Can’t turn Lens Blur as a smart filter in CS3

W
Posted By
wings
May 12, 2007
Views
2049
Replies
12
Status
Closed
Why is the Lens Blur filter grayed out when you want to use it as a smart filter? According to the help it should be usable as a smart filter, I’ve also seen an author use it in one of his latest CS3 books, but he uses the Mac and this problem only occurs on Windows machine. Also the help doesn’t mention any limitations.
Can someone check to see if he can turn the Lens Blur filter into a Smart Object on a Windows machine. Btw, the other flter that’s also grayed out is Stylize/Wind.

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W
wings
May 12, 2007
Sorry fot he title, I mean of course "Can’t turn Lens Blur INTO a smart filter"
JZ
Joe_Zydeco
May 13, 2007
Lens Blur and Wind don’t work in Windows, either, though Help implies that they should.

Adobe either screwed up or they lied about it. Since Adobe never admits to screwing up, they evidently lied.
RB
Robert_Barnett
May 13, 2007
Doesn’t work here on 8-bit or 16-bit. There are also a couple of others that aren’t available like Extrude. Maybe they are too complex.

Robert
W
wings
May 13, 2007
Ok guys, but the strange thing is that it should be possible when you look at this PDF file, page #13:

http://books.elsevier.com/bookscat/samples/9780240520285/Fro m_the_Author/whats_new_in_cs3.pdf

It actually shows a screenshot of Lens Blur converted to a smart filter. So if the author Martin Evening can do that, why can’t I?
I find lens blur very useful to create depth of field, so I would really like to get this working.
RB
Robert_Barnett
May 13, 2007
Well, that is soneone else not Adobe saying it could be done. It is possible that since Matrin would have access to earlier betas that in an earlier beta it was possible to do. Adobe may have remove it because of problems they couldn’t resolve before release.

Does anything provided by Adobe say you can do this? Well, even if it did alls that would mean is that they didn’t get around to correcting it after they removed the ability from a later beta or the final product.

Lens Blur according to Adobe is a very complex filter so they may not have been able to get it work right or speedy enough for this to work. As I said in another post if you covert for smart filter and look at the filters menus there are a couple that are grayed out.

I would not however rely on a third parties product to be the gosple for Photoshop. If Adobe put something out that says you can do this then you need to contact technical support and find out why it isn’t working and how or if you can make it work.

Robert
RK
Rob_Keijzer
May 13, 2007
Does anything provided by Adobe say you can do this?

Yes, it’s in the Help. Search for "smart".

Rob
W
wings
May 13, 2007
Does anything provided by Adobe say you can do this?
Yes, read the help.

Lens Blur according to Adobe is a very complex filter so they may not have been able to get it work right
Well obviously they did get it right, since Martin Evening is showing it.

As I said > in another post if you covert for smart filter and look at the filters menus
there are a couple that are grayed out.
Those who are grayed out are all mentioned by Adobe. The only ones not mentioned are lens blur and stylize wind.

I would not however rely on a third parties product to be the gosple for Photoshop.
Yeah, let’s get rid of all Total Training videos and all Phosohop literature, you can’t trust them anymore. (rolling eyes)

If Adobe put something out that says you can do this then you need to contact technical support and find out why it isn’t working and how or if you can make it work.
Let’s all not visit this forum anaymore (and dozens of others) and contact Adobe instead; they will love it!
RB
Robert_Barnett
May 14, 2007
Well, then I suggest you all stopping being bitchy and contact Adobe. These are user to user forums not Adobe Technical support. BTW I have seen other Podcasts that show the LensBlur grayed out when using Smart Filters on Smart Objects. So it sounds to me like the other sources are wrong. The chances are very good that it was a beta thing that was removed before shipping because of problems with it. The vidoes and books if they are out now were done using beta software not shipping code. As for the help, it just didn’t get updated.

Robert
RK
Rob_Keijzer
May 14, 2007
Then they forgot to edit the help text, that still explains how to do it.

Rob
WE
Wolf_Eilers
May 15, 2007
I just checked the LiveDocs online documentation for Ps CS3 and the ‘About Smart Filters’ entry states:

You can apply any Photoshop filter—except for Extract, Liquify, Pattern Maker, and Vanishing Point—as a Smart Filter.

So, according to this documentation Lens Blur should operate as a smart filter. You can use LiveDocs to ask a question, and I encourage people to do so to determine if this is a documentation omission. (Since I do not yet have CS3 I cannot verify if Lens Blur is able to be converted to a Smart Filter.)

For more information about LiveDocs see John Nack’s May 11 blog posting here: <http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/>
RB
Robert_Barnett
May 15, 2007
That is what I said Rob. Adobe had a very large product launch this time around. Little things are bound to be overlooked.

Robert
RB
Robert_Barnett
May 15, 2007
I have Wind grayed out as well. Again Adobe probably removed it as an option because of problems they didn’t have time to fix and simply didn’t get the help updated. The fact that some videos show it working suggests strongly that those videos were done with an earlier beta that allowed it. Lens Blur according to Adobe when they added in CS2 is a very slow working, time consuming and resource hungry filter.

My suggestion is you get over it and move on.

Robert

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