Crummy Camera Lens Blur CS6

[Guest]

The Camera Lens Blur effect that came with AE CS 5.5 and CS 6 doesn't look nearly as good as the old Lens Blur effect that came with CS 5; it's pretty much unusable for my purposes. Foreground elements that should be sharp render sharp, but with a blurry halo around them. The old Camera Lens blur does not exhibit this behavior, nor the Frischluft Depth of Field plugin.

Here's an image showing the depth map and how the three plugins render it:

CameraLensBlur.png

The images are composited from 16-bit PNGs rendered out of Cinema 4D. There's a nasty halo visible around the foreground particle in the upper left in the CS6 Camera Lens Blur version. I saved the old Lens Blur effect as a preset out of a CS5 project and am, fortunately, still able to use that approach in CS6 since the "improved" version of the plugin looks pretty crummy (I skipped AE CS5.5). As a test I installed the demo of Frishluft's Lenscare plugins, and after inverting the depth buffer in the plugin I got a good result.

The "new" Camera Lens Blur is acting like the Compound Blur effect. Foreground elements appear sharp but with a blurry halo since the entire "background" is being blurred, creating a blurred ghost of the foreground element. The old Lens Blur effect was very slow, but it did work.

Anyone know how to make this new "improved" Camera Lens Blur look like the other plugins?  I've posted a zipped file with the image and depth map in a small AE CS6 project here if anyone here would care to check my settings.  Maybe I'm missing somthing.

CameraBlurs folder.zip

Thank you.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[WShawn]

Okay, 71 views in 24 hours and no replies.

How about this?  I see this forum is frequented by Adobe employees.  Would Todd or Aldofo care to take two minutes, open the CS 6 AE project I posted, and confirm that the Camera Lens Blur plugin is behaving as designed?

Thank you.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Shawn,

It is behaving as designed. You might try adjusting the Blur Focal Distance (Blur Map) and the Blur Radius for better results. The Camera Lens Blur effect is much more accurate than the original one, though you certainly do need to adjust parameters according to the particular shot.

See what Ash Beck says about the Camera Lens blur effect at 2:22 in this video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/ae-me/ae-me-ash-beck/

[WShawn]

Thanks for the reply, Kevin.

No doubt, this new version is faster and does a nice job simulating bokeh effects which probably looked nice in Spider-man.  That said, it's pretty much useless for my work.

Did you have an opportunity to check my project file?  I can find no combination of settings that duplicates the behavior of the old Lens Blur effect.  A Blur Radius of anything but zero creates the blurry halo around my foreground element; the larger the radius, the bigger the halo.  And, obviously, there is no DOF effect if the radius is zero.

Adjusting the Blur Focal Distance racks the blur.  Cool.  But that parameter does nothing to mitigate the blurry halo.

The old Lens Blur effect did it correctly.  The Frishluft DOF plugin does it correctly.  Am I going to have to spend $200 on a third-party plugin to retain this functionality going into the future?  At what point will the old Lens Blur become incompatible with After Effects?

Cheers.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Kevin-Monahan]

WShawn wrote:

Did you have an opportunity to check my project file?  I can find no combination of settings that duplicates the behavior of the old Lens Blur effect. 

Yeah, I checked it out. Here's what I came up with. You don't want to crank up the Blur radius too much or you will get that halo problem.

Does this work for you?

[WShawn]

Kevin:

Again, thanks for looking into this; I appreciate it.

Your sample isn't really what I'm looking for.  I want that big particle in the upper left to be totally sharp, with everything in the distance getting progressively blurrier without any halos around that foreground element.  The old Lens Blur had no problem with this.  If you look at the Old Lens Blur comp in my project you'll see that you're able to crank the Iris Radius way up, creating a background that's really out-of-focus but without a halo around that foreground particle.  The Frishluft DOF plugin produces the look I want, too, and it's much faster than the old, native Lens Blur.  That CS5 version is staggeringly slow.

Also, I attempted to duplicate your settings, but my Blur Focal Distance in the Camera Lens Blur only has a range of 0 to 1.  I don't know how you were able to plug in 8520.  Of course the Blur Focal Distance settings are moot if I'm only allowed a miniscule blur radius to prevent a halo from forming.

It would be swell to have the speed of the new Camera Lens Blur combined with an ability to produce results comparable to the old Lens Blur.  At this point this feels like lost functionality, which wouldn't be the first time for me when upgrading After Effects.  It would be about the fifth time that tools I used regularly were removed in new versions of After Effects, software I've been using professinally since 1997.

Cheers.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sounds reasonable. Can you file a bug report?  Updated link (3/19): After Effects: Hot (1390 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps

[WShawn]

I submitted a feature request since you said the plugin is currently working as designed.  I won't be holding my breath waiting for the issue to be fixed.

Thank you.

Shawn Marshall

[jumpymonkey9]

I'm only chiming in to say that I'm having the same exact issue.  I wonder if anyone has been able to use the depth map feature without getting a halo?  And I honestly can't see this as being a feature of the effect, and not a bug.  Oh well.

[Szalam]

Please also file a bug report, Jumpymonkey. The more they get for an item, the higher priority it gets.

[WShawn]

Issues like this make me wonder whether anyone else is using these features professionally, or whether they just don't have much attention to detail.  Does Ash "Amazing Spider-Man" Beck not notice the halo around foreground objects?  This "new and improved" Camera Lens Blur has been out for, what, two years now?  The old Lens Blur handled depth maps correctly, but it was slow as hell.  If Adobe had just made that plugin multiprocessing-aware we'd be golden.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[Dave_LaRonde]

The old Lens Blur handled depth maps correctly, but it was slow as hell.  If Adobe had just made that plugin multiprocessing-aware we'd be golden.

