Lessons

Lesson Info

Adjusting Images: The Lens Blur Panel

1 Now we're gonna talk about a very fascinating tool 2 called Lens Blur. 3 This is a new tool, in fact, 4 it's got a little blue badge 5 on it that says early access, 6 and that means that it is not fully developed yet 7 and they're working on it and you get to use it. 8 So it's fantastic. 9 It does a great job already. 10 I'm sure it will get much better, 11 probably faster, more interesting. 12 So just kind of keep watching this thing. 13 And as you update to your next version, 14 you'll start to see things change. 15 And you'll see it, you know, 16 morph a little bit. 17 Right now, at the beginning of 2024, 18 this is what it looks like, 19 but you're going to see it change. 20 So maybe towards the end of 2024, 21 it'll be fully developed. 22 And so maybe it'll be a little bit different. 23 But from a general standpoint, 24 this is exactly what it is 25 and I'm gonna show you how to use it now. 26 It's a fantastic tool, 27 but it uses AI in order to do some of its work. 28 So it's...

a pretty complicated little tool 29 and it's pretty smart. 30 So let me show you how that works. 31 And in order to show it to you, 32 I've pulled up a photograph that has a pretty nice 33 kind of bokeh effect to it. 34 And I like all of the blurriness back here. 35 I don't necessarily like the fact that the trees 36 above her are sharp and I know that they are sharp 37 because she's sharp. 38 And so the fact that she is sharp 39 means that the trees above her should be sharp. 40 And I also don't like the fact 41 that I've got so much sharpness on the, 42 the foreground area. 43 So I want to kind of mimic the idea 44 of an even wider aperture 45 so that I, and, and maybe even like a tilt shift lens ish 46 so that I, I really focus in on her and everything else 47 is blurred out. 48 And so that this tool, 49 this lens blur is gonna help us in that way. 50 So let me zoom in on this just, 51 well, I don't wanna zoom in too much 52 because, all right, I'm gonna zoom in as much as I can 53 so that you can see the full photo 54 and see the early access lens blur. 55 The first thing I have to do is click apply. 56 And when I do that, 57 notice that it has to do a little work. 58 Before I can do anything, 59 it has to do that little bit of work 60 so that it can find all of the information 61 and create what we call a depth mask. 62 So it figured out what the depth would be if it was, 63 if it actually had three dimensional information in it. 64 It kind of read the three dimensional nature 65 of the photograph based on the AI, 66 and then it created a depth mask. 67 Now I'm gonna show you what that depth masks looks like. 68 So that's in this little tool right here 69 called visualize depth. 70 So when I click on visualize depth, 71 this is what it's gonna look like there. 72 So now it's just shown you the depth. 73 Now see how she's orange? 74 And those trees that are all sharp are also orange. 75 So that's the depth mask. 76 You can see that the foreground is yellow. 77 The mid-ground is kind of this orange. 78 And then the background is that purple. 79 So you can see that over here in this graph. 80 So there's like a little histogram here 81 and it's showing you that this area here is in focus. 82 Everything from yellow, 83 so kind of that middle of the yellow, 84 up to the middle of the purple is all in focus. 85 And I can change the focus of this image 86 based on sliding this little area around. 87 And so if I want to have less of the yellow in focus, 88 I simply just take this focal range 89 and click on it and move it. 90 You see that? 91 See I'm changing the focal range there. 92 So now this yellow area 93 is not going to be as in focus. 94 So lemme turn off the visualized depth real quick 95 so that you can see what that's gonna look like. 96 When I zoom in, 97 see how it's really blurry now on the edges? 98 And let me just show you what that looks like. 99 I'm gonna turn it on and off. 100 So let me zoom in. 101 Maybe I need to zoom out a little bit there. 102 So let me turn this on and off. 103 See that, the planks are in focus, planks are out of focus, 104 planks are in focus, planks are out of focus. 105 And notice that it's even blurring 106 the background quite a bit. 107 That's because I have changed the focal point 108 so that the focus areas here, 109 not all the way to here. 110 So it's blurring blurry stuff. 