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: 

[Jesus Rafael335391771lgb]

lens blur is a great new feature that was added. I love the way it works. it will help me improve editing my pictures.

[jerseyjon]

On a quick tryout with a shoot, I love it - the result is a great retroactive DoF change. Looking forward to trying out the bokeh effects. 
Request: Like LR masking, it did make a small selection error or two, treating a small piece of foreground as background - so, how about a "subtraction" brush to correct errors like this?

[simonsaith]

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

[RAD Films]

That's a great idea! Thumbs up for the future. The depth mask feature is currently a bit crude and often misses people's outlines. However, the select subject masking feature in Lightroom works perfectly. It would be great if the depth generation feature used the same AI algorithms. Additionally, the depth map could be improved by incorporating the current depth of field information using frequency analysis. Unfortunately, the performance of the feature is not too good, as the preview refresh takes around 10 seconds on a RX 6900 XT and Ryzen 9 5950X. Even the correction brush lags behind significantly. I'm excited to see Adobe's progress on this!

[simonsaith]

Try tweak the focus range settings and/or try the brush refine tool. 

[Claudili77]

wow, ich bin begeistert! Es ist genau das was ich mir schon lange gewünscht habe! Ein wenig ungenau ist es noch an den Rändern aber sonst bin ich ziemlich happy !

[climbbike@gmail.com]

Blur looks wonderful but masking of air, especially on dogs, is SUPER bad.

[climbbike@gmail.com]

that was supposed to say "hair"

[simonsaith]

You can tweak the focus controls a little bit and also give the brush based refine too a try. 

Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[JOTA RANGEL]

Olá!
A ferramenta Desfoque de lente é muito boa!
Mas está deixando o computador muito lento durante o uso da ferramenta.
Ryzen 5 2600

[betht6130552]

I just used it and it looked great until I looked closely at the foot of the eagle and it totally blurred out part of the foot! I need to be able to go in brush out the area of the foot.

[simonsaith]

Try the Refine tool in the lens blur UI. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[Bradley Weeks]

I have only tried the blur now but see exciting potential for the blur and great possibilities.

[SnapdragonPhoto]

On some photos it is totally awesome as is.  Others - not so much, primarily because the user doesn't have the ability to mask what is desired to remain in focus.  The options to mask, and/or create our own focus zones using the the masking filters would be a big enhancement.  Thank you for asking for feedback.

[simonsaith]

Try the Refine tool in the lens blur UI. Checkout Julieanne's nice tutorial video.

[mastix]

Still not perfect by a long margin but the potential is great, and I guess in a few versions of LR- ACR it will deal with even complex scenes and detect correctly foreground background with great masks. Not today but a really promising feature 

[The Eyez of Icarus]

I may not be the best person to say this since I'm relatively new to photography and photo editing however I just not a fan of how the feature can at times take some of the colours in the background and splatter them on the subject. This problem is only really visible at 200% zoom and has only happened to about 15-20% of my photos. 

The feature is great can't wait to see how its developed. 

Also a cool feature to add would be bokeh features/characteristics from different lens. I hope thart makes sense.

Peace, love and happiness to you all. 

IG - @vaimakario

[Divine_Dream6C13]

My goodness I didn't know it was going to be this great. I shot a portrait the the subject close to the background and at 5.6. The blur I got was that of a 2.8 and it doesn't even look like post at 50 amount! Would it it a bit faster but don't trouble too muct about it. The feature is going to wear off from my usage, I can tell you that much!

[Divine_Dream6C13]

Can I add that when the blur effect has been added on an image, when using the "previous" feature to apply all adjustments on that image unto another, it shouls include the blur effect too. 

[Luca Isaia Fanto]

love it! But likewise photoshop blur gallery, it would be great to have grain or texture added on top of the blur effect, or it definitelly looks fake. 

thanx for the fantastic job

[Dustin R Photo]

Love it, but PLEASE add a Feature option.  The depth is incredible, but I can't use it often because the line around the subject is so hard that it make it look cut out and fake...

[PJSAGUN]

I'm having trouble exporting the images that I applied this feature to. the bar doesnt move when going to export.

[Marvin5FED]

it will not let me use lens blur in light room room classic...why its update and everything 

[simonsaith]

What do you see? Did you check the "Apply" box to enable it?

[Fujifanatik]

Great feature with lots of potential.  However I had a couple of instances where lighter parts of an animal - for example the white beak of a colourful bird and the white body of a bird with black wings  - were assessed by LR as background and blurred accordingly, despite being in the same foreground focal plane. I couldn't readily find a simple way of  getting the blur to ignore these invalid auto sleections