Yup.  I suspect the application's legacy code prohibited it, but I have NO insider information on the topic. 

AE seems to be heading for a crossroads: will it keep up with times, or will it be consigned to other applications that worked well for a while, then disappeared?

I love working with AE.  I hope it's the first option.

[Mylenium]

You could just buy a third-party plug-in. As I said in another thread - any of them is better than what AE can/ could ever do, including the legacy CS5 Lensblur.

Mylenium

[WShawn]

Mylenium wrote:

You could just buy a third-party plug-in. As I said in another thread - any of them is better than what AE can/ could ever do, including the legacy CS5 Lensblur.

Mylenium

Define "better."  If you look at the comparison image I posted at the beginning of this thread I put a render from the old CS5 Lensblur next to the Frishluft Depth of Field Blur, and I don't see any appreciable difference in quality.  No halos around the foreground element, nice realistic blur stretching off in the distance.  The primary thing that makes the Frishluft solution better is that it's a lot faster than the old native Lens Blur.  I think it kind of sucks to have to spend $300 to regain functionality that was native in After Effects.

Can you recommend a different solution that looks as good but isn't as expensive?  Frishluft is the only one I know of.

Thanks.

Shawn

[eSay1]

I am experiencing the exact same issue. I use depth passes in After Effects all the time for flexible compositing. This problem has made me completely avoid using CS6.

I would definitely consider this a bug. Not having clean foreground elements really defeats the purpose of using depth maps in the first place.  I have found no combination of settings that creates a clean foreground image without a background halo. I understand you can reduce the effect by adjusting the blur radius, but this doesn't allow for dramatic or stylized blurring. Furthermore, even if adjusting the blur radius was an acceptable solution, even that method doesn't work properly. The foreground object's halo and the background receive the same amount of blur radius. If the halo's blur radius reduced exponentially compared to background's blur radius, then it would accurately reflect the "depth" of the object.

Please, fix this issue or make the old lens blur available. I really don't want to have to buy Frischluft for all my stations.....

[Todd_Kopriva]

If you're not happy with the way that something works, submitting a bug report / feature request (Updated link (3/19): After Effects: Hot (1390 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps  ) is much more useful than commenting on a forum thread. The people who make the changes see the former, not necessarily the latter.

[Guest]

You can still use the old Lens Blur in CS6 if you still have a copy of CS5 working.  Just apply the old Lens Blur to a layer in CS5 and save it as a preset.  You can then call up that preset in CS6 and the old Lens Blur effect will appear in the effects palette, even though that actual plugin doesn't live in any of the plugin folders as far as I can see.  That legacy support is in there somewhere.  It's just too bad it's so very slow and kills multiprocessing.

Shawn Marshall

Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[eSay1]

Thank Shawn! That work around will work great for me, I am glad the old functionality is still alive, buried in CS6.

I agree, it is a pain that lens blur is so cripplingly slow, but I think the final visual is worth the time. Just have to do the final renders over night.

I love having my after effects compositing effects, flares, particles, etc blurred properly in the scene. I think the true 3D depth of field looks better, but that doesn't help when it comes to composite elements.

Also, Todd, I did submit a bug report so hopefully the issue gets addressed some point down the road.

Thanks

[ashleyb17207433]

As much as I appreciate the call out, I notice everything and I used CS5.5 and added my tricks of the trade to the lens blur. I have extensive experience with circle filter lenses as a VFX Supervisor. I replicated that type of lens in compositing long before adobe made the plug in. In Ron Brinkmann's book The Art and Science of Digital Composiiting, he covers my technique of edge matting which I taught to my friends at ILM and Sony Imageworks and what later became Lighwrap. My point is simple, plug ins are great but knowing the technique and science behind the utility is a must in order to craft them. Ash Beck

[blindesign]

Mr Kevin I have a better solution.

You don't get halo effect when you simply turn off the effect!

Why bother decreasing the vaule??

Such a silly answear from you!

The effect works wrong! It worked well before. Don't you see it? If it works as it's designed... IT'S BADLY DESIGNED. The value decrease is not a workaround. We don't pay for workarounds sir!

You made something good, than you screwed it. Now it's time to fix it!

And stop behaving like all's fine when you see it yourself it is not.

cheers

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Blindesign,

Sorry you feel that way. If you don't mind, please file a bug report/feature request as my colleague suggested earlier in post #15: Updated link (3/19): After Effects: Hot (1390 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps

Thanks,

Kevin

[Todd_Kopriva · Accepted solution]

The After Effects team does consider this to be a bug, and it's on our backlog to fix. It just hasn't risen to the top of the to-do list because we have seen very few bug reports about it, so it seems that not very many people are bothered by it. We tend to work on bugs in priority order based on severity and how many people report that they are affected.

So, yes, do submit a bug report to cast your vote.

[SebJ]

Any chance you could get this fixed as soon as possible?

It's an incredibly annoying feature about the Lens Blur! And it has been for years now... about time it got fixed, or just bundle in the Frischluft Depth of Field plugin if needs be! Pleeeaaassse

I've submitted a bug report.

[gavner25]

I agree here, I too have this issue and it needs to be fixed.

[cgb777]

Has there been any updates on fixing this problem in CS6?