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: 

[MisterTee]

This could've saved me spending $2K on an f1.4 portrait lens (5 yrs ago)!

[Alexander31338023s33l]

I like the effect however, if the subject has fine edges, the masking capability of the AI engine falls short; there doesn't seem to be a way to adequately refine the transition edge from focus to blur, so the intended subject is often blurred, and it's time-consuming to attempt fixing the transition. A selection tool would be helpful since the Auto Mask is too heavy-handed. I get a cleaner effect using masks and blur filters the old-fashioned way.

[jimmy33926916dmwm]

Quick usage looks fantastic

[dtdirtbiker]

I really like it. I got nice compliments on the first set of photos I edited using the Lens Blur. 

[Atho MAJESTIC VISUAL]

so heavy in my gtx1050 ti i7 gen 4

[Alicia25816196nygr]

Lens blur is great, but sometimes will include subjects' ears, hands or hair. A tool to erase this would be amazing. Otherwise I can't use lens blur on such images.

[SandraFrance]

Is it just me?   I used a fairly abstract image, and applied lens blur and depth.   Achieved an image that I liked, but was unable to retain it.   I tried exiting the same way as I would for masking, but that did not work either.    Once I tried ANY other adjustments on the image, all my blur work disappeared.

[conlanpatrek]

Noticed it doesn't blur transparent edges, makes it harder to use in a composition.

[CHRISTIAN KREBS]

Great feature, works already very good. I`m missing also the possibility to add grain to the KI-Bokeh. It`s too smoosh and doesnt fit to the "normal" parts of the picture. Especially low light situation with hiher ISO resolution need a function to add grain to the bokeh part.

[Happywaterbear]

This is a great addition to Lightroom, now all you need to be able to do is make it apart of the copy attributes setting so I can apply the same effect to other photos as I go. 

It would be nice to have maybe an additional option for Bokeh to add custom bokeh in the assigned background as well as adjusting the depth map manually, but so far this is fantastic and welcome addition!

[Michael2356933486w2]

This has been doing amazingly well for me.  There are 2 things I need right now.

1) Batch Processing.  This takes so long, that I need to be able to just set it and forget it for the set of photos I'm working on and then I can come back and refine as needed.

2) A keyboard shortcut.  Please.

[GPGW]

If not already mentioned, outputting an optional layer mask would be helpful too

[cathyb68089302]

Using it on ACR and I loveeeee it!!! 

[Mackenzie28661338jf0a]

I really like this feature. As I'm typing this, I'm editing wedding photos, however, the ai is so good at detecting the subject from the background, that it has blurred the ground under my bride and not her dress, so it looks like she's floating.  Maybe if there were a little bit more of a natural blur to the effect, that would be incredible!

[candices66928783]

First play with this new tool is positive! Like all new things it will take some experimenting with but so far i'm impressed with how easy and acurate it seems to be.

[alan33@aol.com]

Wow. Really nice effect once I figured out how to work it. I see where you can select AI or manual subject selection but there is no indicator what subject is picked until you slide the filmstrip slider. I'm in Camera RAW 16.01. amazingly, it picked the right subject. 

[simonsaith]

When you select Visualize Depth, the overlays on the image show the following colors:

• Warm or Yellow: Covers the area that has a near focal range.
• Cool or Blue: Covers the area that has a far focal range.
• White: Covers the area that is currently in focus if you're adjusting the Focal Range controls.

[williamb13713626]

I clicked the "apply" box for several photos that had clear human or animal subjects in the forground and it kept telling me "Something went wrong.  There was an unexpected error and your request could not be completed."  I tried rebooting my computer and opening LR Classic again and that didn't fix the problem.

[simonsaith]

Follow the instruction of the pinned reply at the top to get the GPU driver updated.

[FrancisAlvarezPhotography]

Would love to have this feature added to future iterations as well as be able to copy/paste it as a parameter in the ensuing pop-up window when prompted. That'd be amazing! 

[funny_MeadowB82D]

My use case is sports: indoor volleyball. Nikon Z8 raw. Platform: Lightroom Classic. I've been using the masking feature in Lightroom for a while now, but it requires extensive manual touching up. This lens blur tool does work well, but it requires a nearly perfect sample to start with, and it's very resource intensive, moreso than the denoise feature. Still, I would like to see this lens blur tool develop further to add to the amazing ai-driven editing magic available to us.

[coliny5045454]

Thanks adobe for finally getting lens blur working in windows it's been a while with apple taking preference... I was having to use Luminar Neo as there works fine with windows.... Glad yours is better... Thank you.

[Candydash images]

Really pleased with this new feature, I have had a couple of issues with GPU but have sorted. Its working well on multiple images as well as single so time saving when editing a batch.  I like it and whilst I appreciate its still not finalised I appreciate the early acess. 

[Matthias22209714hcsm]

The lens blur function often works nicely, but parts of the subject that is in focus are sometimes not recognised, e.g. parts of a birds nest or antlers of reindeers standing in front of a birch forest in winter.

[SUSANA340176404yhr]

Muito bom e sincronização automática seria melhor ainda.