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]

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.

[SooHK]

Finger got blur out, Ver 13.0.1

 

[simonsaith]

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

[A2209935043xw]

its unclear how to choose/ fine tune  the forground and background areas that get blured 

[simonsaith]

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

[Ken Lapham]

only works intermittently  -  very aggravating  -  I hope you can correct it!

[simonsaith]

See the pinned reply at the top.

[Rheal]

I tried to use blur tool brush (with shift). I can't remove completely the automatik blur  mask on an item.

[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...

[simonsaith]

Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[jptmd3]

Very nice.  The effects are amazing.

[robertov70898656]

L'ho provato su alcuni ritratti a figura intera e sembra funzionare molto bene

[Runway28]

I would like to see that I can use the masks which I created in the masking section (shift + W) as masks in the lens blur section! So I only have to define my main and corrected subbject in a mask only once instead of doing the same in the blurring section. As you can see the depth map needs an adjustment on the wing tips of the plane here mainly on the left side. If you see the mask from the "masking" section it is already once defined. I would like to see that i can import this mask as a focus mask the "lens blur" section? 

[rogerd4172868]

Nice, but for me as a photojournalist I keep away from it.

Roger

[Vendy333973455l0g]

the features is fantastic, i love it !! but this features is unstable, bcs it's keep crashing my PC or lagging .. i hope in the next update, this features work smoothly bcs i love the result, i love the bokeh ..

[simonsaith]

Please follow the pinned reply at the top. 

[Chibikitty]

I love the new AI lens blur! it works great with very little to ajustments . Now I don't have to worry about switching out prime lenses on an location family shoot!

[JeroenMentens]

First try: it blurs some sharp antennae of a butterfly into a mess.

See attachment.

[simonsaith]

This might be easily fixed via the Refine tool. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[Owen D.]

Just tested it today with some shots from my pixel 6. It works really well and I like the refinement tools, different bokeh shapes, etc...but damn is it laggy. I've got a beefy rig too, ryzen 9 7900x and a 4080. Using in ACR through Bridge 2024

[simonsaith]

It is typcially slow on the first use after a fresh install. GPU driver would need to work extra to prep it. The subsequent runs are typically faster.

[simonsaith]

It should work on Lr mobile on Android. The speed would depend on your internet connection in that case.

[Strider99]

On an in-camera multiple exposure image with a lot of motion, the blur feature worked amazingly well distinguishing the background from the subject.  I was surprised.

[jjaylad]

Hi there,

Enjoying this new feature as relates to portraits etc.  To me,  it is most useful for photos taken with equipment that did not allow for natural DOF in the first place. I enjoy going over OLD photos and attempting to make them look like they were taken with lenses that produced shallower DOF. So, that takes me to images like this, taken in 2009 with my Fuji s100fs bridge cam. The background is obviously really cluttered so I've cropped in about 50 percent, then I ran the filter:

Here's before:

After applying the filter and adjusting it to 100% so I could see the full effect then back down, I actually couldn't see ANY effect at all. Then I tried experimenting with the focal range selection and that worked amazingly well. I had to use the selection brush to blur parts of the power pole right behine the rider, but that worked very well too:

I took me a bit to get the hang of post application adjustments but to me this is really a great filter. I did want to go further and brush in a few adjustments but found the "Blur" brush was actually UNDOING the effect that was already there. I'm really puzzled about that and would appreciate advice on it.

The sensor on that s100fs was only 2/3 of an inch so DOF wasn't something to write home about. I shot a lot of sports with it and sold framed prints from images cropped to 1/8th or less their original size then painstakenly step by step enlarged in PS, then selected the subject onto its own layer then removed the subject from a copy of the original layer, then blurred that layer and applied a mask with a gradient filter to it for a somewhat realistic result.

Golly Gosh Gee Whizz ...this only saves about AN HOUR OR TWO OF WORK PER IMAGE to get similar results.

GREAT WORK ADOBE!!

Sure would appreciate advice on using the Blur brush so as to avoid it overriding what the initial filtering did.

[simonsaith]

Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video. And check out this post 

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