How to blur the background of a photo to get a portrait mode.
We are going to explain to you how to blur the background of a photo in Google Photos to mimic portrait mode, a new function called Blur Background with which you can get a bokeh effect in your photos. With it, Google will detect when the photograph is a portrait, and it will suggest this effect to mimic the portrait mode and be able to apply it after taking the photograph.
There are a few things to keep in mind. The first thing is that it does not seem to work in full body photos, but only in portraits. In addition, you can apply it both in the photos you have on your mobile and those taken from other devices, although at the moment only in the Google Photos mobile application and not in the web version.
Finally, it should also be noted that it is a function that is beginning to reach some devices now, such as Google’s Pixels. This means that it may still take days or weeks to reach all mobiles with Android, and it may even take a little longer to get to iOS.
How to use the Google Photos background blur
The first thing you have to do is open Google Photos. Once you are inside the application, click on the photo you want to apply the filter to. Here, you must bear in mind that it has to be a photograph where the face is well framed, both a selfie and others in which a person appears. At the moment, in our tests it seems that Google does not apply the effect with photos of the full body, so it seems that it is only for portraits.
When you open the photo, and Google Photos detects that it is a selfie, a recommended action will appear below, which is to blur the background to achieve the bokeh effect. Click on that Blur background button that should have appeared to you to continue. If the button does not appear, you will have to wait for the function to reach your mobile in future updates.
When you click on Blur background, a bar will appear that you must move to set the level of blurring of the background of the photo. Here, you have to know that Google Photos will analyze each photo and recommend a different blur level for each one., but always leaving you the freedom to change it as you want.
Therefore, the only thing left for you to do is move the bar to set the blur level (1) in the event that the one suggested by Google is not enough for you. Once you have left it to your liking, click on the Save as copy button (2) to save the changes. These changes will be made as a copy of the photo different from the original, so that in Google Photos you will have both the original photograph and the edited copy.
