Photoshop CS5: Soft and light lens flare effect

Original photograph

I’ve been trying to improve the photoshop tutorials that I’ve written. Hopefully, people would feel that this is better than my past ones. I’ve spent time in this tutorial explaining why I take such steps so hopefully there is a better understanding of my techniques especially in coloring photos. All in all, I do believe it’s practice that makes on get used to coloring images for certain effects they’d like to see in their images.

Final image

I take photographs when I’m free and spend a lot of time browsing the internet seeing the work by other photographers and I always adore photographs with that flare of the sun which gives that really light, soft and soothing effect. Though some photographers feel that a photo should look good based on the skills and techniques of a photographer, I believe there’s no harm done if one wants to make a photo look more beautiful or have a certain effect. So here’s a tutorial for you all which I hope would be liked by most people:

1. I wanted to create an image where the subject (model) is more focused and so firstly, I duplicate the layer and go to “filter” >> “blur” >> “Gaussian blur…” You can alter the pixels of the radius for the Gaussian blur if you like based on the preview on photoshop. It’s okay if your image turns too blurred because you can always reduce the opacity of your layer to reduce the blur-ness you see.

2. Now on the top layer (one where you applied your Gaussian blur to), erase your subject using the eraser tool. Notice how I did not set the opacity of the 2nd layer to a “100%” because I thought it was too out of focus? Now that you’re done with that, merge the two layers together.

3. It’s time to lighten your image to make it more bright as if there is a huge ray of sun on the day the image was taken. Do so by going to “image” >> “Adjustments” >> “Curves…” and follow the settings above.

4. On to my favorite part in editing photos, selective coloring. “image” >> “Adjustments” >> “Selective color…” The main color I wanted to get rid off was the blue in the sky as it was too blue for a photograph where there is a huge ray of sun shining in. Therefore, I reduced the cyans in the cyans (if that makes much sense) to create this dull and light sky. I repeated this step as I felt that once wasn’t enough to decrease the blue-ness.

5. Now for the “Neutrals”. I gave the settings above to give a more yellow and reddish tone to the image. Besides, I reduced the black to make the image more lighter than before.

6. Realizing that my previous settings weren’t enough for me to get the look I want, I applied Selective coloring onto my “Neutrals” once more.

7. On to the “Blacks” which is also in selective coloring. Here, I increased the “yellow” and decreased the “black” to give the effect of the flare of the sun which one can see in photographs.

8. Using the gradient tool on the side, set a gradient with the colors above and on a new layer, sweep it across your image from the bottom to the top. Now set it to “soft light” to give the effect that the direction of the sun is coming from the top left corner of your image. Opacity remained “100%” for this image of mine. Always remember these settings only apply to certain images so apply them based on what you feel looks good.

9. Now create another layer with the same directions as step 8 but with the layer style as “Screen” and opacity of around “30%”.

10. Create a new layer, fill it black with your paint bucket tool and set the layer style to “Screen”. I do so because I feel that it is easier to move my soon to be lens flare around, just in case I did not like the position I first had on the image itself. Add a lens flare by going to “Filter” >> “Render” >> “Lens Flare…”. As you can see, there are many choices of lens flare you can choose from. I picked the 35mm prime and there you have it, my final image below:

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