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: 

[debbieb5731239]

I tried this on several types of subjects and street photos. I found it to be excellent. Depending on the clarity of the subject after blurring the background I needed to do a few cloning tweaks but nothing hard.

[JacquesCapeTown]

Great feature, just needs an option to flip / reverse the blur mask. On a few occations, the foreground has been identified as the background and vice versa. A toggle to flip this depth inference would be useful.

[G25475996ryuf]

unfortunately didn't blur the area between the subjects legs, adding a brush or other way to adjust focal points in a more specific areas would help with this issue

[Jefenator]

How awesome is it to be able to go back & make my f/2.8 captures on APS-C look a little more like f/2 on full frame! Even in the "Early Access" phase, the success rate has been remarkable.

The effect seems to work particularly well for enhancing blur that is already there.

Like with most fun things, it is easy to overdo. Subtler applications seem much less prone to revealing artifacts & depth generation errors.

It would be nice to be able to reassign an entire masked-off region to a different depth - I don't quite get the appeal of that feathered brush tool for making those alterations.

The most obvious AI gaffes I've encountered thus far are when there is a chair back or counter ledge behind the subject and one side gets mapped conspicuously deeper than the other.

I do still prefer what I can achieve in-camera with a good lens and good framing. (I noticed practically none of my frames with the 55/1.8 seemed to need this tool.)

That said, distracting backgrounds will happen, and it's nice to have such an easy and effective option to rescue certain shots.

Bravo!

[byrong60063344]

Well, this is interesting.  First use on orchid portraits which I've already got pretty separated for depth of field.  Seems to work well identifying subject and adding a bit more bokeh to background.  I like that it doesn't go crazy.  The effect is subtle.    Don't know that I'll use this extensively as I work to get the effect in the field, but can imagine it being useful when my attention drifts to other aspects of the image.    Cool!  Thumbs up.    Hardware is a 14" M1 Macbook Pro.  Reasonably quick.  Camera by the by is R5 with the RF 100-500 for these shots.

[bruceh5035976]

Easy and accurate. Works fine on my PC with no issues. Love it. Thank you.

[Jonathan35161237jdnq]

Having the ability to adjust the AI filter with a Brush would be awesome, because sometimes background objects that are far back get caught up with the foreground subject, or vice versa, and there is no way to fix this.

[Jonathan35161237jdnq]

Nevermind!!!! The REFINE feature is there with the Brush!!!

[default0j54qibpting]

Somebody had to point that out to me! Couldn't find it on my own.

[Jefenator]

So this is also good for changing my mind after the fact.

If I could re-shoot this, I probably wouldn't use f/11; I'd open up for more of an environmental portrait kind of look.

Well, what do you know!

[Ritik34945623kkhl]

osm tool 

[Allen34442459u18i]

This is a bummer, the copy-and-paste workflow feature should have been added so users can determine if it's something they would like, the feature is really good and useful. it adds more depth to images but it would be nice if users could copy and paste the setting even though it's an early access feature. PS What other new features are yall holding back on. 😄

[rickb-sgu]

I like it a lot!  It really helps the foreground stand out.  The bokeh setting is amazing for night shots.

Something I wonder: can a mask be created from the blurred region?  I like to further manipulate the background - I've noticed that the blue effect seems to be more precise the separating the background than the background or subject masks.  Making a mask from the blur could be useful, IMHO.

Thanks

[royw1234567]

Totally agree.

[floraf40321448]

superbe idée, mais il faudrait qu'il soit plus précis notammennt au niveau des cheveux et du contour des personnes. Peut etre retravailler mieux le flou car il a tendance a déformé certain élément de manière pas tres naturel

[drewp96451657]

Memory hog or memory leak?  When activated blur spikes memory usage from about 7g to almost 15g on 16g system as reported task manager. After processing a blur memory usage stays high, killing system poerformance. LR system info only reports 7.8g used. Closing Lightroom returns memory usage to sub 5g.

Have had LR crash twice also when while waiting for system to return to responsive.

Intel I7-8700 3.2Ghz, 16g ram, Nvidia GTX 1070

[Dadsiview]

Used on a couple of photos and love that I have the ability to add some bokah to my photos without going outside of lightroom.  

Is there a way to "flag" or otherwise mark the photos that I have processed in the filmstrip?  Or have it listed on the attributes page in the library?

[mayerl]

I've used it on 4 Nikopn raw photos today. I did normal editing (basic adjustments, masking areas with further adjustments). I applied blur. It would lock up if vignetting effect was added before blur, or it would lock up after the blurring when I then added vignetting.

[Jan231388005gny]

Great tool, love it, its works fine  at my setup. Thanks

[Michaellionheart]

I find it a very usfule tool I could blur the background of a portrait where the talent could not stand a away from the background. 

[Colyn35234063pt29]

It would be greqt if one could erase a section of the desired subjecdt which has unintentionally been blurred... an eraser... 🤓. What a great tool! 👏

[default0j54qibpting]

It's there - check out the refine option, right under the focal range. I missed it too.

[nomarraydos2]

Overall, I love the added feature and hope it continues to be refined.

[drclearly]

This is a stupendous feature. Thank you very much for all the work and for giving us a crack in early access.

One issue I noticed is that I can modify the focus using the brushes up to a point and then it won't accept further modifications. (Maybe I need to be more careful and thus not need so many corrections.)

Thanks again!

[Jefenator]

https://youtu.be/9Tva1zmNMWY?si=EdOsCSevDx17vtgI

This quick tutorial helped me a lot.

Using "Auto Mask" and the "Amount" slider I've managed to reassign some pretty specific regions to the depth of my choosing.