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: 

[danaf69875454]

After the update LRC has become crazy slow, to the point of me not wanting to edit.   When making any lens blur adjustment there's a long period of spinning color wheel, it makes this optioin pretty much useless to me.  Is there a way for me to roll back to the previous version? 

Imac 3.8GHGZ Quad Core I5, 64 GB ram, 2tb hard drive with 1.7TB free, Radeon Pro 580 GB, photos on 4tb SSD with 1TB free. 

[Huntley27609156rm9s]

It's already made my copy of  Lightroom Classic crash four times. Looks interesting and of value, but it's frustrating to have to constantly restart the application.

[nicci250115351hjq]

it will not work as it says I need version 3 or later, but my LR is updated?? I don't know what to do...

[marolu]

I used it for the first time and find it most useful for family portraits where you have to stop down or use more wide angle lenses where depth of field increases.

[JeffP3456]

I regret that you removed the hue/saturation sliders which were an easy way to remove a color cast or tint in the images. AFAIK there is now no way to easily and selectively remove such. 

[Sean McCormack]

@JeffP3456 This is the Lens Blur thread. HSL is still there in the Color Mixer panel. You choose between Mixer and Point Color. HSL is in the Mixer. 

[chrisp30202608]

Great featire and would be even better of the blured area could be edited with other  tools, such as exposure.

[DonH]

Building on chrisp30202608's comment - could the focus area selection from blur be used as a way of making a selection mask (I'm thinking of this in LR-Classic or ACR)?   The blur panel seems to have two functions - one is to select based on focus (with fine tuning) and the other is to blur a selection - those two functions don't really need to be connected - you should be able to blur any selection from any mask, and it might be useful to be able to adjust exposure, etc based on the focus selection (kind of like the select focus capability in PS).

[simonsaith]

What you are asking for is the depth range masking, which is already supported by Lr and ACR and is available to photos that already have device captured depth map. If Lr/ACR could allow access to the same depth map generated by the lens blur...

[DonH]

in simonsaith's reply:  "access to the same depth map..."  -  Exactly!  That would address the ability to make other adjustments than just blur based on the focus selection.

And then it would make sense to add the blur and bokeh controls to the list of other selection-based adjustments (exposure, clarity, etc).  

Although we can certainly put the focus selection and blur algorithms to the test using the current implementation in the mean time!

[DFord]

I just found lens blur and so far I have found that it is quite accurate and intuitve to work with

[seriouseater]

It is easy to think of requests for improvements or additional features, but as is it is great. I have already rescued some of my worst images.

[puchta-design]

Is it possible to export the depth as a alpha-mask?

[Julien32923045m8ka]

Cette nouvelle fonction flou de l'objectif va être révolutionaire ! Mais en effet, pas encore au point . 

Voici quelques exemples 😉

Merci adobe pour votre travail.

[defaultv5uvu2wpgyxn]

Looks great, but does'nt work on my clearly defined subject. Masking object/background works flawless. Why not making lens blur available as a mask effect? 

Image: Handle and board of the original are in the same plane of focus

[marko91179374]

Love the concept of the Lens Blur palette, but some Develop palette tools needed to fine-tune what is being blurred, so it more naturally "fits" with the in-focus subject ... things like exposure/brightness, highlight/shadow and contrast control ... of course, temp/tint would be great, too.

A slider to control the feathering of the selection would also be helpful.

My experience is that the selection is very stark from background and works best with low-ISO photos. With high ISO, being able to use background blur to further mask noise in high ISO photos would be terrific.

[Nicaise32331948q0j8]

ths camera raw is very slow now nad for blur system

my computer has 16GB for RAM and 3.35 Ghz for processor so i don't how is slow and graphic processor disabled

[simonsaith]

For performance issues like this, I would first check that the GPU acceleration is turned on. Go to the app's Preferences dialog, under "Performances" tab, make sure the "Use Graphics Processor" setting is not turned off. See more details here https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/kb/acr-gpu-faq.html#other-apps. If required, you should also update the GPU driver to the latest.

[_Augustux_]

this is wonderful, please add it as soon as possible.

[B32926581gusy]

good

[Rob II @ MPI]

This is a fantastic addition to these products!  I have only used it on one image (so far) and I am thoroughly impressed with the results!  Definitely keep this in the product line!

[Argonne_Hills]

Pretty impressive stuff so far but need some more time to check it all out.  Wondering if some of my old photos may have actually been taken with an f/1.2 lens instead of just a ho-hum f/2.8 if you get my drift lol

[Argonne_Hills]

Just found a neat effect for a small issue: in at least one photo the software can't detect the background as seen through a car window.  Which means that the background as seen through the windows stays in focus, which results in a kind of funny / neat illusion of the car windows acting as corrective lenses for the blur, so to speak.

[Cassandra_21]

Lens blur is AMAZING. What would help to save time to be able to copy and paste to every photo if wanted instead of doing each photo. Don't ever get rid of this. I'm planning to use this on EVERY session moving forward now 😄

[Jonathan2225]

I don't know if this would be possible but it would be cool for this feature to work with the new iPhone 15 feature of capturing depth information for a more accurate effect. Apple is doing it so you can add the Portrait mode effect after taking the photo, and also for the ability to adjust the focusing point and the blur amount. I don't know how feasible this would be because you would have to find some way of exporting that depth information with the RAW photo from photos on an iPhone to Lightroom, but if you can get it to work that would look the best.