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]

Please see details of possible woraround: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access...

[Sheen W]

Lens blur is on the right track - love the concept and it works.  What I've discovered is once you blur a background, it seems as if the local adjustment tool does not work as well on that area if I wanted to continue modifying texture, clarity, etc.  Just started playing with it tonight...  New color tool and being able to apply it in the local adjustment area is terrific.  Overall performance is slower on my system 64GB on iMAC.  

[jacquit39058026]

Seems pretty good on the 5 or so images I tried it on. I lost the subject's nose, though, on the most recent one. 

[simonsaith]

The first thing I would suggest you trying is to do some fine tuning of the focus depth range via the manual focus range slider control or the Point/Area Focus sampler.

[jacquit39058026]

I did that. Just letting you know there was a glitch in the subject recognition

[Jens3294753763ue]

It looks good generally, however, the same issue you have with AI-blur are the smooth transition between areas of high contrast (e.g. a background with sky / dark forest) where everything is out of focus. The transition between the highlights and dark areas is too "obvious" making it useless in some cases. 

Having said that - it is an excellent and useful tool and I find it very helpful if contrast is not too harsh. It would be great if this could be improved.

[Joshua Bury]

Out of curiosity, were those areas slightly blurred (out of focus) in the captured photo? We currently have some quality issues blurring areas like this when they start with existing optical blur from the lens they were captured with.

[Roberto Grippo Fotografia]

excellent function, i'm already using it and it's perfect

[Roland_Rick]

Would be cool, if the subject could be masked. For your convenience, I provide a NEF. Subject is the church of course. Copyright: © Roland Rick, Liechtenstein. Rights usage term: All rights reserved. Adobe may use it for development purposes.

OK: the system here isn't accepting NEF (26 MB), so please have a JPG instead, will try NEF to DNG converted also.

OK 2: DNG (26 MB) also can't be uploaded as file of 47 MB, 16 bit PNG or compressed TIFF are about 106 MB, that's more as allowed max. file size. So, I stick to JPG. Honestly: Adobe could make it easier to users, helping to supporting Adobe, pleae make RAW file upload possible. It's anyway ridiculous RAW isn't possible.

[WSPHOTOG]

When bluring landscape in the background I am picking up a white line on the horizon and along the tops of hills.

[Joshua Bury]

Thank you for reporting. This is likely a quality issue with the Boost slider (just under the bokeh buttons). Please try reducing Boost and see if the problem goes away. (Note that currently Boost can only be adjusted in the "desktop" versions of Lightroom, not on mobile).

[Tami5EE1]

I think the feature is fantastic. I have not found any issues with it just yet! 

[alainpiaf]

le nouveau "flou de l'objectif" est superbe, mais un peu insuffisant. Je n'ai pas pu recréer le flou de mon objectif (OM system 90mm macro) sur une photo prise à f/11 pour recréer la photo prise à f/3,5.

Cordialement

Alain Jouffray

[akiramedia]

At the stronger settings, it tends to have very hard edges on overlapping foreground objects as it applies the lens blur to them. They will be blurred, but with very hard edges.

[defaultcgb1uff3pxrb]

It works wonders on simple scenes, but it seems to struggle to identify depth when there's a fence in between. Would be interesting to add a masking option for some fine detail, with a depth slider so you can tell the AI how deep certain parts are (Maybe linked with opacity values?).

[Kryzhov]

Hi! Thanks for great feature. 

It might be useful to make masks based on depth and apply them on other effects like dehaze, change temperature or desaturation. 

[Sanrob66]

Viewing Anthony Mroganti site.

fond the blur function very easy.  It correctly identified the subject with no additional adjustment.  Upon enlagring the photo to check the total image I found a strange aboration around certain parts of the subject. Note captured area.

[simonsaith]

The Refine tool is available to do some clean up in the missed area.

[PurpleSwanPhoto]

I guess that I'm going to have to upgrade my laptop, as using this makes it go so slow, to a virtual standstill in fact. Works well, but I couldn't use it in a workflow.

[Bob Ulius]

I need to do one more test to see if I will be able to use this at all! First try hardest crash ever on this computer. All froze. Required power button shutdown and reboot.

Worst comes to worst, forces me to create BOKEH with skill rather than tools 🙂

[simonsaith]

Please see details of possible woraround: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-lens-blur-early-access...

[MKPHOTOGRAPHY777]

RAD!  Love the different iris efx! 

[Moshe32958599qz1h]

For me it seems amazing abilities

[chriswesselmanphotography]

Here's another "hair problem" example. It's a trememdously useful tool, and I really look forward to using it!

Chris

[Lucas Plankensteiner]

A very usefull tool. I haven`t tryed it in combination with a mask, but it looks very promising.