Lens

Lens simulates the optics of a real lens: blur toward the edges, vignetting, color fringes and distortion. It works on photos and video.

Start with a preset. Helios is a Soviet portrait lens with swirling bokeh. Biotar is a 1920s cine lens with even more swirl. Cooke is soft and warm. Dispo is the plastic lens of a disposable camera. Anamorphic gives oval bokeh and bends lines near the edges. Move any slider and the preset becomes your own lens. Off turns the lens off and keeps your settings.

Strength sets how strong the whole lens is. Size sets the lens’s image circle, and every other effect scales with it.

Tilt sets the lens center. Drag the handle on the photo to move it. Amount tilts the plane of focus, so one side of the frame goes soft.

Lens Vignette darkens the edges. Strength sets how dark, Falloff how gradual and Defocus how soft the edge is. Color Cast warms or cools the edges.

Bokeh blurs the frame more toward the edges, like a fast lens wide open. Blur sets how much. Shape squeezes out-of-focus points into ovals. Swirl spins them around the center, and below zero stretches them outward. Boost brightens out-of-focus lights. Lens Blur uses the same Shape, Swirl and Boost. With a depth mask in Lens Blur, the blur follows the photo’s depth instead.

Chromatic Aberration splits colors along high-contrast edges, mostly in the corners. Growth sets how close to the center it starts. Fringing adds a purple or green edge to bright outlines, like branches against a sky. Coma makes bright points trail outward. Fringing and Coma each have Amount and Size.

Sharpness sets how much detail the lens keeps. At MTF 100 nothing is lost. Lower values soften fine detail. Falloff softens the corners more.

Distortion bends straight lines. Amount sets how far the corners bend, in percent. Negative is barrel, positive is pincushion. Mustache bends the middle of the frame while the corners hold.

Lens is demanding, which is why it carries the LAB label. While you drag a slider, the preview runs at half resolution. Exports with a lens take longer, especially on video, and older devices may struggle. For faster exports, set Settings ▸ Export ▸ Effects quality to Fast. Fast draws the lens like the preview and is about three times quicker. Precise renders it in full.