How to Remove Lens Flare from Landscape Photos in Photoshop

[@cliffordmcfarlane9008]

It's very simple when it's explained well. Thank you.

[@adejones2340]

I've only been using PS for say just over 2yrs now and this example has got to be the best example I've seen out there explaining this technique. I can easily follow what your explaining, fantastic tutor, and very well-presented video. Thank You.

[@CharlesParmar]

I am learning new techniques each time I see your videos! Thanks for creating such great content and sharing! 🙏🏻

[@alexnail]

My pleasure Charles :)

[@Stillfilm1]

Flare is one of my biggest problems. I've tried hard not to introduce it and even harder to get rid of it in post - usually by cloning. This video is brilliant Alex, you explain the other methods so well. A huge thank you.

[@lightexplorer]

Method 3 with the curves layer worked the best for me. Amazing technique thank you for sharing.

[@QuietLightPhoto]

Great! I'll have to give the frequency separation method a try.

[@alexnail]

It’s particularly useful for those horrible rainbow flares!

[@dannywootton9553]

Great video. I’m learning a huge amount in this series of tutorials. Thanks

[@alexnail]

Great stuff Danny, glad to help.

[@tireeautomatik4537]

So good! That last method was fantastic. These videos deserve more views!

[@alexnail]

Thanks a lot! If you want to help get more eyes on this video then please feel free to share!

[@geraintlyons]

I've only recently discovered your videos. I have a broad range of appetite when it comes to photographers on KZbin (as well as the usual names like Thomas Heaton, Gavin Hardcastle, Adam Gibbs, James Popsys). Your style is one of my favourites. Detailed. Methodical. And especially appreciate your videos regarding composition finding and refinement. I'm also pleased to find out your processing videos are also on point. Thanks and please keep the videos coming.

[@alexnail]

Thanks Geraint, I’m trying!

[@werkannderkann6337]

Thank you very much for this really really useful video! I like, that you explain some background what the methods do exactly and why they work the way they work. Helps me a lot!

[@alexnail]

No problems Dominick - I actually wouldn’t feel happy teaching techniques that I couldn’t explain! I

[@mfuller1093]

Great tutorial, the main thing I get from this is to do everything possible to get the image right in camera so to avoid a long process session, mainly because for me the editing is the least enjoyable part of photography when it needs so much fixing.

[@alexnail]

Yeah, likewise I don’t really enjoy these parts of editing!

[@MegaDwilkinson]

Fantastic Alex - great stuff. Masterful again. I have fond memories of you teaching me the "thumb block out" method for flare reduction in the Drakensberg, but these options in post are definitely very very useful.

[@alexnail]

Thanks David. Yeah there is that method and then there is also the ‘recompose’ method if the flare overlaps the sun itself. By moving the sun around the frame you change the position of the flare. Both methods aren’t perfect though. Veiling flare can be a problem. So I often end up using a combination of methods!

[@kennymuir1019]

Excellent content Alex. A simple explanation for some fairly advanced techniques. Genuinely impressed at how well you have managed to deal with the flare on this particular image.

[@alexnail]

Thanks Kenny, I’ve actually been doing this for years, people kept asking what my technique was and now they know! It all came out of a good understanding of what curves does though!

[@kennymuir1019]

@@alexnail Great to see you gaining traction on youtube. Looks like you have put in a lot of time to do things well.

[@alexnail]

@@kennymuir1019 yeah, some traction is about right! Thing is unless I can grow quickly it’s going to be hard putting the time in once the restrictions are over!

[@kennymuir1019]

@@alexnail you’ll be desperate to shoot again!

[@brucelittle5548]

Best one so far Alex. I've definitely got a few images to apply this to. Cheers.

[@alexnail]

Great stuff :)

[@christophbailleux6339]

A really helpful tutorial. I was already despairing. Thank you Alex!

[@chriskearney4058]

I’ve recently watched all curves, white balance and now this one. Excellent work, delivered at good pace. Given the technical nature of these, I feel the length of the tutorials is spot on. BTW found you via the Nigel Danson critique video. Not sure if you have produced anything on file management i.e. where do you house raw file once you’ve created a multi curves layered 150mb psd file.

[@johnpunnett1426]

Great content & techniques again & filed away for future use - cheers...👍

[@alexnail]

Thanks John!

[@deryckstorey1465]

Well, once again I'm off to go back through my 'sun flare photo bin' and try out this technique to see if I can salvage anything! Another well explained tutorial, thanks you.

[@alexnail]

Great! There are of course some flares that are almost impossible to edit out, but many can be fixed for sure!

