The iPhone 8's new camera mode needs a lot of work

One of the big new features on the iPhone 8 Plus is Portrait Lighting, a new camera mode that uses the phone's dual-camera system to adjust the lighting around your subject to add different effects.

It's an enhancement to last year's Portrait photo mode, which was designed to bring the iPhone's camera closer to a high-end DSLR through software enhancements. Portrait mode's software separates the subject from their surroundings and creates a blurred effect in the background. The new Portrait Lighting mode uses a similar tactic to adjust the lighting effects around the subject.

Portrait Lighting launches in beta on the iPhone 8 Plus on Friday, but even though it's an early version of the software that will improve over time, it's clear that Apple has quite a bit more work to do. In my tests over the last week, I found that Portrait Lighting didn't work well unless real-world lighting conditions were just right. Sometimes, the results were abysmal, like someone had a few too many drinks before attempting to edit a photo in Photoshop. Other times, the photos looked great.

Here are some examples of the different Portrait Lighting effects: