Experimenting with lens flare - CC Please

[rpcrowe]

I am not a great advocate of lens flare portraits but, I decided to play today with this portrait that I shot a few years ago at a San Diego Asian festival...



I did some retouching on her face with portrait professional and ran it through a few sliders in NIK Viveza. I then added a sun flare with the Photoshop CS6 flare filter (filter > render > flare and then move the flare around and adjust the intensity). This is the result; a totally different portrait. I placed the flare at the upper image right; with the flare only partially in the image.



I used the healing brush on two ugly sun spots, one on her cheek and the other in her hair...

I discovered the Photoshop flare technique in a Chelsea Northrup (Tony and Chelsea Northrup) YouTube video.

What do you think?

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, the outer edges has a nice vignette effect and the flare is not intrusive.

[ionian]

I'd prefer it without the lens flare artefacts as they look fake to my eyes, but it's in no way a deal-breaker. The rest of your edit has reduced the contrast and I like that, and it simulates a back-lit portrait well. You have a couple of cloning spots on her face that are obvious - some blending with a low opacity brush tool in PS would soon sort that out. It's a nicely framed shot of a pretty lady.

[Manfred M]

Richard - I've played with lens flare too, but the more I photograph, the easier it is to spot a fake, and this falls into this category. You've tried to simulate a bright background, which would be typical when pointing a camera towards the sun, but the face does not look back-lit, so that gives it away.

On the other hand, there are a lot of non-photographers who would never spot this, so why not have some fun with this effect?