P: Remove depth effect from iPhone photos

[Rick.Williams]

I'm not sure how possible this is, but it would be nice to have the ability to remove the Apple Photos portrait mode effect. iOS has saved depth data as metadata for some time. Lightroom is able to use this depth data in order to assist the recent lens blur function. Is it fesable for Lightroom to gain the ability to remove the Apple portrait mode effect? Sometimes I want to adjust it after importing the photo into Lightroom using the recent lens blur feature. The lens blur feature is difficult to use to its full potential when you are working with a file that has already been blured.

Right now if I want to work with a clean file I have to:

- Delete the imported file from Lightroom

- Go to Apple Photos and turn off portrait mode

-Reimport the file to Lightroom

Obvisouly this is kind of a clunky workflow.

My preferred implimentation would be:

- Photo imports with the current depth effect from Apple Photos

- If the user engages the depth effect editing feature in Lightroom the image is basically reset to a non portrait mode and all depth effects are generated by Lightroom.

[umlautnord]

Could you share how you are importing the photo into Lightroom currently? There are definitely ways of getting a depth-mapped photo into the Lightroom ecosystem with the depth map without Apple's own blur technique, but, it depends on the device/version. It's actually fairly easy on MacOS Photos > Lightroom Classic, but that doesn't sound like the process/device you're describing! 

[Rick.Williams]

I always use the iPhone app to upload photos from my phone.

[umlautnord]

Got it. Yeah, it'd be nice if the depth mapping played better together! I don't know how much of this is an Apple thing and how much is an Adobe thing. You get the full un-blurred HEIC with depth map when exporting unmodified original from MacOS Photos, so I presume it's possible. (That process is why I asked about how you were getting the photos into Lightroom.)

The depth map itself seems to be mutually legible between Apple and Adobe, so it does seem like they could make the actual transfer be less troublesome!