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: 

[Johannes24309365z223]

Hi,

It looks great, and a good idea, but why to do it with A.I.?

I want so much as possible, "the boss" when I edit.

Combination with Masks is in my humble opinion better.

Regards.

[feargalq@gmail.com]

Just downloaded Lightroom V13.  The Lens Blur panel is present but "Greyed out" and unavailable in editing - any ideas why?

Feargal

[simonsaith]

Did you downloaded the app from the Mac AppStore? If so, there is a LrD 7.0.1 update available.

[charlottem89846831]

Just what I wanted for an image I took this past weekend. And the depth section allowed me to include a tree that the 1st part missed. On my machine, the functioanality was slow to activate, but I'm guessing that was a one time load situation (LRC.)  I'll try this in PS camera raw tomrrow. (after removing the tree in PS.) 

[David1643+]

I agree with several others. It looks great and having the ability to control the blur is beneficial.

[Stefanile]

Great tool, thanks for adding this. I think/hope that in the future it will be added a way to copy/paste like with masks. But other than that for being first stage is very well done! 

Regarding LrC 13.0 could you please add a way to switch back to the older Histogram view? With this one is very hard to understand the color balance, it's almost useless like this. Just a right click and option to show histogram as it was before with solid colors would be great.
Many thanks!

[indigoo41164202]

Very nice idea... but not perfect... especialy problems with hair and also some strange things on hard edges..

and it is very laggi ...showing a black screen for 20-30sec several times and in between no reponsivity at all

..ok lot of calc in background... but mabe a final go button would help after al sliders are ajusted

[MrApricots]

I too support an option to delay applying the effects until the masking and other adjustments are complete. Maybe a "pause until 'Enter' is pressed" type feature to avoid the continual wait while the latest clicks are registered and processed (there is an annoying lag even on a Mac Mini with the Apple M2 chipset with auto GPU and 16 GB RAM). I keep thinking the latest clicks were not registered and click again in my impatience.

[Franz H.]

A really nice feature. Would be great and look much more natural if it automatically would maintain the level of noise of the original image in the blurred areas or at least offer an option ro manually add grain to these areas only.

[Markus.S.]

On my Core i7-12700K with 64GB RAM it is not that fast.

All cores are up to 70-90%, so its realy using the whole system but takes its time to apply the effect.

Maybe its the GPU, i use a Radeon RX6600 and this feature is more optimized on GPU performance?

[Sheridan25313040c8oz]

Adding to Sync or copy+paste would be a great time saver to apply blur to a batch of photos that all have same background/intent, e.g. theatre or series of head shots.  Works very well, less is more.

[Nicholas32878933jxof]

Is refine edge coming for Lihtroom in the near future? Lens blur is awesome but it can't handle hair well.

Also are custom bokehs coming in the near future? like a Helios vintage objective swirly bokeh.

[Dragos32879119h4hg]

Of course it has some problems detecting edges.

SO a substract / add brush feature would be good !

[Aurel_serban]

Looks very good for product photos, i would like a grain effect for the blured parts, its whey to smooth, sure i can add it after, but it would be nice a slider with a ammount for it, so i dont have to make another mask for that.

[Ars Clicandi]

I get an error when initiating the tool:

[simonsaith]

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

[default9fx28a4ne81d]

It's not great at seperating the subject from the background.

[marcelb99524565]

Hi,

Addition of this feature is amazing, I am really enjoying it. Some things I have noticed are:

1. The lens blur is pulsing when using crop tool. Probably some kind of bug.  I am using LrC on Windows 10. 

2. I would like to be able to aply this effect to multiple photos at once simmilar to how you can add AI masks and sync them between multiple photos. Would be amazing if lens blur was added to the copy develop settings dialog when it exits the beta phase. 

[Jeffrey24882808uf8s]

I'm liking this.  With my f4 lens, I'm able to add a little more Blur to the back ground.  I think a very usfull tool

[Jp Digital Studio]

Been redoing some old photos and this is a great tool!! One note on the optimization, I'm running a 13900k and an RTX 4090 and my temps spike up to 100c on the CPU when it's analyzing, however, the GPU is not being used much at all with temps in the 60c range. Perhaps sharing the load between the two would help. Wonder if Apple's unified M chips fare differently. 

[Chris Saul]

My M2Pro Mac mini keeps its cool

[tcnsignstudio]

The User Interface is great, I love the depth toggle and your method to visualize depth is really easy to understand, kudos!

Since it is only beta it is no wonder it is not perfect, but I am confident you will get there. What I would recommend though is to somehow sustain the grain-noise quality of the blurred parts. That would really distinguish this feature from the filters of cell phones. (Also I am sure I am not the first one to suggest, but hair detection need to be better that that.)

As a beta: promising, easy and fun to use. 🙂

Keep up the good work, forget LR and make sure to develop LR Classic for a long time!

[Curstin32882058sg4c]

I have it on my iPad it's updated and so is my app why do I have every feature but the lens blur help! 
It's on my phone but can't do it on my iPad but my iPad has all the other early access features but the lens blur

[Nexus 6]

For me, works great, better them use Blur > Lens Blur.
Arround soft details like hair it looks kind blur but, yup firts steps.
Good job

[Kenneth236156193cb2]

For Photoshop users, instead of putting this inside Adobe Camera Raw, why not add it to the Photoshop Neural Filters panel ? This would allow us to place the correction on its own layer (current layer, smart filter, etc.) which would open the door to the many creative options which come with Photoshop layers which are too numerous to mention.