111 And I can change that. 112 Let me kind of zoom out here, 113 and I can change how much the background is blurry 114 just by dragging this forward, or sorry, backward. 115 I'm dragging it backward so that everything's in focus 116 or dragging it forward 117 and see how things start to go out of focus 118 back there in the background, which I really like. 119 So let's go to about there. 120 Okay, and then I can play with this one 121 and move that focus out and in. 122 Oh, I'm moving the whole focus, sorry. 123 I want to just grab the front edge of that focus 124 'cause I can grab the entire focus plane 125 and move it back and forth, but I don't want to do that. 126 What I want to do is I want to grab 127 just the one area of focus. 128 I just want to grab this front area of focus 129 and slide it until it hits basically her feet 130 and see how if I go too far, 131 it kind of blurs her. 132 Don't want to do that. 133 And you can tell where she is. 134 If I visualize this, you can see I don't want 135 to get into this orange area here. 136 So I grab that and I drag it back and forth 137 until see how it's starting to creep up her. 138 Don't want to do that. 139 So I'm gonna go like that there. 140 That's it. 141 That's as far as I want to go there. 142 And in the background, I want to bring it up 143 and it's gonna start to creep over her. 144 Don't want that, there. 145 Good, turn off the visualization. 146 And now you can see I've got this nice blurry, 147 but see I still have this really nice area up here 148 that's nice and sharp, which I don't want. 149 So now I get to use the brush tools involved here 150 and these are awesome. 151 So I'm gonna come back in here 152 and I'm gonna choose whether 153 I want to add focus or blur. 154 And in this case I want to add blur. 155 So I'm gonna use my pen tool here 156 and I'm gonna come in and click on the blur 157 and I'm gonna change my brush size. 158 So I need it to be, well, that's too big, 159 and I can hit the bracket keys 160 to change the size of the brush, 161 or I can just go down and grab the brush size 162 and bring it down. 163 That's probably about right. 164 And the feathering is all the way up. 165 And let's take the flow 166 to like 60% or something like that. 167 Do not turn on the auto mask. 168 If you turn on the auto mask, 169 it's gonna see edges of things. 170 You don't wanna see the edges of things right now. 171 We just wanna blur this whole area up here. 172 And if I turn on visualized depth, 173 you're gonna see that whole area is considered sharp 174 and we wanna blur it. 175 So I'm just gonna start painting, 176 see how that's blurring. 177 So I'm painting and blurring. 178 I'm gonna decrease the size of this 179 so I don't spill onto her. 180 There we go, there. 181 So now we have a very blurry area here. 182 And see this area is closer to the camera, so it's yellow, 183 but it's still gonna be blurry. 184 And this area is further away, 185 so it's gonna be purple 186 and it's gonna be blurry. 187 So now let's turn off the visualize. 188 There we go. 189 Now we're starting to see blur. 190 That's a good amount of blur there. 191 So now when we look here, 192 we just see her sharp 193 and we've got the background a little bit more blurry 194 than it was, and we've got the foreground 195 a little bit more blurry. 196 And I actually, I, I would enjoy this being blurry 197 over on the left bottom side. 198 So I'm gonna go back into visualized depth again 199 and I'm just gonna start blurring out this area here too. 200 Just like that and maybe even there. 201 Okay, now let's turn off the visualized depth again. 202 Yeah, that's better. 203 That way I don't see that stone all that much. 204 So I like the way that's looking. 205 That's so much better. 206 Now let me show you a few more things 207 that are involved inside of this lens blur option here. 208 There's also the blur amount that you can use 209 and the bokeh effects. 210 So notice that there's different types. 211 So you've got different blades on the apertures, 212 different kind of effects that you get from bokeh. 213 Just play around with them, choose. 214 So I'm just gonna click through them so that you can see. 215 Remember all of our blur is set. 216 So none of this is gonna change even when we do this. 217 So now I can choose from just kind of a normal bokeh, 218 see how that one's a little softer. 