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: 

[simonsaith]

See the original description at the top on how Lr would handle the device-captured depth:

"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)."

When the device-captured depth data is avaialable, Lr would use it by default, unless you overrride it to use AI generated one by Lr via options in the "..." menu in the UI.

[defaultp7jrbc0vyae8]

Great new feature. I have to turn boost way down with back lit subjects. Small circles appear, almost like lens flair.

[Jonathan2225]

Also, I have this one photo (taken on iPhone) and the blur was doing some weird things on the edges of this hill. The non-blurred picture is a screenshot of the RAW photo (taken in DNG raw) and the other screenshot was an exported JPG with edits including blur.

[richardr483]

This is incredible.  It seems you've just turned my f4 24-120 into an f2. It took literally seconds to do the conversion below. 

[Jenö32141164a42n]

It works fantastic with a landscape, a field of lowers, that I could blur in the distance.

But I tried it with a group of people and the blur edges are not realistic. There should be a slider to adjust the softness of the transition between sharp and blurred.

[Dainius244275322fy8]

Hello, I am using LIGHTROOM professionaly on my top notch best specs laptop (Lenovo LEGION 7i, CPU i9-11980HK, GPU RTX3080, RAM 32GB) and it become extremely slow with this artificial LENS BLUR applied. Impossible to work as it is now a great loss of time and functionality overall. Worst experience despite the idea of havng this feature available. But only that. Please look into performace improvement. This is a key issue... here.

[garyd03]

I am having the same problem.

Lightroom now eats up memory since the last update, take a look at Task Manager.

Gary

[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 possible, you should also try to keep the GPU driver update to the latest.

[onepixelwide]

unfortunatelly, it crashes everytime. 😯😕

[ChrisD-1955]

Just tried it for the first time. Brilliant result with one click!!

[jamesd41541245]

I tried this feature to blur an already out-of-focus background further. It created a more defined edge than was already present, along with a shadowy halo. Neither of these outcomes was desirable.. I'll continue to try it on other images. It may have some practical applications.

[simonsaith]

The feature isn't specially tuned to work well on already blurred photos.

[FrancoisCKX]

I love the general working of the new lens blur! If I could make a wish, as a photographer it would be to be able to tilt and or swivel the axes along which lens blur works, much like on a view camera where you can tilt and swivel both film and lens planes (along their horizontal and vertical axes). I am not sure I would need either noise or a more elaborate bokeh, I think the bokeh is fine as is.

Best,

François Hendrickx

[mjskok]

:party_popper: EXCELLENT! - Please include in PRESETS so it can be used along with other settings 🙏🏻

[Sylvain Messier]

It seems that I can't apply refine Blur everywhere I want.

[Sylvain Messier]

I works if I use Point/Area focus.

[AndreasL9067694]

Easy to use! Nice effect for portraits and people photography!

[Morgan M.]

Fast and easy to use for the most part. My main complaint is that it works very slowly on my end when trying to clean up edges manually (I am using a 2019 Macbook Pro). For example, I had to wait a few minutes for it to load as I attempted to manually un-blur the figure's hand. However, I have had issues with Lightroom Classic running very slowly, so it may not be like that for everyone. 

[BlueRanger]

First try for me - I happened to be looking at railroad switchers, and this photo struck me as having a well-defined subject that should provide a relatively easy test. Aside from the halos others have mentioned, which increase with blur intensity, it doesn't like it when a part of the subject is the same color as the background - it blurred the roof. So it still needs refinement and maybe it will never work perfectly for every photo, but I think the overall effect looks convincing and I'd call it a good start. It's not something I need with my cameras because I have the lenses to blur backgrounds as much as I want, but I definitely see this being useful for some of my drone photography.

[NEKSNPR]

I'm impressed!  Keep going.  This is one of the best new tools since LR masking.

Feature Request:  Refinement brush to paint in focus or blur where the AI depth analysis algorithm made mistakes.

[simonsaith]

This brush based refinement is already supported. It is hidden behind a collapsible "Refine" arrow in the UI by default.

[BlueRanger]

Here's another example where it had trouble identifying some of the finer details as being part of the subject - note the railings and antenna. This is a great example of an image where I'd love to use it if it worked better.

[corinnec51244538]

Bonjour,

ne peut-on pas passer en mode négatif avec la touche "option" du clavier ? 

[simonsaith]

"Can't you switch to negative mode with the "Option" key on the keyboard?"

Please explain exactly what you want?

[Diego Espin]

This was super cool!... love the effects and the visualization strip...