it's unbelievable hard to just export the pictures e.g. via Finder, like in Windows when just opening a SD card and copy&paste ...

Report · Feb 20, 2024

I just remebered that HEIC is not a RAW format but just a different format similar to JPG.

I'm at the end of my suggestions since I only have a iPhone 11. Here's an article on PRORAW format that may help

Report · Feb 28, 2024

I have several sample Iphone 12 .heic photos containing depth maps that are recognized by LR. I downloaded them from somewhere, so I don't know the workflow for prying them out of the phone into LR.