Using Portrait Blur in new Microsoft Teams

I generally use the Blur feature when I’m using my camera on a new Teams call, as I don’t think people want to see the junk on top of my dressers. But the regular Blur is pretty blocky and doesn’t always look great. There’s now a more refined version of Blur called Portrait Blur, and I like it much better. Here’s how it works and looks…

Here’s the Standard Blur filter, and you can see how intense the blurring effect is. But if you click on the Camera icon dropdown, you have an option to change from Standard Blur…

…. to Portrait Blur:

Now with Portrait Blur, the blurring is less intense while still masking some of the details of your background. Also, it seems to do a better job of defining the outlines of my face:

This would be a great choice if you had something like a whiteboard behind you and you wanted to make sure the details on the board were not readable without turning everything into a white blob. 🙂