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: 

[francop13010581]

Indeed is a good aditive, as far as I have been taking it to test. It is an improvement by far than having to mask the background and lower the shrapness. The details on the bokeh are stuning. Hope to enjoy giving more use to it

[robert jeanf47154025]

On a WIN 20 22h2 computer Ruyzen 7 5700 Nividia GTX 3060 12 Gb, the blur function caused 3 times an unrecoverable fatal error on the GPU thus disconnected in the session.

The effect of the blur is completely unconsistent and unpredictable. The function apperas to be up to now highly unstable. Moreover the effect viewed in ACR is not retrieved in PS where the visible effect is much much lighter.

Hope this helps for developpers to eliminate early bugs

Bob

[robert jeanf47154025]

I meant WIN 10 of course

[John R Ellis]

@robert jeanf47154025, "On a WIN 20 22h2 computer Ruyzen 7 5700 Nividia GTX 3060 12 Gb, the blur function caused 3 times an unrecoverable fatal error on the GPU thus disconnected in the session."

See the full pinned reply at the top of this thread.

[Andre63]

Also Ryzen - 4000 series /5 - same issues. HP Envy. Radeon Graphics. Gives System error.

[rmcbjc]

is there or will there be a mask to take away blur in an area that it was not suppose to be.  It did a nice job on the backround in my phoot but also did just a little bit of someones face that was not truely in backround.  i would've used it if i could have erased?masked it off the face on the preson 

[John R Ellis]

@rmcbjc, "is there or will there be a mask to take away blur in an area that it was not suppose to be."

See step 5 of the Help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/lens-blur.html

[Elkenmelken]

great feature in LR - would be even better if could be applied to masks

[Square Carrot27310861m2w8]

I think it would be nice to select the focal point/object/subject similar to masking it. 

[Troy28244336ksyb]

We need a Recaculate button please. I often reapply my Camera Raw smart filter to other images, or will drastically alter the image to which a Lens Blur might be applied. Currently there are remainents that can't be reset. 

[Simon S Chen]

Toggle the "Apply" checkbox off and on again will function as your recalculate.

[Orocasa]

Lens Blur works pretty well. It had a little trouble edge masking some fly away hairs.

[tanyar55988521]

I have a photo of a bird in a tree in the winter so no leaves. The sky is light blue-ish and overcast. So there is a lot of contrast. When I tried applying Blur to the in-focus twigs, most of the the twigs get blurred only on one side. Blurred on the left for the left hand side of the picture and blurred on the right for the right hand side of the picture.  That's not right. In any case, they don't blur like the real out-of-focus branches in the distance.

It's a bit of a silly example, since you never have enough depth of field in bird photos, so it's not natural to apply the Blur module. I also looked at some high-rise building photos and a chain-linked fence photo but did not see this problem there.

Also, If I blur a star-burst test pattern, the radial spokes do something very odd; they go from dark gray to light gray back to dark gray. The stronger the blur, the more times it does this. It's neat looking like a Moire pattern, but not the right behavior. I was curious if I would see the same problems as in the bird photo, but other than the Moire pattern, it looks pretty good.

[davidb16616750]

Keeps turning GPU off, sometime forces Photoshop to close down.

i7 2.50Ghz Dell with 16GB RAM with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060i graphics card.

It's good when it works but frustrating when it doesn't.

Agree with the need to be able in add/increase noise.

[Simon S Chen]

See the pinned reply at the top.

[leafsobsessed]

I'd like to be able to mask or brush this effect. Sometimes it applies to areas that I'd like to stay clear (i.e. flyaway hairs)

[Simon S Chen]

Try out the Refine tool. Expand the Refine collapsible widget in the lens blur UI to play with the focus/blur brush. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[thor329760193fcv]

ça bug un max !!

[defaultk72oseiadc81]

Still trying to undestand how the meter on the focal range works. I think there should be an indicator of where the camera's focus point was if possible. If we could snap to the original focal point, and then adjust our range symetrically from there that would be really useful. 

[fritl94956607]

The selection of the subject is consistently inaccurate, especially in that it leaves unselected space outside of the edge of the body.  This itself makes it unusable, but the fact that there is no way to edit the mask makes it quite frustrating as a tool.

[Simon S Chen]

try out the Refine tool. Expand the Refine collapsible widget in the lens blur UI to play with the focus/blur brush. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[cmajors]

Definitely interesting. Seems to mistake some hats as background elements, so it would be useful to have a selection tool to include or exclude elements that get misidentified. I think this tool is really interesting though so please keep refining.

[Simon S Chen]

Please try out the Refine tool. Expand the Refine collapsible widget in the lens blur UI to play with the focus/blur brush. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[harleyr71646725]

Looks great so far. Would like to put easy gradient on background blur to give it more depth.

[Gerhard56]

Kills ears of persons .... otherwise is really nice ....