During its recent Unpacked 2024 event, Samsung not only announced new devices like the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 foldables, but also a handful of exciting updates to said new gadgets. These included new astrophotography tools, which we now know is also coming to older Samsung phones like the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S24.
When you use your phone’s Astrophoto mode to take stunning photos of the night sky, the camera needs to use a long exposure time to capture the sparkle of distant stars and galaxies. This longer exposure time doesn’t work well if you want to include people in your photo, since any movement from that person can cause your photos to come out blurry.
The new Astro Portrait mode coming to the Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6 aims to solve this by capturing two photos: one with your subject in the frame, and then another of just the background and night sky. The camera software will then stitch these photos together to give you the best of both portrait photography and astrophotography.
And it looks like those with older Samsung phones will benefit from it too, as a community post (translated from Korean) announced that this tool will also be available for the Galaxy S23 series and Galaxy S24 series phones (which includes the base, Plus, and Ultra models).
How to use Astro Portrait mode
The new Astro Portrait option will be included in an update to the Expert RAW camera mode, but Samsung has yet to specify when exactly it will be released.
When the update goes live, you’ll need to make sure you have Expert Raw installed in order to use Astro Portrait. You can find it by opening your Samsung Galaxy phone’s camera app and then scrolling through the options at the bottom – Photo, Video, etc. – until you find More. You’ll find a collection of other camera modes here, with Expert Raw found in the top-left corner.
Tap the icon to install Expert RAW if you haven’t already. In the future, you can open the app from this menu or from the companion app (which is now in your library, should you want to add it to your home screen).
Within Expert RAW, you can find Astrophoto settings by tapping the Constellation-like icon in the menu at the top of the screen. When the update rolls out, we expect to find the new Astro Portrait mode there.