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: 

[Dirk32845912ydcv]

I like it. Super

[JDob]

The new Lens Blur panels looks like it's going to be really useful and save round trpping into Photoshop to achieve the same effect. I'd really like to see a way of visualizing where I've been brushing with the Focus and Blur brushes when refining the effect.

[björnw97523715]

I find the feature very good, although it should be used with caution. I would find it helpful if you could manually select the point yourself first. Because the AI usually recognizes it incorrectly.

[SeanMcCormack]

The tiny person icon lets you select a person as the focal point. Beside that is a rectangle. Click that to drag around the area you want in focus. 

[Etrephotography]

Hasnt quite masked the subject so altough the first try was interestting, there is patches around the models head of sharp foilage where the mask hasnt selected the hairline correctly.

[SeanMcCormack]

The sliders under the Refine tool are there to help that (click the triangle). I agree that it's not always 100% accurate, but at least there are tools to help. 

[mikesch0815]

Not bad. But it doesn't work really good with some animals in foreground, like a dog is walking to you. The edge of his tail looks very unrealistic.

But keep going on, looks mostly fine.

[robertw78010893]

having tried on a couple of photos very inpresive.

[Roy79]

Love it

[cjl21177653]

Excellent addition to LR.  The implementation is perfect and the ability to visualize the changes live is fantastic.  My only issue at the moment is that it struggles to work with the pressure sensitivity of my Xence Eos pen/tablet. 

[brandon27813119zhkh]

I cannot get the analysing to work to completion. It freezes. I have to shut down computer and start all over again with GPU enables in preferences and it gives an error message. I have 2  GB on secondary GPU. 

[simonsaith]

Please report your system info Lightroom>Help>System Info...

[Valentin Paul28293818sjjh]

 looks fantastic

[joelnorman]

The actual quality of the bokeh is nice, but the masking around hair is really horrible and blocky, meaning I would not use this for people shots in its current form.

[josm10431234]

An adjustment brush for retouching would be useful. as I have photos where parts have not been softened.

[rhemondb93973931]

Feathering subject need some more improvement

Found some strange artifects on the edges of the subject ( a deer in this case) 

[toadovision]

The focus mask is not available as a selection mask.  The "select focus range" is grayed out in the masks panel.

The depth mask works well but it would be good to be able to use it with the masks tab.

Refering to the RAW update, splitting up each section 'light' 'effects' etc creates extra clicks and is time consuming having to open up every tab.  

[hennieb8218076]

It works well but slows down the PC. The screen went black intermittently (Windows 10)

[kirstyh83940792]

it is actually really useful 

[Dizzster]

Works, but not when the subject is hairy. Similar to other comments, lose fine details and flyaway hairs which makes it a nice gimmick but not great for actual use. I usually photography dogs, so can't see me using it much unless I can refine it more.

[killen1234]

meh

[johnny corcoran]

i did alots of adventure shoot up the mountains, its ok cos of the long grass doesnt work well with it.

[tamásk19914590]

I would love a grain slider for the blurred areas only. Sometimes I don't want to add extra grain to my image, I just want to match the existing grain in the blurred areas. Since you already have a grain slider that works great even with lens blurred pictures, adding this extra would be a welcome change.

[APatricio]

I tried it for the first time.  It is impressive.  I will conitunue to use it and gain expertise.  Great addition!

[davidh71320214]

Seems to be working ok on the few images i have tried but would like easier way of refining the edges as the blur removes fine hair and detail from around edges and leaves a un-natural looking effect so I have been having to refine the edges using the focus brush which is not very precise but a good start.