Reducing Flare Reducing

In this lesson, we’re going to talk about lens flare. We’ll learn about what causes it, how to prevent it when you’re out shooting and how to remove it from your images using Photoshop and Lightroom. Because there may be occasions where you want the lens flare effect, we’ll also cover techniques to ensure that you get it.

What Causes Lens Flare (Timestamp 0:49) When you get lens flare in your photo, it’s going to appear as an area that has less contrast than the rest of the image. Sometimes, this will be the only effect of the lens flare. Other times, there will be more obvious effects that you’ll probably want to get rid of. Lens flare is coming into the lens of your that’s not being used to light the subject matter in the scene. Instead, it’s light bouncing around inside the lens in ways that it’s not supposed to. The various glass elements in your lens are somewhat reflective. Therefore, when light comes in and hits the glass edges directly, it’s going to bounce around the lens and end up Lens flare is created by a bright light source falling on creating something other than the front of the lens. a direct path to the lens sen- sor. When that’s the case, you get lens flare.

In a nutshell, lens flare is caused by light reflecting on lens elements. To get lens flare, you need a really bright light source somewhere near your field of view.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 2 How to Prevent Lens Flare (5:20) The easiest way to deal with lens flare is to prevent it in the first place. Here are a few prevention techniques:

Use a . This will help to pre- vent bright light sources that are com- ing from a slight angle from hitting the front element of the lens.

Obstruct the camera’s view of the light source. If you’re pointing the camera to- ward the light source, try to find an ele- ment in the scene that the light source can hide behind. In one of the example images, you can see that I hid the sun In this image, we prevented lens flare by behind the gas station sign, preventing placing the bright light source (the sun) be- hind the gas station sign. the sun’s light from going directly into my lens.

Shoot with the light source behind you. This will ensure that the sun will not re- flect off of the front lens element.

Shoot wide open. If you change the setting on your camera, you’re go- ing to change the way that lens flare is rendered. The more you stop down the lens (using a higher and higher aperture number), the more pronounced the lens flare will become. The more you widen the aperture, the less dominant the lens flare will be. If you’re really concerned about lens flare, shoot wide open, at the lowest aperture number your lens is capable of.

Buy with anti-reflective coatings.Higher end lenses have anti-reflective coatings. The higher the quality of this anti-reflective coating, the less light is go- ing to reflect off of the various elements in the lens.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 3 Use filters with anti-reflective coatings. It’s common for photographers to use filters on the front of their lenses. This can be UV filters, polarizing filters, etc. Any time you introduce a piece of glass in front of your lens, it’s something that the sun (or other bright light source) can reflect off of and create flare. If you’re going to buy one of these filters, look into whether or not it has an anti-reflective coating on it. If it does, you’ll usually end up with a higher contrast image and will have reduced lens flare.

Lens Hoods are not Enough (9:26) A lens hood is designed to be most effective when you’re at the widest angle view that the lens is capable of. The more you zoom the lens, the less effective the lens hood will be because it’s not really shaped for the zoomed-in view. You’ll also find that many lens hoods are round. These are less effective because they do not consider the of the camera’s sensor, This is an example of a lens hood that is not round and therefore takes the sensor shape into account. which is not round. Look for lens hoods that are not round and that have a matte, felt-like finish inside. These account for the shape of the sensor and will not reflect light onto the lens itself. Full-frame lenses on crop-frame sensors have less-than-ideal hoods. If you’re us- ing a camera with a crop-frame sensor, you’ll need to be careful about what lenses you’re using because the lens hood is designed for a camera with a larger sensor.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 4 Use a Human Lens Hood (12:43) Sometimes, the lens hood is not going to be enough, especially when you’re shooting with a wide angle lens that has a small lens hood. In cases like this, you can hold out your hand to block the bright light from bouncing off the lens and causing lens flare. You just need to be careful that your hand is not actually in the image frame.

The image in the upper left contains lens flare and you can see that it lowered the contrast in the vehicle. For the image on the right, I held my hand out to block the sun from hitting the lens’ front element. At left, you can see what the technique looks like.

Use Lower F-Stop Setting (14:54) The aperture setting is going to affect the way the lens flare is rendered. Various shapes may appear around the bright light source and those shapes will usual- ly be in the same shape as the aperture you’re using. So if you’re shooting wide open, the shapes will be round. As you start to close down the aperture, you’re going to start to see the shape of that aperture opening in those little spots.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 5 From left to right, these images were at f/22, f/9.5 and f/4. You can see how much more pronounced the lens flare shapes are at the smaller aperture.

