P: Lens Blur brush refinements aren't copied by Sync Settings and Copy/Paste Settings

[John R Ellis]

Lens Blur brush refinements aren't copied to the target photo by Sync Settings / Copy/Paste Settings.

To reproduce on LR 13.4 / Mac OS 14.5:

1. Download, unzip, and open this small catalog:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i8vynvlmbidsyexsackaf/lens-blur-copy-bug.2024.06.29.zip?rlkey=nyedxcd... 

2. Select the two photos, with test1.jpg most selected.

3. Do Sync Settings and select just Lens Blur.

4. Observe that the basic Lens Blur settings are copied from test1.jpg to test2.jpg, but the brush refinements are not.

[GoldingD]

but the brush refinements are not.

What were the brush refinements? Perhaps I am overlooking them.

At any rate, On my Windows RIG (sorry, I no longer have a MAC rig to test with)

Test 1, with the Focus Blur Mods

 Test 2, without any Ficus Blur mods

Select both image, Test 1 most selected, Select SYNC

Just teh Lens Blur (Focus on Subject) Note the Treatment als unchecked

Test 2, post Sync.

Does not look like I can repeat. Or I am confused (it happens)

[John R Ellis]

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Your screenshots show the bug:

1.png shows test1.jpg with default Lens Blur settings applied, Blur Amount = 100  plus the Blur brush applied everywhere except around the lettering on the cup:

2.png shows test2.jpg with no Lens Blur settings applied yet:

5.png shows the result of syncing Lens Blur from test1.jpg to test2.jpg. The background has been blurred moderately (compared to 2.png), but the foreground remains sharp, unlike in 1.png / test1.jpg:

If you make a virtual copy of test2.jpg, reset it, and apply the default Lens Blur settings, Blur Amount = 100. but no Blur brush, you'll see that test2.jpg (after sync) and the virtual copy look identical.

[GoldingD]

1. First up, yes, I was in error.

Ah, I can now see where I was overlooking this issue. Shame on me, I concentrated on the sliders, not the visible result. And in hindsight it is obviously wrong.

So, that brings up a followup. In the second image, in the Lens Blur panel, if you click on and off the visibility "eyeball" you can cycle though on and off, thereby helping to see what has occurred or not. After doing that I have no idea why I overlooked that before.

So lens blur has occurred, but the result is very different.

2. Second up an additional oddity.

On the initial sync from the first image to the second, in the lens blur panel, notice the grayed out RESET within the Brush Refinement section:

3. And a different twist on the Virtual copy.

So I decided to create the virtual copy. But instead of manually setting the lens blur, I choose to see what might be different if I approached the SYNC differently. That is instead of using /Settings/Sync Settings/, I used /Settings/Copy Settings/, then /Settings/Paste settings/

Dang if the result was better. It matched. (Or so it currently looks to my eyes)

4. Aggggh.

But if I revert the second back to before the sync, and attempt /Settings/Copy Settings/, then /Settings/Paste settings/, the same problem appears again. So works on virtual but not different images.

BUG

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Moving back to discussions

This is as designed. Since DepthCorrection can be very image-specific, it was decided that they would not be copy-pasted. 

[John R Ellis · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the update.

The use cases for copying Lens Blur refinements are the same as for copying other image-specific adjustments like masking and Remove:

- Bursts or timelapse sequences of photos in which the foreground objects change little. 

- Copying adjustments between a raw and a TIFF saved from Photoshop.

If the SDK supported copying the refinements as it does for the computed depth maps, then plugins could provide the missing functionality.

[John R Ellis]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography, the release notes incorrectly indicate this "bug" was fixed in LR 13.5 even though it's been declared not-a-bug.

[incognito_photograher]

Lens blur edits are not saved when you create a snapshot of the same photo, therefore is useles... It's really frustating and a waste of time

[John R Ellis]

"Lens blur edits are not saved when you create a snapshot"

I filed a bug report about brush refinements not getting saved in snapshots:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/snapshots-don-t-record-lens-blur-brush-refinem...

Note that the other settings of Lens Blur do get saved and restored in snapshots.

This bug is clearly an oversight, and it suggests that failing to copy/sync brush refinements was also originally an oversight and that the response it's "as designed" was an ex post facto argument.

[John R Ellis]

When I make a virtual copy of test1.jpg, and then Sync Settings from test1.jpg to the virtual copy, the Lens Blur is copied exactly.  Ditto if I use Copy/Paste.

For all of the AI commands (masking, lens blur, generative remove), when you copy their settings from the source photo to a virtual copy of that source photo, LR doesn't recompute the AI results -- it just blindly copies all the internal settings without recomputing. That works because the virtual copy pixels are exactly the same as the master photo's pixels.

So that probably accounts for why syncing lens blur from the master photo to its virtual copy brings along the brush refinements too.  

It's when you sync lens blur to a different photo (different internal UUIDs), that LR decides it needs to recompute the AI results, and that recomputation is failing to include the brush refinements for some reason.