Lightroom/Camera Raw: Focus mask / image sharpness

It would be nice if Lightroom could calculate image sharpness (as in, camerashake) programmatically.

This would help my workflow because there are frequently cases where I took several copies of a shot at slow shutter speed, and want to see which is the sharp one, without having to manually compare them. (I would also like a quick way of spotting 'blurred' shots right away in general.)

It could be a number ('on a scale of 1 to 100, how sharp is the sharpest bit of the picture'), which you could set to appear as a badge on the image thumbnail, or else a visual display such as a colour-map of which areas are sharp (green = really sharp, red = soft, or something like that). The latter could also indicate what's in focus. Should be available from the main library screen so you don't have to look at the photo to see how sharp it is.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom - programmatically calculate image sharpness.

I'd like Photoshop to have a "Depth of Field" filter which creates a mask according to the distance (Which is evaluated relatively to the "Focus").
It can be done.

It can be done if you have a stereo setup...

I've created a Lightroom plugin for this:

http://www.capturemonkey.com/focusmask

Capture One reportedly has a new feature where a green mask is overlaid where the picture is most in focus (thumbnails as well). As an action shooter (sports, airshows, etc) that would greatly help identify OOF shots for disposal.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How about a "mask" to show areas of sharp focus?.

Note: This topic was created from a reply on the Lightroom/Camera Raw: Display camera focus information topic.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How about a "mask" to show areas of sharp focus?.

Lightroom: Automatic focus checking when comparing hunderts of images from a session, like Capture One does. This allows the pro who's working with high volume to quickly sort out misfocused frames or motion-blurred frames.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom: Automatic focus checking.

It would be very useful if Lightroom could display where the focus is sharp on an image. Much like exposure clipping, turning white to red and black to blue, focus mask would color the area of the image that is most in focus.

This would make it very quick to find the best in focus image in a series of pictures.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Lightroom : Focus peaking, mask, check....

It would be interesting if the implementation was similar to the focus peaking points used on film sets by focus pullers.
This has also been recreated by the guys at Magic Lantern for DSLRs.

Any focus mask feature would make such a speed difference for me after my shoots.

Focus Peaking is the right feature. It shows areas of the photos that are in focus (i.e. are sharp). This can be calculated from sharpness in the image. There SW that can do it already.

This should be available in Library and Development modules to enable fast image picking and filtering.

I just read the information about Lightroom 5 and I'm really sad that Focus Mask is not part of the release...

I work with a 12fps dslr and when shooting sport I can burst 10-15 images each time I press the shutter button. It's not an option, it's MANDATORY for me to check the focus of images before retouching them.

Focus Mask is long overdue and would be much much more useful than a lot of other features.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Lightroom: Analyze images and show an overlay of the sharpest areas.

In Grid view, it would make culling so much faster if we could have some sort of Focus Mask (like Capture One).
Please add something to easily see if a photo is properly focused without having to zoom in on it. Thanks!!!

This topic is 4 years old (don't all LR feedback comments start this way nowadays?). I agree with people that say LR could benefit hugely by a full recode from the ground up. Make it a priority to create tools that make editing FASTER, but even more importantly Adobe needs to add intelligence to the software to ASSIST us, not just sit there waiting for us to move a slider.

I don't think it needs a full recode. That implies that the code is what is slowing down development efforts. It's still an excellent tool. It just has lagged in development especially in the organizational workflow lately due to the focus on mobile tools. the develop module continues to take advantage of the camera raw team's work, and it does amazing job to make near real time changes to large images. However keywording and sorting through images, stacking and grouping and reorganizing clearly isn't a priority as little has changed since lightroom 2 and 3.

Focus Mask/peaking via microcontrast detect is a great idea like seen in Capture One

YES, this is exactly what we need in LR. Great suggestion!