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: 

[Brubek6]

La sfocatura sembra essere buona

[itsmoretojab]

Like it thus far! Tested it out on a headshot and the bokeh was good. Also liked how it had multiple bokeh options as well. Helped with the fly away hairs too haha. 

[DaddioManOttawa]

very cool.

option to create a mask to add adjustments to the blurred (or not blurred) areas like the other masks in lightroom would be uber cool. unless it's already in this and I don't see it lol.

[adrian_hudson]

Worked really well!

[shooktj]

I agree with the toggle and the earlier comments, but overall I love this feature.  Has been really helpful with sporting events and crowds!

[dsirjuesingh]

Would like the option to move the focal point of the blur to other parts of the image.

[simonsaith]

You can try out the Point/Area focus sampler or try out the focus range slider control.

[arlenes1482429]

Absolutly  love it! It is a substitute for expensive lenses.. takes my photography to the next level,,,Thanks Adobe!

[Bombdog]

It takes your editing to the next level, photography still just average! 😄

[Michaela314445141ta9]

Anyone else havingtrouble with it rarely working? Feels like 4 out of 5 images, I get the "something went wrong" message

[johnrellis]

@Michaela314445141ta9, "something went wrong" usually indicates you've got an out-of-date graphics driver. Please follow these steps:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access... 

[Tony22164589ob6d]

I also noticed i that it doesn't do well when a subject is infront of a white background. You can notice that on the edges of the subject as they don't seem to be smooth

[Sono.photos]

I was working on 270 photos and doing lens blur on some of them, I did about 15 when LR suddenly went blank and updated my photos by creating a second copy of all the originals -even the ones that did not have lens blurr (1 shows my edits and 1 has the raw file). the files I was working with are Nikon NEF files (lossless). so all of the sudden my picture count doubled even in the Library. That can't be by design. 

[simonsaith]

Something else is going on. Are you doing importing in the background? Or this might be an user error by accident?

[Luca329286205ds0]

it's fantastic

[stephaniea270587]

This is a great feature and replaces the 'background blur' mask I made myself! Would love to be able to make fine adjustments to what it perceives as the subject, as is possible with masks.

[Anuradha Sarup]

Took me a while to get figure out it's features but now I love it. Would appreciate an 'object' masking selection to it not just brush and focus. 
For someone who cannot carry heavy fast prime zooms required for a lot of wildlife photography, this feature is a wonderful gift! Thank you Adobe!!

[Mirrorless Man]

I would like to have a shortcut available to Lens Blur from my Loupedeck Live S, has anyone achieved this?

[giscellayne0101]

É uma ferramenta que tem de tudo para ser perfeita, falta aprimorar a escolha da onde será feito o desfoque. Algumas áreas da foto o desfoque nao pega, mesmo sendo parte dofundo, poderia ser criado uma mascara para a gente conseguir colocar ou retirar esse desfoque de alguma area especifica.

No exemplo que eu mandei o desfoque ficou no braço e não ficou em uma área do fundo, se tivesse como usar uma mascara, daria pra tirar ou colocar o desfoque.

[timp1255760]

Quite useful with a lot of potential. Deals well with large areas but less well were there are small gaps between subject and background, needing some adjustment with the focus and blur brush. Also does some odd 'bubbling' around edges sometimes.

Some pictures also max out my processor, not a powerful one, whereas others are just fine. Not worked out a pattern to that yet.

Generally a positive welcome to this feature,  I will make use of it.

[Mathew L]

Great to see this. When I have a photo with some existing lens blur, this creates "bubble" outlines on the out-of-focus subjects. So I guess it isn't yet designed to *add* lens blur to a photo that needs some more?

[porterhouse_89]

Works ok, but does remind me a bit of iPhone portrait mode. I notice there's a brush to add more areas of focus, but not one to remove parts we don't want in focus? This would be a great addition

[simonsaith]

The same Refine tool that you use to add focus has a toggle to switch to add blur too. 

Please checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[PKinBFT]

I love the potential.  Shallow depth of field is an important element in much of my photography.  Being able to add or accentuate it is a great tool.  I wasn't able to get through most of the other posts so much of this is likely redundant:  

-  I tried using the Focus Brush as essentially an erase for the Blur Brush but I assume it's merely adding detail to that which was just blurred.  So I am guessing it adds two instances of processing artifacts to that part of the image.  A true Erase would be much more "transparent".    

-  This is probably asking a lot to have blur applied as a layer so it can be more finely modified later in Photoshop (more magnification and better selection tools for masking etc. - as well as erase!) but I can dream.

-  Applying blur similarly to how Gradients (linear, circular, etc.) are applied in PS would be handy, especially so with an Erase tool and better Selection/Masking tools to tweak the foreground.

-  More sophisticated selection tools, akin to those in photoshop - color, lasso, would be useful for creating a more useful mask.

[simonsaith]

@joshuabury gave a very good intro on how the focus/blur brush works https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access...