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: 

[Simon S Chen]

It is probably worthwhile to 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.

[AussieActive]

Enjoying lens blur, as it's has a more defined effect than adjusting clarity/texture/sharpening. Hope this is going to be enabled for masks, like Gradients, and presets. Currently, it gets pretty slow on a top spec M1 MacBook, after using for a while. Looking forward to full release.

[Sutamas33181048ss4m]

i like it.

[Roland_Rick]

Quick usage looks awesome. BUT I would prefer another workflow, first mask, then apply blur. The current implementation with the Focus and Blur brush is extremly lagging, it is even not possible to finish a brush stroke without getting Mac OSs' busy beachball. That makes the usage of the blur tool when refining (what is despite of AI always necessary) extremly inconcenient. - I'd supplied the developpers with an original image, but unfortunately RAW/NEF Files are - for no reason that makes sense - not allowed to upload.

The mask of the blur tool can not be used in the Masking tool. This shoudn't be separated.

Besides, concerning the Masking tool: Unfortunately it is still not possible to intersect between e.g. Mask1 and Mask2. Intersection is only possible between the submasks of e.g. Mask1.

Best regards,

Roland

[Rokdoc]

It crashed my LR app and corrupted the catalog.  LR fixed both so no chrisis

[adriand2299536]

My Bokeh controls have dissapeared

[Simon S Chen]

Could you please show us what. you see? Are you running the new version of Lr?

[Claudia Mori]

I found this resource fantastic! It works very well in Camera Raw. A bit slow, but it does an excellent job. It's not working in LrC.

[Simon S Chen]

>It's not working in LrC.

Could you please explain? It should work similarly.

[nabila33187231vo6h]

j'adore ! laissez le moi s'il vous plait 🙂

[smooth_video15A8]

So far, seems like a really promising tool. A couple ideas:

• It would be great to control the feather of the focal range (simulating f-stop to some degree)
• It would also be great to be able to apply a softening to the entire image. Right now zeroing out the focal range eliminates the effect for some reason– this could be a great tool for adding a little image softness.
• It would be great to be able to see areas painted in with the refinement tool (much like you can with brushes by toggling the overlay). 

[Anton280313680qmv]

great feature, unfortuanely only worked once, now its just asking to leave a review and not letting me use it

[Simon S Chen]

Please try out the pinned reply at the top to see if it helps.

[Els31621214u8ts]

It would be helpfull if there was a brush which you can use for adjustments on places where the lens blur wasn't correct.

I used the filter on a photo of a tree and between the branches, the filter wasn't correct. 

[Simon S Chen]

It is probably worthwhile to 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.

[Kaj_E]

I woud like the blut brush and particulalrly slider to allow better definition between different grades of blur, so that one could make the depth of field effect more reaistic.

[JD27266218lz0i]

Please add a "refine edge" slider i the dialog box.

[Clips]

So far so good. Some issues im having are similar to that of Aberration when dealing with images of high contrast, Darker subject against bright BG. I have a pixaltion. I know im pixel peeping at + 50 - 100 but I wish i had a feathering option to pull the blur in or push away from the edge of the subject. 

[kristinsherman10]

First time using lens blur and I love it!  Processed quickly and defined subject/background properly.   I used ACR 16.0 on macOS for editing.

[AussieActive]

I noticed some odd effects, using standard settings. In the before/after partial screenshots, he guy in the background gets a very geometric treatment of his hair.

[simonsaith]

You might be able to use the Refine tool to touch it up. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[DreamageConcept]

Utilisation intuitive claire, résultats pas toujours à la hauteur des attentes en particulie sur la reconnaissance de la profondeur de l'image

[angelat39278158]

Fall off could be better on quick usage.

[Andre63]

Lens Blur feature repeatedly gives error message - Warning - "unexpected error" ?

[John R Ellis]

@Andre63, try the steps in the pinned reply at the top of this thread.