Previewing Lens Flare (16:25) If we want to prevent lens flare, we first need to be able to recognize that we’re getting it. That can be tricky with DSLR because the aperture setting is set to wide open while you’re looking through the viewfinder. They do this to keep the viewfinder nice and bright, but it prevents you from being able to preview any lens flare. If you hold down the Preview button on the front of your camera, it will close down the aperture setting to whatever you have your camera set to. This causes the viewfinder to become dark, but you’ll actually be able to preview the lens flare you’re going to get.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 6 If you use a mirrorless camera, you’re seeing a video screen when you look through the viewfinder. It doesn’t matter what aperture you’re shooting at because it can compensate for the brightness difference when the aperture closes down. There- fore, your camera will usually have a preference, allowing you to decide whether or not you want to preview the aperture setting. If you DO preview the aperture setting, you’ll also be seeing any lens flare that you’re going to get.

Want Flare for Effect? (19:02) • There may be instances where you want to have lens flare as a creative effect in your shot. Here are some things you could do to ensure that you get it. • Include the sun (or other bright light source) in the view. • Remove the lens hood so any bright light sources can reach the front element of the lens. • Shoot at f/22 because higher aperture settings create more pronounced lens flare. • Add off-angle just outside the frame ( works great for this). • Add cheap UV filters to the front of your lens because it’s going to give you more surfaces for light to reflect off of. • Shoot with a cheap, uncoated lens. • Add dust and smudges to the front of the lens. • In Photoshop, add a lens flare filter by clicking on the Filter menu and choosing Render > Lens Flare.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 7 Removing Lens Flare in Lightroom and Photoshop (21:57) Now let’s talk about how we can remove unwanted lens flare in Lightroom and Photoshop. Theses are the general steps we’ll take: • Retouch in Lightroom/ACR • Adjust in Lightroom/ACR • Composite multiple shots in Photoshop • Retouch areas that don’t contain critical detail in Photoshop • Adjust areas with critical detail in Photoshop.

Reduce or Eliminate Lens Flare in Lightroom (24:47) In the first example image, I was shooting directly into the sun and used an aperture setting of f/22 to ensure that the sun would appear as a starburst. As a result, I ended up with a lot of flare in the image. The flare is rendered as white shapes in the top part of the image and some colorful blobs in the bottom part of the image. We’ll open the image in Lightroom’s Develop Module and first focus on the colorful flare in the bottom part of the image. We’ll activate the Adjustment Brush, which can be found in the tool bar beneath the histogram on the right side of the interface. The Adjustment Brush sliders will appear in the panel on the right and we want to make sure that they’re all “zeroed out” to their default settings. To reset the sliders, double-click on the word By shooting into the sun, I ended up with “Effect” at the top of the sliders. lots of lens flare spots in this image.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 8 Now, because the area surrounding the colorful flare has no , we’re going to drag the Satu- ration slider far to the left so that the Adjustment Brush will be used to remove the color. We’ll use a small brush size and make sure the Flow and The Adjustment Brush is located Density settings are at their maximum values. on the right side of the Develop This tells the brush to deliver 100% of the effect Module. that we’ve dialed in. We’ll then use the Adjust- ment Brush to paint over the flare area. After we’ve painted to cover the affected area, we can return to the adjustment sliders to fine-tune the settings. We’ll further lower the Saturation slider to make sure that there is no color left in the area and we’ll move the slider just slightly to the left, darkening the area so that it matches the surroundings. There is a little spot near the top of the area where the flare used to be that is still too bright, so we’ll click the New button at the top of the Adjustment Brush slid- ers to tell the brush that we want to complete the current adjustment and start a new one. We’ll return all of the sliders to their default settings and then move the Exposure slider to the left a bit. Then, we’ll paint on the remaining bright spot to darken the area so that it matches its surroundings. We can fine-tune the adjust- ment sliders as necessary.