[@hecalledmelala]

Wow! Thank you so much! It really helps!

[@alexnail]

My pleasure

[@HoriaBogdan3]

Really cool tutorial here, mate! I'll definitely distribute it around the nice folks joining out our photo tours, who want to learn how to deal with this issue in the future :)

[@alexnail]

Thanks Horia, that's very kind :)

[@michaelsugrue7735]

Amazing video ALEX.I use ligthroom but now have to learn Photoshop

[@alexnail]

Just realised I missed your question, I guess I skipped over it completely because I’m pretty sure it was on the list! All you can really do for prevention of lens flare is: Buy a better lens Don’t use filters Make sure you lens is spotless Shoot a frame where the sun is blocked by your hand Or Shoot a panorama so that the location of the flare moves and the composite…

[@johnchambers6272]

Excellent. Much appreciated Alex, you are a great teacher. Very well explained and at a good pace.

[@alexnail]

Thanks John! I quite enjoy teaching actually!

[@danielrao3120]

A superb video. Very informative and well explained and demonstrated. Many thanks.

[@BLarsenPhoto]

Thanks so much for this video. Helped a lot

[@Auroralover9797]

Thank you very much for your clear and informative tutorial. I really appreciate it.

[@TCizauskas]

The "Curves Method" actually begins at 15:23. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@alexnail]

Thanks, fixed!

[@25joaojl]

Thank you Alex for your excellent video! Congrats!

[@liverpoolpictorial]

Such a good tutorial, Alex. Thank you.

[@alexnail]

My pleasure!

[@maidn1887]

wow, that is awesome! thank you

[@alanmorton1370]

Wow! That was worth waiting for. And when you made that final adjustment on the green channel it gave me quite a eureka moment. I shall definitely be hunting out my images with lens flare to see if I can correct them. Thank you again for providing a very well thought out and useful series. Incidentally do you use a pen/tablet or just a mouse for your editing?

[@alexnail]

Hi Alan, glad it was helpful. I used to use a tablet but to be honest it was a bit of a faff for everything that wasnt masking and I ultimately realised I didnt benefit much since its now very rare that I need to paint masks with any real precision (and when I do its just a bit slower than it would be with a tablet). In this case a tablet wouldnt really have made the process any easier in my opinion!

[@andrewfindlayphoto]

Great video again Alex. I mask my lenses with Black insulation tape this helps with the flare 😎

[@alexnail]

I’m curious to know what you mean by that Andrew! Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@andrewfindlayphoto]

@@alexnail mask off the parts of the lens that don't produce an image with Black electrical tape. See the front of my lens: 5.20 minutes into this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/h6KZqmqpeMiEndk

[@jill_creates]

Incredible methodology and tutorial! Thank you! Curious if you have other content relating to frequency work in Photoshop? I'm not even sure I know what frequency is in relation to photography.

[@alexnail]

I don’t have any reasons to use a similar technique personally but I can think of a few applications for people who wanted to edit in a more fantastical way! It’s actually a little difficult to explain frequency in an imaging context if you don’t have an intuitive sense of what *frequency* means in a general information sense. But I will try… If you have an image that is black on the left, white on the right, with a gradient in between that would be an extremely low frequency image. If it went black white black white then that would be a slightly higher frequency. If you have a image full of detail that detail is represented by the highest frequencies. But there may be some underlying low frequency information (the general brightness/colour of areas). The confusing bit: Since the original scene is essentially a combination of all detail levels (frequencies) it can be arbitrarily separated digitally into any number of frequency parts. That is essentially what this method does. It tries to separate the general colour and tonal information where the flare is (low frequency) from the detail colour and tonal information (high frequency). This allows you to remove the flare without affecting the details. I’m sure I’ve confused you more but at least I have tried to make it clearer!

[@jill_creates]

@@alexnail Thank you so much, Alex! That does help me understand it a bit more. I appreciate you taking the time to teach it more in-depth. I forgot to check back for a reply but was just referencing your video again to fix another photo (that's how helpful it is!) and saw my negligence. Apologies! But thank you again!

[@talukebold6454]

Very helpful video

[@alexnail]

Cheers Taluke

[@ChrisBishop0303]

OK, so it’s not a quick solution, but wow was it time well spent. We’ll done and thanks for sharing

[@alexnail]

Yeah it’s not a quick video although certainly once you come proficient these are fast techniques for all but the very most complex flares!

[@paulbruins9935]

Brilliant. Now that I've watched this... I doubt that I'll ever use the clone tool again to remove flare.

