Fuji’s X series cameras have X-Trans sensors. They are a different arrangement to the common Bayer sensors used by almost every other camera manufacturer. X-Trans sensors are more picky about post-processing software. Photoshop was a poor choice at one time but the latest versions work fine. Some people prefer other software such as Lightroom, DxO, Capture One, or Iridient Digital.
I decided to take a look at how Lightroom in 2024 handles Fuji files, and ended up looking at something else that Lightroom can do. Look at these two images. They are the same photo that I processed twice, and in one version I instructed Lightroom to blur the background naturally.
How To Blur Backgrounds
It really is simple. Here is a screenshot of Lightroom Develop module. On the left you can see a list of presets. Because I have clicked on ‘Adaptive Blur Background – Strong’ (it’s at the bottom of the list here) then that is the preset applied.
At the top of the list of presets you can see a slider that enables me to chooses how much ‘Strong’ I want to apply. I set it at 100. The scale goes to 200 but that was too strong,. meaning the contrast between the foreground and background looked unnatural.
Click on the image to see a bigger version:
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