This article describes the bokeh effect and how to create/apply it to smartphone photos.

What Is the Bokeh Effect?

The bokeh effect describes the quality of the out-of-focus areas of an image. The white orbs in the background appear because of the camera lens, usually when it’s at a wide aperture, which lets in more light.

In digital photography, the shape of the camera lens creates the white circles that appear in the composition’s background.

The bokeh effect is popular among DSLR and film camera shooters, and it’s possible to mimic it on a smartphone camera, using built-in tools or a third-party app.

It’s a technique that adds artfulness to portraits, close-ups, and other shots where the background doesn’t need to be in focus. Once you recognize it, you’ll start seeing the bokeh effect everywhere.

This technique adds artistry and is commonly found in:

• Portraits: Where all the but the subject is blurry
• Close-ups: Similar to bokeh in portraits, but zoomed in a particular area of focus
• Other shots where the background doesn’t need to be in focus

Bokeh Photography on Smartphones

When using a DSLR or film camera, a combination of the aperture, the distance between the photographer and the subject, and focal length creates this effect.

Aperture controls how much light enters, while focal length determines how much of a scene a camera captures, and is expressed in millimeters.

On a smartphone, depth of field and bokeh work differently. The elements needed are processing power and the right software.

The smartphone camera needs to recognize the foreground and background of a photo, and then blur only the background.

A smartphone with a dual-lens camera will shoot two pictures at once and then combine them to get that depth-of-field and bokeh effect. 

If you have a flagship phone from Apple, Google, Samsung, or other brands, your camera probably has a dual-lens (at least), and you can get bokeh without an app.

When you take a photo, you should be able to choose what to focus on and what to blur. Some smartphones also have a dual-lens front-facing camera for artful selfies.

You can also get bokeh with a single-lens smartphone camera by downloading a third-party app like AfterFocus or Bokeh Lens.

Consider trying a few to see which one you like best and practice to hone your technique.