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: 

[Gary34322273r7bo]

Nice but a brush tool is required to fine-tune areas.

[natework.ch]

i d like to have a checkbox to invert the front / back focus.

[Rex07]

I tries but it is not able to clearly focus on subject, Subject is also getting blured in result. Anybody facing same issue,

[paulgelso]

No! Working perfectly for me!! I use a fairly new Mac with an M1 processor though!!!
Any of the people having problems like yourself maybe using older max or PCs?
Mod: <Personal Info removed>

[Christoph vL]

It works fine, but see one artefact here: The fence post has gotten longer 🙂

[Norman25293387x2tq]

Well, which one is the subject in your photo? 

[Pabligula]

Add a spinner or something to know when it is working.
on raw files it takes a few seconds to respond.
I'm using a 3 year old HP Omen laptop  with RTX video card, I7 and 32GB RAM.

[BGhibby]

I like it a lot, the quality of the bluring is great but two things could do with improving. First one is more important. For portraits, animal shots, anything with hair it is simply not good enough at picking up the fine stray hairs, attempting to refine this with either focus or blur tools is very slow (this is with a AMD 5950x and 4070ti) and usually not succesful to critical viewing.  This leads to the next issue which is one of noise / grain.  When attempting to blur a higher iso image the grain is removed (understandably) in the bluring process - but this makes the background at odds with the foreground forcing the use of the grain tool to simulate grain, plus a mask that paralells or approximates the add blur depth range unless you want to add further grain and reduce detail on your subject.  Its great for bld graphic images but I would love this to work better for portraits.   A grain slider to aid this issue working only on the inverse of the depth mask would solve this little issue.  

[Ken313007498ppk]

Yea basically any type of busy subject and background is not rendered
properly using the blur background tool. Adobe will need to improve the AI
in with this tool. I think they will since they have done a tremendous job
on the mask tool for background, subject, sky so I do think this tool will
greatly improve soon.

[patrickt2748351]

Ok I just want to start with -- I really like this feature.  I can already tell it's going to be in my workflow down the road.  The one thing I see here that I want to strongly agree with is that Custom Bokeh would be a nice add-on.

[mpauliks]

Hi Rick, it would be great if one could define sort of beginning and end of sharp zone. Did not found out how to achieve it so far. But very interesting new tool in LR!

[Norman25293387x2tq]

PC would hang for a few seconds while or after applying the blur. Looks like a memory leak

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[FABRIZIO218806073v0f]

Very good but the masks are a bit too sharp, would need a tool to blur the edge of the mschera to make the transition less sharp and more pleasant.

Molto buono ma le maschere sono un po troppo nette, servirebbe uno strumento che permetta di sfocare il botdo della mschera per rendere la transizione meno netta e più piacevole.

[Julianna22252626ieib]

I've used sparingly on a few family portraits and been pleased with the results. 

[vincentt75522347]

I like the new lens blur feature. I've only used a few times on portraits and find that it works well when I need the background to be a little less obvious. Thanks. 

[Stephanie34376736gcf4]

I've been using the lens blur for the last few weeks now and I just want to say its pretty cool. I like the brush features and the ability to add and take away focus and blur in the area's you want. I have noticed some glitchyness, sometimes it will take forever for an image to add the blur and it has made my program crash twice (I use lightroom classic on a Windows based computer). Another feature I think would be good to add is like a linear gradient brush, just to have that fade to add a more natural apreture feel. Even with the feather at 100% it still doesn't do much to naturally fade the blur...if that makes sense. 

Other than those two things, when it works it works great and I love the feature! I'm excited to see where this, and other features develope in the future I'm a 7 year lightroom user, and I plan on sticking with this program! Keep up the good work! 

[Sanpanza]

The blur tool is useful, but it is a crude tool, and it is difficult to make precise applications of the blur brush. I would like to have other tools like the pen tool so I could achieve more control of the blur. 

[katherinec21032236]

I love all the different lens options we have!!!
I'd like to see Motion Blur function added, where we can pick the subjects we want to add this effect, but I'm pretty sure we'll get there soon ❤️

Katherine E. from LA

[marysmyth]

Looks great so far. Love it!

[sb2314]

I have been playing with it and it works really well. I sometimes use it to blur the unfocussed areas slightly to further enhance the focused area to give it more prominence. Very useful tool that I'm using more and more. Good job!

[Melodic_elegance5D22]

Outstanding, although I own mostly fast lenses, I have a few 5.6 - 6.3 telephotos that I stopped using. This turned them into a 2.8.  Lots of control and I especially like the visual depth option.

[Anthony257]

Ability to refine subject selection.

[Expoeuropa]

Deveria existir alguma ferramenta tipo Pincel para "pintar" sobre zonas que se pretendiam desfocar ou não desfocar, para existir um ajuste mais fino e personalizado, em vez de estar limitado ao  que o computador acha que deveria estar em foco.

[gl.wagner]

Lens blur has a lot of potential! I noticed that the depth inference can be less accurate in washed out areas, or in areas with less detail. To fix this, I think it would be nice to augment the "refine" tool with the ability to directly edit the depth field. I'm interested in creating blur that looks "realistic", so I want to fix errors in the depth inference calculation, rather than adjusting the blur effect directly. Thank you!

[Fabio344030815ay3]

Ottima funzione,

bel tool's