Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold3 is getting better at taking photos of pets

Capture your good boy's best side

Samsung’s portrait mode has improved a lot over the years, and while it doesn’t beat Google's solution found on Pixels, it’s become much better than it used to be. Now Samsung is further enhancing portrait mode, this time specifically for cats and dogs.

I’ve looked through the changelog for several devices, and it looks like the feature was made available for the Z Fold3 in the October patch and the S21 series in One UI 4 beta 3. In this case, I used my Z Fold3 to test it out on of the best dogs around, Elmo.

Image Gallery (2 Images)

Taking these photos works as you’d expect — switch to portrait mode, point the camera at your goodest boi, and snap. Once the photo is processed, you can pick which portrait filter you want to use, how strong that filter should be applied, and refocus the image. All of the modes currently available for human subjects are available here as well.

The results are pretty good, but you’ll need to play around with the settings to get something useable. Rather than keep all of Elmo in focus in the sample images above, the algorithm opted to blur everything except his head, which almost makes it look like it’s floating off of his body. Limiting the blur to level two or three (out of seven) mostly negates the issue.

That criticism aside, the updated portrait mode works well, instantly recognizing the subject and almost always nailing edge detection. Hopefully, we’ll see this feature reach more devices soon.

About The Author

Zachary Kew-Denniss (214 Articles Published)

UK-based Android aficionado specializing in everything Samsung and Android. There's a 90% chance my articles will contain Spongebob or Transformers references.

Current devices:

Galaxy S21 Ultra Galaxy Watch4 Galaxy Buds/Buds+/Buds Pro Pixelbook iPad Pro 2020

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