Portrait Mode Adjustment Features Unavailable on macOS Photos

Hi, Community.

Focal Length, Depth of Field, or Blur adjustments have not been available in the macOS Photos app for some time. Images that are decidedly indicated as "Portrait Mode" do not offer the respective adjustments available for these Portrait images. This includes the Depth of Field (or Blur) adjustment as well as the Lighting Adjustement options.

The following section of the Photos manual for macOS Ventura addresses the intended method of making lighting adjustments:

Change the lighting of a Portrait mode photo in Photos on Mac - Apple Support

The issue of the Portrait Depth adjustment panel has been documented in many community posts including the following:

Mac OS Photos unable to edit Portrait Dep… - Apple Community

As shown in this article from January 2021 on 9to5mac.com, there should be a Portrait adjustment panel (allowing for adjustment of Light and Depth). Additionally, a horizontal bar of lighting options should be available. Again, this would be for a photo that is identified as Portrait Mode (by the "Portrait" indicator on the image).

As of today, I can report this functionality is not available on macOS Photos v.8.0 (Build 520.0.240) on macOS Ventura 13.1 (22C65) using photos from iOS 16.2 (iPhone 13 MLN13LL/A). I can confirm all images tested had the "Portrait" indicator present, and there were a mix of untouched images and those cropped and adjusted on iOS prior to transfer to the Mac (via AirDrop).

This issue has been pervasive through multiple macOS updates, and I'm ready to open all the support cases I need to get some traction with Apple Support. I realize I can make the adjustments on my phone, but seeing these photos on the workstation screen gives me more visibility into the detail.

I'd like to use this thread as a collection of reference data for the combinations of software and hardware used in success or failure to find these adjustment options with Photos.

Anecdotally, I can report that I was able to incorporate this as my workflow for a very long time before it seemingly stopped working.

- Dave