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: 

[minuteman62]

I like it, this will come in handy and i'm looking forward to experimenting with it more.

[travelwitch]

Attached image of red leaves and green background should select easily but fails badly. Not everyone shoot sportraits and even if you do DOF is easily controllable with right lens and technique. A click to seelct by colour picker would be useful for non portrait type subejcts. The effcts it produces looks good though so has potential.

[jmiller1948]

Just started toying with it today, but so far I am very impressed.  I'm a bokeh lover, and the new feature does a good job analyzing and applying blurring.  Adjusting the effect is easy and effective.  Appears to be a great tool.

[ericw91084808]

Quick and easy. It would be nice if it was included in the mask tool. 

[dragantomas]

I think the transition between focus and blur bound(s) could be a bit more seamless when Moving Focal Range slider. I think transit is too abrupt. Yes It can be fiddled with when in Refine section, but in practice that can be a double edge sword. You are never sure if you got it right. 

If the transition was less interrupted it can and will make a difference from the very get go, also in terms of speed workflow. 

[demiguel.m]

I would love to have the possibility of being able to export the mask for different uses within Photoshop itself.

[victor lucas es]

as others have mentioned - some way to control and refine the masking of hair and other edge details of the 'in-focus' subject would be great. Perhaps a slider to adjust overall edge feather? Or something like the 'refine edge' tool in photoshop. See attached 100% crops of before and after... the objects behind the subjects head need to be separated somehow. And the hard edge makes the effect look artificial.

[MenahemYaniv]

In Visualize Depth I would like to be able to sample an existing depth color, to set the amount slider accordingly, so I can paint the same depth at another area of the photo.

[cadec87784668]

If it would work and not hang up it it might be a good tool. So far not impressed at all.

[John P R5]

LOVE the future and thinking of this feature. It's got some quirks to work out....this photo picked up some areas that may have been off plane from the subject (bird in this case). 

[Nuts100000]

Excellent on most of my photos (wildlife)....Goodbye to expensive fast lens

[ajh3_esquire]

Love it...so much. I ran Lens Blur on a scanned hasselblad transparency and it generated a wonderful depth of field effect. But it also created strange circular bokeh circles in the uniform clouds. Is this expected or a strange artifact?

[joshuabury]

Try reducing the Boost slider under the bokeh options. It's possible some of the brighter details in the clouds are getting detected as "light sources" and boosted so they are more visible when blurred.

[simonsaith]

Try reduce the hightlight boost to see if it helps reduce the artifact?

[simonsaith]

Try to reduce the highlight boost amount slider to see if it helps?

[lkazphoto]

I would like to keep Camera Callibration to be the panel that's mapped to the CTRL+9 shortcut. Or at least these customizable.

[Mr Wyn]

When the subject is obvious (to my eye and the AI) it works like a charm, however, it needs a way to extend the masking in the depth preview to inlude bits that were missed...  For example I had a photo with two people, a woman (subject) and a guy holding a water bottle and smartphone - the guy was nicely blurred in foreground all except for the water bottle!  I went into the masking and found the person, I added the water bottle and the phome, but couldn't figure out how to make the lend blur update the blurring on the the masked person to include the extended mask.  Obviously, I don't totally understand what I need to do...  Still, a very nice and welcome additional feature and looking forward to it's continued refinent.

[zwdb08wdb]

I see you moved my feedback to here. That would present another Adobe issue , their complicated site . I searched for feedback and found nothing . That to needs addressing. But truly for this beta blurr tool to be effective it needs to be linked to masking so landscape users and even portrait users can mask specific areas for the effect  ..AI is good but its the user that should be in charge of how its implemented.  AI is taking the editing skill out of the equation of photography to appeal more to the point ans click generation. Its a great tool but should allow for user control. In landscapes you only want specific areas to blurr...this is nothing more than than the same portrait blurr app that comes with my phone inputed into a photography editing giant like lightroom. But its allready a free part of most phone cameras. So adobe is behind the 8 ball. Why not create a tilt shift focus effect , or better noise reduction or focus stacking in the mobile app that would be game changing since folks like me with poor eyes edit with my phone. Then allow simple blending layers ...or add vibrancy to the masking tool,for creative color, the mobile app is good but could be great....Bill 

[mpphoto8496]

It works great for a lot of  things however it would be very helpful to have an Add and Subtract brush.  It seems to have problems with openings in hair where the background shows through.  Otherwise, it is an amazing addition.

[John P R5]

There is, its under refine dropdown. Not easy to spot at first

[Kayla30271140ks29]

Everytime i try using the lens blur feature it says "'something went wrong, there was an unexpected errror and your request could not be completed"

[Pixelstorys]

It would be nice if you could add some grain to the blur then it would look more real

[Volquardsen photography]

The hand is not korrekt. The main part is sharp, but the fingers truning to the sharp body where blurred.
Even a background in the closed area between an arm and the body is not fully blurred. on little part was still sharp like the body.

[johnd47664283]

Looks good the only issue I have is that backing up the cat from one machine to another,  I have to turn off then on tne lens blur for it to reactivate on the sexcond machine (Desktop to Laptop via wifi drive)

[cjthibeault98]

I'm seeing the following buggy behaviors and issues:

1. When using the Focus/Blur brushes, if it is already processing in the background, it appears to  register any mouse movement as a brush stroke even if the mouse button is not held down. 

2. Related to the previous, there should be a) visual feedback (cursor change, or something) to indicate that it is still updating the image and b) only register brush strokes when the mouse button is definitely down. 

3. Because of the previous, I have had problems where I get brush strokes of blur going across parts of the image I wanted to keep. It appears that the Undo feature does not work to correct this (the brush strokes remain, and Undoing will take me all the way back to unappying the filter entirely). 

4. After struggling with all the previous issues, I attempted to paint with the Focus brush to restore focus to areas (such as faces). However, even after selecting Focus instead of Blur (and seeing it change in the UI), it continued to apply more blur wherever I made a brush stroke. 

5. I would suggest adding a "Preserve People" mode similar to the AI people selection. Essentially, any pixels inside a selected people region will remain untouched by any depth effects. 

It's definitely a cool piece of tech, but because of the things I mentioned, I find it faster and safer to do this in PS using the Neural Depth Blur (although what you have here in LR is technically better; please port this into PS).