Discover how to create and apply CGI lens flare effects to your images, writes Jon Adams. Real lens flare can be a wonderfully evocative way of injecting extra atmosphere into a shot, and the natural way to do it involves allowing directional light to strike the front of your lens. We’ve talked about creating in-camera lens flare before but you can also generate the effect digitally in Photoshop. There’s a built-in filter that will render a number of different types of Lens Flare on screen, but it can be tricky to accurately position and control the effect.
In this video, I’ll show you how to use digital lens flare on a separate Layer. This allows you to place it on your image with real precision, so you can add a digital sun to a shot, or enhance the presence of genuine lens flare to get a more powerful image.