Having some fun with Google Pixel Camera’s portrait mode… on my Nexus 6P.

See me below, having fun with my funny fun face on? That’s me having fun.

In all honesty, today was (of course) the first work day after that mushy christmas-new year period, and I had to wake up at 7:30, about 1.5 hours before what’s typical for the last 2 weeks. So, yeah, fun.

But anyway, I learned during morning coffee that the Google Pixel Camera has been ported to Nexus 6P as Camera NX (release notes here / apk here), with the fabled Portrait Mode added too. (Motion Stills is also supported.) As I still have a Nexus 6P, I quickly downloaded it and replaced the default camera app on my phone, and then took the above photo on my way to work.

Let’s look at this more closely:

It is pretty good, even on the Nexus 6P (I’m guessing it would be better on the Pixel.) One thing that is clearly visible is how the AI dwarves were unable to make a difference between Amsterdam (background) and the grandpa hair on the left side of my head (foreground.) I’ll also guess though that shooting a portrait with Amsterdam in the background would be atypical… so I’ll have to try taking another photo with a different, more homogenous background.

But all in all the ported app seems to do the trick just fine, so if this was the only thing making replace your Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, or Pixel to a Pixel 2 (which is impossible to get in most parts of the world anyway without considerable hassle), go and download Camera NX!

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