LEFT: There is some colorful lens flare on the bottom of the image. RIGHT: The Adjustment Brush was used to correct the area, using a Saturation setting and a slightly nega- tive Exposure setting.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 9 Now we’ll focus on the lens flare in the top half of the image. These spots are in mostly clean areas of sky, with no critical detail behind them, so we can use the Spot Removal Tool to try and eliminate them. We’ll activate the Spot Removal Tool, which can be found in the tool bar on the right side of the interface, beneath the histogram. (In Adobe Camera Raw, the Spot Removal Tool can be found in the tool bar that runs along the top of the screen.) With this tool active, some settings will appear on the right side of the interface and here we have the choice between Clone and Heal. We want to make sure that we’re using the Heal setting. We also want to make sure that the Feather slider is set to zero so that the tool has full control all the way out to the edge of the brush. We’ll make sure that the Opacity slider is set to 100. We’ll move the cursor over the image and set the brush to be just slightly larger than the spot we’re trying to remove. We can change the brush size by using the left and right bracket keys ( [ ] ).

The Spot Removal Tool is located in the toolbar on the right side of the Develop Module. It’s being used to remove some of the lens flare spots in the sky.

We’ll click on the spot that we want to re- move and Lightroom will choose a spot from the surrounding area to sample from. Be- cause we are using the Heal setting, the tool should attempt to precisely match the area to its surroundings. We’ll continue this pro- After clicking on a spot with the Spot Removal Tool, it will choose a sample cess for the other spots that need to be re- area to copy from. The heavy circle is moved from the sky in this image. the area we clicked and the light circle is the sample area.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 10 If Lightroom ever chooses a bad area from which to copy from when using the Spot Removal Tool, tap the forward slash key ( / ) to force the tool to choose a different sample area. Alternatively, you can manually drag the sample circle to the area that you would like it to copy from. There are going to be a few lens flare shapes that we’re not going to be able to remove in Lightroom and that’s because they overlap the starburst shape created by the sun. In order to remove these spots, we will need to be able to rotate the sample content so that it matches the starburst ray that the spot is overlapping. Lightroom is not able to rotate sample content so we will need to do that part in Photoshop. In Photoshop, we’ll use the Healing Brush in conjunction with the Clone Source panel to effectively remove these spots.

Reduce Rainbow Effect with Moiré Slider (39:12) In the next example image, we have a lens flare in the form of a starburst that has something like a rainbow halo mixed in with it. We don’t want to remove the star- burst, but we do want to minimize the rainbow effect. If you ever find that your lens flare has a bunch of in it, use the Adjustment Brush to paint over the entire area where you find the rainbow of color and then drag the Moiré slider far to the right. This will do a good job of reducing or elimi- nating the differences in color.

LEFT: A rainbow effect can be seen around the sun in this image. CENTER: The Adjustment Brush was used to remove the effect. RIGHT: Under the Adjustment Brush settings, we dragged the Moiré slider far to the right.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 11 More Adjustment Brush Settings for Fixing Lens Flare (42:07) Depending on what the lens flare spots are overlapping in the image, we’ll need to use different types of adjustments to remove them. In the temple image, the flare lightened part of the image that should be dark and also introduced a blue cast to a small part of the image. To correct for this, we used the Adjust- ment Brush to paint over the affected The lens flare spots are lighter than the areas, moving the Shadows slider to the surrounding area and have a blue color cast. left, therefore darkening the shadow ar- eas. We also used the Adjustment Brush to paint over the spots with the blue cast and then used the White Balance ad- justments to correct the area, moving the Temp slider to the right, away from blue. This removes the blue cast by introducing blue’s opposite, which is yellow.

We painted on the lens flare spots with the Adjustment Brush and then used the Adjustment Brush sliders to darken the spots (Exposure) and remove the blue cast (Temp slider).