[@alexnail]

It’s handy for little flares still, but it’s always best to use the other methods if you can to try to preserve as much colour/texture as you can :)

[@Joebus100]

Thank you very much for this. Exactly what I was looking for. Specifically the Frequency Separation. In the frequency separation method I followed everything right up to where you started using the clone tool. With "Color" layer selected, the clone tool is still cloning the source as it appears, like regular cloning. I will try again from the beginning in case I missed something. The only difference with mine vs yours is I have a bunch of Adjustments above the frequency separation group.

[@alexnail]

Hi, yeah you do need to go through it again because you haven’t quite figured out what is going on here. The clone adjustment you are referring to is cloning directly from the selected layer but that layer has no detail. That detail is provided by the layer above. The cloning brush is set to current and below so it ignores anything going on above the selected layer.This is the exact purpose of this frequency separation method and the steps I have shown are correct. Glad you found the video helpful! Alex

[@hubertloriot5234]

Merci pour le tuto Super vidéo

[@wellsyboy]

very excellent - ta muchly!

[@smirz1234]

Excellent and thank you, Alex

[@alexnail]

No problem :)

[@steveking6204]

EXCELLENT.

[@pradiptadattachaudhuri6457]

This is really awesome.

[@alexnail]

Thanks Pradipta

[@lilcurtiz5333]

I'm pretty unexperienced in editing photos. Would you remove the flare before or after editing the photo in Lightroom?

[@alexnail]

You want to prevent it in the first place ideally, and there are a number of methods. But the methods explained in the video are done in Photoshop and it is best to make them after basic corrections in Lightroom.

[@lilcurtiz5333]

@@alexnaillovely, thanks for your quick reply :)

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

Hi Alex, Did you see the 'flares' question that I re-wrote after you mentioned that it had disappeared? You mentioned it within your 'Volcano' video comments, so that's where I replied. Please let me know. Thanks, Nigel

[@alexnail]

Hi Nigel, unfortunately there is no reply there that I can see. I'm not really sure what's happening, a few comments have disappeared, not just yours!

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

@@alexnail Hi Alex, I'll try again. Are lens flares always red, green or blue? The reason for asking is that I make a lot of effort in my setup to avoid flares, but was caught on what is/ was a lovely shot. I was in a valley looking downriver with a lowish Sun ahead and slightly to me left. My main subject was the beautiful sunlit turquoise water and its patterned submerged boulders. Ahead and either with were hills running down to the river bank and extending to the horizon. Unfortunately, on downloading the image I discovered a couple of red flares (which I can now deal with - thanks), but rising from the river is a shortish column/ band of 'white' light. Any helping in understanding how/ why this could have occurred and more importantly - how to remove it - would be greatly appreciate. Thanks, Nigel

[@alexnail]

@@NigelDownes-fi2pk ah that comment has finally worked. Whether you can remove it will depend on how much detail remains behind the flare. You can remove any flare with curves and accurate mask painting *in theory* but if the texture and detail behind the flare isn’t well defined then removing the flare will end up stretching too little information. If you email me Alex at alexnail dot com then I can take a look!

[@NigelDownes-fi2pk]

@@alexnail Great. Thanks Alex. I'll email it later later today.

[@kennethrohen5963]

Weird. There is a myriad of overlays and apps to add lense flare to photos, so why bother?

[@alexnail]

I don't understand your question. Are you asking "Why bother removing flare?" or "Why bother adding flare?"

[@gregwoolliscroft6255]

This didn't work at all because my problem was in a clear blue sky....

[@alexnail]

"this" being what method? The three methods here cover all scenarios. Most people would just clone a flare over blue sky. However with some complex flares you do need to be very accurate with what you are doing.

[@henriborius6158]

Excellent tutorial and I ran to my flared images to experiment with the curb tool. However due to my inexperience in color theory and color grading, I found that some flares were hard to correct. Beyond the flare issues, could you create a video on color applied to landscape photography? For commercial work, I have used Joanna Kustra kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3SboJ9oYrtqec0 class, but you have different standards and natural landscape photography has narrower options.

[@alexnail]

Hi Henri, unfortunately there is a degree to which you need to both understand color and have a really keen eye for spotting it! That last part is a matter of experience really, but certainly the color theory side of things can be taught. Through the course of making these videos I’ve found that the content that does the best is generally less intellectual/complex and these videos are also easier to make. So I’m actually planning to move some of this more complex content into a paid tutorial series likely to be called something like “Understanding Landscape Photography Editing” or similar where I will discuss things like colour theory in more depth. I think I will try to make KZbin videos a bit more specific and single part videos from now on!