Extract Depth Maps from iPhone Portrait Mode Photos

[felixarch]

Hi all,

I am currently toying around with depth images and photogrammetry and wanted to extract the depth maps from iPhone (LiDAR-)Photos shot in Portrait mode. I know that the command is something like this

Code Select Expand

exiftool -b -DepthImage IMG_20210420_155329.jpg > depth.jpg
or

Code Select Expand

exiftool -b -MPImage2 IMG_XXXX.jpg > IMG_XXXX_depth.jpg
but anytime I try these commands, they'll return a file with 0kb.

Is there anything I am doing wrong? Or did Apple change the way how depth data is stored?

Thanks for your help!

[Phil Harvey]

No idea.  Run ExifTool without any parameters to see what metadata exists in the file.  DepthImage and MPImage2 will appear in this output if they exist.

- Phil

[felixarch]

Thanks Phil, I did list all metadata with exiftool and found out that iPhone portrait mode images have up to 8 layers with various masks and the last layer is the Depth Map. So the depth maps are stored in MPImage8 for the front camera and MPImage3 for the rear camera.