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 12 Combine Multiple Images in Photoshop (44:30) Let’s look at how we can remove lens flare spots by combining more than one image in Photoshop. In the video example image, I shot at f/22 because I wanted to turn the sun into a starburst. As a result, all of the little lens flare spots became very prominent. I saw that this was happening while I was out shooting, so I also captured the same scene while shooting with the aperture wide open. Shooting with a wide aperture minimized the undesirable lens flare spots. We’re going to combine both images so that we can keep the starburst sun while removing the undesirable spots. With both images selected in Lightroom, we’ll click on the Photo menu and choose Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. This will create a new Photoshop docu- ment with both images as separate layers. The problem with this set of images is that they were shot handheld, which means that the camera moved a bit between exposures. Before combining the images together, we’ll need to align them so that the building is in the same position in both layers. We’ll make sure that both layers are selected in Photoshop’s Lay- ers panel, we’ll click on the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Auto-Align Layers. A dialog box will ap- pear, presenting us with some options. We’ll leave this set to the Auto option and The two images have been placed as separate layers in this then click OK. Photoshop document and, with both layers selected, we are choosing to Auto-Align Layers.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 13 The layers had to be repositioned in order to align with one another so the doc- ument had to expand a bit to include both images. This leaves some transparent areas that we’ll eventually need to crop out. The top layer is the image that was shot at f/22 and contains the sun as a starburst. With this layer active, we’ll add a layer mask to the layer but we want the mask to hide the entire con- tents of the layer. We can achieve this by holding down the Option key (Alt A layer mask was added to the top layer and it is filled with black, which means that it is on Win) and clicking on the Layer mask hiding the entire layer. icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. The layer mask will be added and it will be filled with black. When it comes to layer masks, black hides things, so the entire contents of the layer will be hidden. We want to the part of the layer con- taining the starburst sun, so we’ll activate the Brush Tool and we’ll make sure that the fore- ground color is set to white. We’ll use a soft- edged brush and make sure that the Opaci- ty and Flow settings are both at 100%. Next, we’ll paint over the area where the sun is. If we accidentally re-introduce some of the un- desirable lens flare spots, we can switch the foreground color to black and paint over the spots, therefore hiding them again. In this ex- ample, there are some small flare spots that We’re painting on the layer mask with overlap the starburst, so we’ll need to use a white, revealing the part of the image really small brush here in order to paint away containing the starburst sun. the spots while leaving the rays of the star- burst intact.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 14 When trying to keep an intact starburst, you may need to retouch one or more of the individual rays that have lens flare spots on them. When that’s the case, you can copy one unobstructed ray to paste over the spot-obstructed ray. We’ll use the Healing Brush to do that in this example. We’ll start by clicking the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to create a new, empty layer at the top of the layer stack. We’ll do the retouching on this layer. We’ll activate the Healing Brush tool and we’ll make sure that the Sam- ple menu (in the Options Bar) is set to Current & Below. This is the setting you’ll need to use whenever you use the retouching tools on an empty layer.

The Clone Source Panel We need to use the Healing Brush to sample from one of the starburst rays that is perfectly clean. We’ll find the appropriate ray, hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) and click on the base of the ray. This creates the sam- ple point, telling the tool where to copy from. We want to apply this copied con- tent to the ray that has some obstructions, but the sampled content is going to need to be rotated in order to paint the ray out in the appropriate angle. We can rotate the sampled content from within the Clone Source panel. If it’s not already open in the interface, we’ll click on the Window menu and choose Clone Source.

The Healing Brush is being used to sample from part of a starburst ray that we want to copy.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 15 There is an angle setting within the Clone Source pan- el, and I find that the easiest way to change this setting is by using keyboard short- cuts. We’ll change the angle by holding down Shift+Op- tion on Mac, Shift+Alt on Win, then tapping the great- er-than and less-than keys ( > < ) to shift the angle clock- wise or counter-clockwise. When the angle of the sam- pled ray matches the angle of the ray we want to retouch, The angle setting in the Clone Source panel was changed we’ll start painting over the so the sampled content matches the angle of the ray we ray, starting from the base want to retouch. The Healing Brush is being used to paint over the ray. and working our way out. After we’re done with the Clone Source panel, we’ll click the little “u-turn” icon to change the settings back to their default positions. It’s important to do this so that we aren’t using strange settings the next time we use our retouching tools. Finally, we’ll use the Crop Tool to remove any transparent can- vas from the edges of the document. The “u-turn” icon will reset all of the Clone Source panel settings.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 16 These three images were shot using different aperture settings and will be combined so that we can maintain the starburst sun while removing the lens flare spots.

Match Total Exposures When shooting multiple exposures for the purpose of compositing them together later, it can be difficult to keep a consistent exposure across all of the images. If the exposures shift between images, there is a technique we can use before compositing the images in Photoshop. In the video example, we have three images that were shot using different aperture settings. We again want to keep the version where the sun looks like a starburst while removing all of the undesirable lens flare spots. In Lightroom, we’ll select all of the images, click on the Photo menu and choose Develop Settings > Match Total Exposures. This will try to make the overall brightness of all the selected images to look similar.