219 That one's got a little bit more of an edge to it. 220 That one's got kind of, it crosses over 221 so the circles kind of inter lap with each other 222 a little bit more, 223 and so it creates a little bit more confusion. 224 So just kind of play around and choose the one 225 that you like the most and go with that one. 226 There's no right answer here. 227 It's just which bokeh effect do you like the most? 228 And I, that one's a little bit too much. 229 I think I actually like the first one the best. 230 And then I can change the amount. 231 So I can increase the blur or decrease the blur. 232 So that's zero. 233 Let's zoom out so that we can see 234 exactly what it looks like. 235 So there's the full photograph. 236 This is at zero and this is at a hundred percent 237 and that's probably too much. 238 So let's go to like maybe 50, 70, 60%, something like that. 239 That looks pretty good. 240 That kind of softened everything up, 241 gave me the right amount. 242 In addition to this blur amount option, 243 you also have something called boost. 244 And boost is just a matter 245 of a hundred percent or 0% of the effect 246 of the specific bokeh that you've chosen. 247 And sometimes you'll see it, sometimes you won't. 248 This is not a really great image 249 for seeing that because you don't have 250 a lot of like sparkly highlights in it 251 or something like that. 252 And so you won't see those bokeh effects 253 on the highlights as much. 254 And so the, probably the nearest place 255 that you would see is up here in the highlights of those, 256 of those branches, those leaves. 257 And so as you go to a different bokeh effect, 258 you might, there, you see it there, 259 and then if I take the that boost down or up, 260 then you'll see a little bit more or less of that effect 261 inside of the image. 262 So it's just a matter of kind of subtly 263 changing these different bokeh effects. 264 And I really don't like that bokeh effect at all. 265 So I'm gonna go back to the normal one 266 and I'm gonna just double click that boost 267 and that sends it back to 50. 268 And by the way, again, everything here, 269 even inside of the lens blur options, 270 if you just double click any of these tools, 271 they will go back to the original. 272 If I double click the focal range area, 273 it will go back to its original state as well. 274 And also, just, just so that you're aware, 275 this is important to note as well. 276 If you are looking at your image 277 and you want to choose a focal range, 278 you can choose that focal range 279 in a different way. 280 So we chose it by visualizing the depth 281 and then manually changing the total 282 amount of focus. 283 So, the actual focal distance, we changed that manually 284 by looking at the depth mask that was created. 285 You can also change that by going again 286 to the targeting tool. 287 So when you click on that target tool, 288 you can draw a box in the area 289 or the the distance that you want. 290 So I can just simply say, 291 I want this distance right here 292 to be the only distance in focus. 293 And when I let go, 294 it chooses a fairly similar area in the distance, 295 in focal range to what I had chosen. 296 So if I hit undo, you'll see it's pretty similar. 297 That's what we chose. 298 And then it chose something a little bit wider than that. 299 So if you want to, you can just draw out 300 the distance that you want in the photograph 301 and then it uses that to calculate. 302 You can also click on this little human icon here. 303 And when you click on the human icon, 304 it looks for the person 305 and tries to figure out what includes them 306 and doesn't include them. 307 And it creates the visual depth mask 308 based on trying to keep them in. 309 And of course it see how it kind of 310 went wider to make sure that that person was in. 311 But I'm just gonna undo 312 because I liked our depth mask that we created better, 313 because it allows the trees to be out of focus as well. 314 So the lens blur option is a really wonderful addition 315 to the Lightroom universe 316 and it's available in Lightroom Classic as well. 317 So if you happen to be a Lightroom Classic user, 318 it's there as well. 319 You play around with it 320 because you're going to love what it does 321 to subtly change some of the images 322 that are really good. 323 And then they could just use a little extra help. 324 Like in this case, I thought that the trees 325 above her were calling too much attention to themselves. 326 And so by adding that natural looking blur, it's perfect.