How do I remove all of this unsightly lens flare and light pollution?

[ChelseaPaul]

Greetings

I recent too some night time shots of Tower Bridge in London - attached is a section of one of them.
As you can see, against the night sky there is some lens flare and light pollution and it just looks messy.
What would be the best method using Photoshop CS6 to remove all of this and to have a clear patch of sky, while still retaining the star shine effect of the fixed lights under the bridge? Thank you for your help.

 

[ChelseaPaul]

Greetings

I recent too some night time shots of Tower Bridge in London - attached is a section of one of them.
As you can see, against the night sky there is some lens flare and light pollution and it just looks messy.
What would be the best method using Photoshop CS6 to remove all of this and to have a clear patch of sky, while still retaining the star shine effect of the fixed lights under the bridge? Thank you for your help.

I should add that the constant white and yellow stripes are the light trail of a London bus and I would also like to retain those.

 

[Tom Mann]

There are many, many ways one could approach this. Here's one way:

1. Make a mask (aka, alpha channel) that smoothly selects the problem area (ie, the sky that isn't completely dark). There are many ways to do this, so I won't go into details at the moment, but we can return to this. I'll call this the "sky mask".



2. Using the sky mask, de-noise the sky, reduce the color cast, and adjust the black point, overall brightness and contrast in the sky area.

I then used Topaz Adjust on the result of the above steps to give the overall image a bit more punch.



3. If you want to remove some of the smaller blobs and lines of light in the sky, you can use the clone tool, the spot healing brush, the patch tool, etc. I only spent a minute or two doing this. With more care, one could get it as clean as you want.



HTH,

Tom M

 

[ChelseaPaul]

There are many, many ways one could approach this. Here's one way:

1. Make a mask (aka, alpha channel) that smoothly selects the problem area (ie, the sky that isn't completely dark). There are many ways to do this, so I won't go into details at the moment, but we can return to this. I'll call this the "sky mask".

View attachment 37044

2. Using the sky mask, de-noise the sky, reduce the color cast, and adjust the black point, overall brightness and contrast in the sky area.

I then used Topaz Adjust on the result of the above steps to give the overall image a bit more punch.

View attachment 37047

3. If you want to remove some of the smaller blobs and lines of light in the sky, you can use the clone tool, the spot healing brush, the patch tool, etc. I only spent a minute or two doing this. With more care, one could get it as clean as you want.

View attachment 37048

HTH,

Tom M

Hi Tom,

Thank you for making the time and effort to do that, it's really appreciated.
I'll give it a go!

Paul

Who said the camera never lies!?