We can now click on the Photo menu and choose Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. The three images will open as separate layers in a single Photoshop document. These images from the desert were shot on a so they are al- ready lined up perfectly. This means we don’t need to use the Auto-Align Layers feature here.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 17 The top layer contains the image with the starburst sun, and we’ll use the same masking technique as we did in the last example. We only want to use a small part of this layer (the sun part) so we’ll add a layer mask that is completely black, therefore hiding the entire layer. We can do this by holding down the Option key (Alt on Win) while clicking the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Next, we’ll activate the Brush Tool and set the foreground color to white. Adding white to a layer mask reveals parts of the layer. We’ll make sure that we’re using a soft brush and we’ll paint over the center part of the sun, revealing the starburst. We’ll be careful to not paint in the undesirable lens flare spots.

The image containing the starburst sun is the top layer and it was masked to hide the entire layer. Here, we’re using the Brush Tool to paint with white on the mask, revealing the starburst.

Now we’ll move on to the next part of the image that contains some problems. The bottom part of the image contains some colorful lens flare blobs that we want to mask out. We need to find out which layer or layers we should use to hide the spots. We already masked a good part of the top layer, but if we want to see what the bottom part of the image looks like in that layer, we can hold down the Shift key while clicking on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers panel. This will temporarily disable the mask so that we can see the entire layer. There are parts of this layer that we can use to hide the spot, so we’ll Shift+click on the mask thumbnail again (to enable it) and then paint with white on the part of the image that contains the uncontaminated area.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 18 There are some colored lens flare blobs visible in an underlying layer, so we are painting with white on the top layer’s mask to reveal the layer in that area, covering up the lens flare.

Now we need to see which parts of the bottom layer can be used to hide the lens flare spots, but because it’s at the bottom of the layer stack, we can’t see any parts of it. We’ll take that layer and drag it to the top of the layer stack and then add a black mask to the layer (therefore hiding the entire layer). We’ll Shift+click on the layer mask thumbnail to temporarily disable the mask so that we can see what areas we want to use. Then, with the mask enabled again, we’ll paint with white over the areas that can be used to hide the undesirable lens flare spots. We’ll continue painting on the layer masks, revealing the desirable areas from each layer and hiding the areas of the layers that contain the lens flare spots. When we’re done, we can check a layer mask by holding down the Option key and clicking on the layer mask thumbnail in the layers panel. This will show us what the mask looks like in the main image window and it will reveal any holes or other issues with the mask. After correcting any issues, we’ll again hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) and click on the mask thumbnail to return to the regular image view.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 19 Removing Lens Flare from Important Content (1:10:52) There are going to be instances where the lens flare is overlap- ping areas of critical detail. This will make it more difficult to re- move, because we don’t want to remove important elements in the image. In the video example image, there are some large lens flare spots that are overlapping Karen, who is the subject in the photo. Let’s look at techniques we could use to tackle this kind of problem. We’re going to start with the lens flare blob that is overlapping Kar- ABOVE: This image en’s body. We want to isolate that has lens flare spots spot so that we’re not working on that are overlapping the entire picture. Because the important detail. LEFT: In Quick Mask spot has soft edges, it will be dif- Mode, we are using ficult to isolate the area with our a soft brush to paint regular selections tools. Instead, over the flare spot. we want to be able to paint in the selection using a soft brush and we can do that while in Quick Mask Mode. We’ll type the Q key to enter Quick Mask Mode. We can tell that we’re in Quick Mask Mode because the image tab above the document window will read “Quick Mask” after the image name. We’ll activate the Brush Tool and choose a brush of medium hardness. Then we’ll paint over the lens flare spot and we’ll see a red overlay appear in the area where we paint.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 20 This red overlay represents areas that are NOT selected. We want the opposite so we’ll click on the Image menu and choose Adjust- ments > Invert. This will give us the opposite, so the spot that we painted will be the se- lected area. We’ll tap the Q key again to exit Quick Mask Mode and we’ll see the “march- The lens flare spot has been selected. ing ants” selection of the lens flare spot. Now, we are going to use an adjustment layer to fix the spot. We’ll click on the Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Curves from the pop-up menu. Whenever we create an adjustment layer while there is an ac- tive selection, that selection will automatically be applied to the layer mask that is attached to the adjustment layer. The selected area will become the white part of the mask, and the rest of the mask will be black. This means that the adjustment will only be visible in the area that we had selected. The Curves Properties panel will appear and we want to make sure that the targeted adjustment tool is active. It looks like a hand icon on the left side of the panel. We can now click within the lens flare spot on the image and drag down to darken the area. Clicking on the image with the targeted ad- justment tool active will place a point on the curve and drag- ging down will move that point down, darkening the target- ed brightness range. We’ll drag downward until the tone match- es the surrounding With the curves adjustment layer active, the targeted adjustment tool (circled) is being used to click and drag down on the area we area, removing the want to darken. lens flare spot.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 21 This does a pretty good job, but the edges of the lens flare are still visible. We need to soften the edges of that targeted area to fix this. We’ll activate the Blur Tool, which looks like a wa- ter drop icon in the Toolbar on the left side of the inter- face. We’ll make sure that the layer mask is active and we’ll use this tool to paint over the edges of the isolat- ed lens flare. This is blurring The Blur Tool is being used to paint on the layer mask, softening the edges to make the transition less noticeable. the mask, softening the edg- es of the selected area. After removing a lens flare spot like this, you’ll sometimes need to go back and fix the edges of the spot in order to truly make it blend in. I like to use the Healing Brush for this task. We’ll create a new, empty layer on which to do this retouching and we’ll make sure that this layer is at the top of the layer stack. We’ll activate the Healing Brush and make sure that the “Sample All Layers” check box is turned on within the Options Bar at the top of the interface. This will allow us to use the tool on an empty layer. Then, we’ll use the Healing Brush to paint over the edges of the lens flare spot, smoothing out the transition.

