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: 

[Lumnia5CD5]

I just tried it out for the first time but I think I'd like to see a masking feature in the future so I can go in and edit the effect by hand.

[Todd25265443a9y2]

Love to be able to apply this in a masked off area.

I've used it on about 30-40 images.  Works well and looks like a natural bokeh.

[Riv Dogg]

This is a great feature, but I found two issues for me. Firstly the maximum degree of Blur is not enough. Secondly I needed to tidy up the blurred area, but the heal and clone brushes could not cope with what I wanted to do. I transfered to PS and did the job 'the hard way' , but was able to get exactly the result I wanted not the half way house I got in LR. I can see how the LR tools could be inproved, but in general as LR gets more powerful as it also becomes more complex which is not necessarily a good thing. PS inevitably adds more complexity, but perhaps that is what it is there for? I've always felt it should not be about LR v PS, but LR and PS and knowing when to move from one to the other.

[HL Photoguy]

It works pretty well. In a portrait I found that hair, especially dark hair loses definition and softness. It make the hair/head look like it is matted down. I used the manual adjustment to bring more of the frizzies into focus which made for a more natural look.

[Stéphane338856883ohi]

Bonjour,

Concernant la fonction "flou de l'objectif", j'ai toujours la même erreur :

[simonsaith]

Veuillez suivre la réponse épinglée en haut pour mettre à jour le pilote GPU de votre machine.

[Allen Maestas]

It's pretty amazing, but definitely resource hungry.

[Fotomaker01RA]

As an added feature to Ps ACR/Camera Raw Filter Lens Blur: I'd like to see the ability to save the Depth Map back to my Ps layer stack (just like with the Depth Blur neural filter) - after making Lens Blur adjustments. Thx.

[deanw20556551]

I love this feature.  Just had a chance to use it today and it seems to have worked perfectly.  Excellent job!

[Karolina012]

You could you develop the function so that it doesn't smear the grain

[KristaClearPhotography]

Focus/Blur adjustment circle is resizing by itself all of a sudden! Just started this today! Makes it hard to use! 

[2001bc]

Cool feature. Needs ability to add noise.

[shanejones8]

Would be useful if you could subtract the subject as sometimes the subject borders get blurred too.

[belovedmike]

I've tried it on several images but just can't get the subject to be detected properly, it usually misses an arm, or the wingmirror (if a car) or something pretty critical. Manually selecting the subject with a big box doesn't really work, it needs more of an PS style object selection tool so you can add or remove parts

[simonsaith]

Have you discovered the Refine tool and try it?

[Larry E Klink Photography]

In my experiment, I had 2 Bald Eagles sitting on a tree branch. The background is a busy, jumble of tree branches. The blur algorithm blurred the branches but also blurred the white head of the 2 eagles. I ended up with headless eagles.

[simonsaith]

You can pick the focus area via the Point/Area focus tool, and use the Refine tool to touch it up.

[ZionPhoto]

Doesn't work in Windows.

[simonsaith]

See the pinned reply at the top to get your GPU driver updated.

[Robert33920973prcr]

This is a nice intuative feature - I like it

[Kathy Peden]

I am really enjoying using this with family portraits! Very pleased :))

[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.