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: 

[Joshua Hayes]

Amazing tool. The fact that you can adjust the depth of field is perfect.

[seanl5726960]

As blur is added, or focal range adjusted fine details at the edge of the mask appear clipped ... example are cat hairs & whiskers.  Cropped images attached, CatBlured has 50% blur, 81% focal range.  Clipping is evident at margins of the mask in cat hair & whiskers - and much moreso on the right side of cat's head (oddly)

PS: This upload tool does not yet the two new export formats just added in LR, Jpg XL and AVIF

[Proulx32893992b1e0]

it would be nice to add a kinda brush tool that we can only find in the lens lur section so if theres mistakes in what is selectioned to be in focus or not we can easily fix it.

[joshuabury]

If you are on desktop (Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, or Camera Raw) you can find a brush tool for making these kinds of corrections by expanding the "Refine" tools at the bottom of the lens blur panel.

[teresah38463594]

I was able to try Lens Blur on three images. The blur worked great, didn't look fake and I was excited to try it on more images. It kept my subject untouched-unless I moved the blur to do so. Worked great around my different subjects hair and didn't give them helmet head. It worked great around flowers, wheat grass blowing near my subjects and around a stray kitten that photo bombed us.

HOWEVER- It was hard to get the blur amount/focal range etc to show up, it would take two to three minutes to show before I could use the program. Then it froze on 4th image and is still frozen aound 15 minutes so I'll probably have to do a force quit. But I'm hoping all this is fixed so I can continue using it! (Yes my computer & adobe programs are up to date)

[simonsaith]

Could you share your system info via Lightroom>Help>System Info...

Also check out this thread to see if it is helpful for you. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access... 

[michaelw69411470]

LOVE THIS!  WOW!  A couple things I noticed after trying it on multiple images:

1.  In some portraits of people with overhanging branches/leaves closer up, and then a distant background, the transition from the closer branch leaves to the distant blurred background can be "strange" at times for lack of a better word.  It's almost like there needs to be a way to refine the transition smoothing or something like that, maybe even with a brush or some way that is tied to the lens blur tool, as a way to help it understand it needs to smooth out a gradient or something.

2.  Sometimes with a distant background, where I know for sure everything is pretty much the same distance away, it will randomly pick certain patches of the background as being "closer" and less blurred.  Definitely random and not on every image, but it'd be nice to have a brush tied to the lens blur tool that could help tell it that a certain area should be just as blurred as another area (almost like a clone tool type usage with a target area perhaps).

3.  Bonus issue ha:  Not sure if it's the lens blur tool being used or something else, but I noticed Lightroom acting really slow at times, even though I have a really powerful computer.

Overall though, I LOVE this!  Such a cool and smart tool to have within my Lightroom workflow.  Thank you!  🙂

[michaelw69411470]

Okay, so I didn't even see the "Refine" section of the lens blur tool ha...so will have to play with this a little more and see if my above concerns still stand.

[Leo Lopez]

I would LOVE to see a Chromatic Aberration feature to the bokeh

[simonsaith]

Could you explain more? Add Chromatic aberration only to the bokeh or the whole lens blur effect of the full image?

[Bwanar]

I think it would be great if you added/combined the feature of the gradiant mask, where you could pull it over the mask, center it where you want and make adjustments ahead and behind by draging edges or the whole effect for centering. It would be very fast, precise and the lines could mark the depths.

[Photo911]

Comparing Camera Raw "Lens Blur" to Neural Filter "Depth Blur" (which was my go to) is no comparison. I love the Lens Blur! Love It! Love It! Love It! Tried both on the same picture and CR Lens Blur is soooo much better. You can get deadly accurate with the "Refine" option of Focus and Blur, with "Auto Mask" on! Thank you soooo much! Now let's fix Point Color shall we ....

[David29085696aoml]

Great if it worked!!  

[simonsaith]

Could you share your system info via Lightroom>Help>System Info...

Also check out this thread to see if it is helpful for you. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access... 

[Paul_B_GB]

Unfortunently i can't use the Lens Blur tool on any of my Raw files. All i get is a message saying "Something went wrong - There was an unexpected error and your request could not be completed"

[simonsaith]

Could you share your system info via Lightroom>Help>System Info...

Please also try this to see if it is helpful for you. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access... 

[Gerardo29563039z9wh]

Cunado la foto esta enmarcada en por ejemplo una venta no reconoce el fondo de las personas, y solo desenfoca el exterior de la ventana. Deberia mejorarse eso. 

[Erwin22059521ktu6]

Funktioniert mit einiger Übung schon GUT, ist aber sicherlich hinsichtlich der Anwendungsfreundlichkeit noch verbesserungswürdig.

[romain32898247jzuz]

Je ne peux pas activer la fonction, le logiciel m'indique systématiquement un message d'erreur.

[Claude29759077q5w6]

Bonjour, il faudrait pouvoir cibler la zone que l'on veut garder net.

[philippet12571594]

Tres bon resulta du traitement du flou une bonne reussite Philippe

[defaultw79i85820olv]

So far, easy to use with wonderful results. for the subjects remain perfectly focused and the depth is nicley enhanced, great tool!!

[AlanTChater]

Gave the feature a run on a typical garden photo of a flower in a pot with all the distractions in the background (pool, house, other distant flower beds, etc). The result was pretty amazing. The DOF was better than I could have gotten using my EOS 7D and 24-105mm lens. The foreground and subject selection was spot-on and the refinement tools provided by the feature worked very well. One nice to have would be a progress bar while the photo is being analysed, my Macbook Pro just showed the non-responsive circle while this was happening. Also automatically stacking the result with the original photo would be a nice addition. 

[Michiel2]

I like the possibility of multiple blur/focus brushes in the lens blur panel (+sign in the refine panel). Could you make edit pins for it like the edit pins in the masking panel?