Color matching Looking at the spot, I can see that the color doesn’t match up quite right. There is a blue cast surrounding the spot and the inside of the spot looks either neutral or reddish. Here’s a technique for correcting this. We’ll start by creating a new, empty layer at the top of the layer stack and we’ll activate the Brush Tool. We want to copy a color from the picture and set it as the foreground color. With the Brush Tool active, we’ll hold down the Option key (Alt on Win)

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 22 and the cursor will temporari- ly change into the Eyedropper Tool. We’ll use it to click on the area just outside of the lens flare spot. This is the color that we want to paint with and it will be set as the foreground color. We will paint with this color inside the lens flare spot so that it match- es the area outside of the spot.

The only problem is that we are With the Brush Tool active, we are holding down the covering up detail as we paint. Option key (Alt on Win) to temporarily access the To fix this, we need to change Eyedropper. We’re using the Eyedropper to click on the color we want to paint with. the blending mode of this layer. We’ll click on the Blending Mode menu at the top of the Layers panel and set the blending mode to Color. This will only allow the layer to change the color in the image, not the brightness.

Add a Lens Flare in Photoshop (1:23:52) We mentioned earlier that you can add a lens flare to your images in Photoshop using the Lens Flare filter. Before applying the filter, you’ll one to take one step to ensure that the flare is placed in the exact spot where you want it to show up. Expand the Info panel in Photoshop. If it’s not already open in your interface, you can open it by clicking on the Window menu and choosing Info. Inside the Info panel, there are little X and Y numbers, which represent how many the cur- sor is positioned from the upper left corner of the document. Position the cursor in the location where you’d like the lens flare to appear and take note of these X and Y numbers.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 23 At left is Photoshop’s Info panel. We posi- tioned the cursor in the spot where we want the lens flare to appear and are making note of the X and Y numbers.

Then, click on the Filter menu and choose Render > Lens Flare. (If the Lens Flare filter is not available, ensure that you’re working on the correct layer and that it’s not using an odd mode. The filter cannot be applied on text layers and other spe- cial layers.) The Lens Flare dialog will appear and it will contain a small preview window. You can drag the little crosshair around to position the flare within this preview, but the window is so small that it’s very difficult to set a precise location. Hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) and click on the little crosshair. Another box will appear that contains X and Y fields so you can manually enter in the pre- cise location. Enter in the X and Y numbers that you had previ- ously noted from within the Info panel and then click OK. At the bottom of the Lens Flare dialog, you’ll find different options for which type of lens is being sim- ulated and these will change the look of the flare quite a bit. Ex- periment with the different op- tions until you find the one you like and then set the Brightness slider to your desired brightness. Click OK to exit the Lens Flare dialog and the lens flare will be In the Lens Flare dialog, we are entering in the X and applied to the image. Y numbers to precisely place the flare.

Reducing Lens Flare © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved 24