P: New AI-powered Lens Blur (Early Access) available across all surfaces.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & the Lightroom Ecosystem products.

The Lightroom team is sharing an early look for AI-powered Lens Blur–giving you the ability to apply optical blur on any image regardless of how it was taken. Lens Blur is now available to try on all Lightroom surfaces.

How does Lens Blur work?

• Lens blur applies a depth-based blur effect, similar to what can be achieved with real-world optical lenses, by using AI-generated or device-captured depth data (when available).
• Lens blur will automatically prioritize focus for the detected subject, but you can also interactively adjust the focus distance. Precise focus range tuning is also available (currently desktop only: Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Classic, and Camera Raw).
• You can also further customize the Bokeh shapes, highlight Boost (desktop only), and make depth map refinements (desktop only).

Will my Lens Blur adjustments on one surface be synced to other surfaces? I.e. mobile to web to desktop, and vice versa?

• Yes, all edits will sync. To revert settings, you can go back to previous versions or history steps, or un-apply Lens Blur settings.

Can I add Lens Blur settings to my presets?

• No, presets and copy + paste workflows are not currently enabled for Lens Blur during Early Access.

For more information, please check out Lens Blur. 

Please give it a try and share feedback in this thread as we continually improve this feature.

Lisa Ngo: Lightroom Product Manager

Current Popular Lens Blur Feature Requests:

• Add Noise Option
• Custom Bokeh

Stop by and give them a vote if they're of interest to you!

Posted by: 

[carlb17047802]

Hopefully your going to make this able to Auto Sync, so it cna be applied to multiable images at the sametime!

[drchevalier]

First attempt worked well. Like the ability to control the span of the blur.  I don't expect to use this much, but based on my first go, it works well.  Does take a while on Intel based Macs though.

[jmorg65]

Pics of my wife and I where there is a small amount of space between us, that area is not registered as background and remains unblurred. Makes clear it's an artifact and detracts from overall visual appeal. Needs more precision with space between people. Have found the same issue with masks in general, detecting space between body parts where there is a small gap, and between people, can be easily missed.

OF NOTE... If I create a mask on the same photo and select Subject, what is selected does NOT include this background area between us. So, the Mask tool is using a different algorithm to determine subject from background than what is used by the Lens Blur tool. So far, Mask tool wins on my n=1 trial.

[ireneb57579486]

It is not working at all for me.  

[ronc62810223]

I'm getting frequent beachballs when I use Lens Blur (and also when I use the Crop Tool). The whole program is now sluggish. I'm on a MacBook Pro, late 2015, running macOS 12.7, Safari 16.6.1.

[constantind7119395]

Utilizarea rapidă arată fantastic

[Bruno Guido25435298438n]

Hallo,

die Veränderungen sind bei einem ersten Test nur gering. Ich sehe momentan noch keine Anwendung für meinen Bedarf.  Vielleicht habe ich es auch an den falschen Bildern ausprobiert.

Viele Grüße

[garyd03]

When using Lens Blur my machine crashes. Message not responding. Its an 18month old Dell desktop with a good spec. Running latest version of Windows 10.

Looking at task manager it seems eat up the processor.

Only happens on Lens Blur. Recovers then crashes again.

Gary

[simonsaith]

Likely a GPU driver issue. Could you share your system info via Lightroom>Help>System Info...

Please also try this to see if it is helpful for you. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access... 

[defaultkrjfu9l0olxt]

Lens blur, when activated, makes my screen go black for about ten seconds and the results are unuseable.  Here is an example.  

[owent59949149]

I have tried several times to get it to work without success. I get the message, "There was an unexpected error and your request could not be completed". Every single time. very disappointed.

[stefanf58290378]

I like to have an ad or substract tool to add or delete blure on not desired parts

[joshuabury]

You can find a brush tool for making corrections to the estimated depth, and therefore returning some areas to focus and making some areas blurry, by expanding the "Refine" tools at the bottom of the lens blur panel.

[jjaylad]

This is a great addition to the program. I shot with prosumer cameras for years and then with crop sensor cameras (I like to shoot sports). Manyu years ago I made actions for photoshop to select subject onto another layer, then dup the base layer and apply a depth blur to it, with 9 adjustable blur areas, using smart objects. It was easy to adjust as needed after the action ran and that is how I faked expensive lenses all these years. Got so it took only a minute or so per photo, but this new feature looks like it will negate the need to even flip it into Photoshop! I've used Luminar's blur feature too, but this is infinitely superior.

With a marathon to shoot on the weekend, I'll see how it works using my 18-140 on the D7200. I have a Sigma 50-150 2.8, but the 18-140 will be nice for runners close to my position.

Nice to see Adobe finally catching up to my cell phone in capability for this, and without the need for the phone's depth mapping. Really nice! Should be a huge time saver and so far I'm really pleased with the results. Now if only we could apply it in batch at default settings. That would make it mind bendingly useful.

[Greg25282837n41s]

Game changer for me, please continue to add more to lightroom. I'm cheering you on!! Thank you. 

[fonzindy]

I am LOVING this new deature in Lightroom! So easy to use and it makes the photos so nice. love it! 

[James329132208ypi]

Some websites offer a service to remove lens blur and the effect of camera shake from image files, mainly jpeg.  Some of these are surprisingly effective.  Apparently this involves some form of AI.  Does Adobe provide such a service or, will the ability to do this appear in Lightroom Classic and other photo editing applications?

[Doug Rogers]

When I use lens blur on a furry animal, the fur is blurred along with the background.  This is a great feature.

[ACEkin]

Somehow, it does not look believable to me. I tried it on a photograph with a wall on my left and a ninety-degree wall straight ahead. There are a few cars in the middle. Auto apply looked really odd as part of the car closest to me was out of focus while others behind it were in focus. Also, the transition from in-focus to out-of-focus looks unrealistic compared to what a lens might produce.

[ACEkin]

I should have added the sample pictures. Here they are. Look at the roof of the car in front and the lamp pole. Also, see how the bricks go from sharp to blurry almost suddenly.

[simonsaith]

This is because the lens blur tries to focus on what it thinks the main subject -- the blue car in the front.

If you don't want the build wall in front of the car blurred, you try toggle to use the Point/Area focus control to make the wall in focus.

[ACEkin]

I was pointing at the roof of the car with the plate JE36 being out of focus while the car behind it and facing me being in focus. Also, the sharp to blur transition on the wall on the left is far too abrupt. I also understand the blur and focus areas can be adjusted.

[DannyK.]

The feature is really nice! I would add an ability to add objects to the focal range. Right now it's either a person, or another object that I select a band around. I'd like this to be additive (e.g. this person + the rail that they're leaning on). Adjusting this by distance range alone doesn't always work, since the AI doesn't always detect the distance of objects correctly.

In addition, please work quickly to improve performance and memory footprint of this feature. It's almost unusable at this time. Clicking "Apply" for the first time adds 6-8 GB of memory, and eventually LR (and the entire machine) hangs. I also see huge memory fluctuations througout the usage, gigs of change all the time, up and down. To be able to seriously test the feature, this needs to improve.

[健治長33016109]

When there is a fence in the focused range, it seems to be difficult to blur the image behind the fence. It is the only way to correct this is to use a brush, but it is hard to do when the fence is fine mesh.

[DannyK.]

That's my experience too.