Smart objects with lens blur get messed up after scaling

Question

Hello all,

This happened to me for the first time today and it took me a while to pinpoint what triggers it.

If I have a smart object and apply camera raw filters to it, the object gets messed up when I scale it. Parts of it would be blurry and parts of it would be regular.

After some tries, I figured this happened when one of those filters is lens blur. What happens is, the smart object is scaled, but the mask of the lens blur does not scale with it.

Take the example I've attached. The image is converted to a smart object and in camera raw presets, adaptive: blur background (strong) is applied. When I scale the image down, (i'm guessing) the mask for the blur background doesn't scale with it, resulting in a weird effect. This wasn't the case before, I would scale the image and all the filters would be just fine.

First I thought I must have changed some setting by accident, but resetting my preferences did not help. Neither updating my PS and Camera Raw to the latest version. Any ideas?

Thanks

Mac OS 15.3.1
Photoshop 26.5.0

Camera Raw 17.2

creative explorer · Answer

@kbertan Since you've already tried updating Photoshop and Camera Raw, and resetting preferences, the issue likely points to a specific interaction bug with that particular filter and Smart Object scaling. A common workaround for this kind of problem is to rasterize the Smart Object after applying the Camera Raw filter, but before you scale it, or to apply the blur filter as a separate regular filter (not a Smart Filter) after scaling your Smart Object to its final size. This breaks the "live" link of the Smart Filter for the blur, but ensures the effect is rendered correctly at the scaled dimensions. If you need to maintain editability, you might have to scale the Smart Object first, then reapply the blur filter in Camera Raw.

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