How to remove this lens flare

[ddhans]

Hello. I'm new to the forum, but I'm hoping someone can make my first time asking for advice useful

How would I get rid of the lens flare in the center of the attached image (both the colour and the distortion in the image)?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

[Remote-Medic]

Lots of Clone tooling to be honest with some sponge tool to desaturate the flare where you can. Some sort of composite is needed for this to get it to look anything near acceptable

 

[ddhans]

Thanks for the reply. However, I'm quite inexperienced with photoshop, so although I appreciate the advice I don't really know what to do with it. I was hoping someone could provide me with a link for a guide to an identical situation, or type up some steps

I briefly tried the sponge tool already, but that wasn't really working out for me...

 

[ddhans]

Also, on a related note: I'm curious to know what people think of the photo as is, despite the lens flare. I mean, I think it'd be nicer without it, but I don't dislike it as is because it's just a natural result of the sunlight

 

[ibis]

Thanks for the reply. However, I'm quite inexperienced with photoshop, so although I appreciate the advice I don't really know what to do with it. I was hoping someone could provide me with a link for a guide to an identical situation, or type up some steps

I briefly tried the sponge tool already, but that wasn't really working out for me...

Good photographing is 90% of job done, always have it in mind.
if you have waited for 5 minutes for sun to set down it would be the photo that you wanted, even though it does look natural this way. i have few photos I've taken after more then 20 attempts, go out to the site- check the lighting, angles, sun position, traffic, people around, cars parked etc. to eventually take the photo. may sound like a lot of work, but good photo worth's it.

 

[ddhans]

Good photographing is 90% of job done, always have it in mind.
if you have waited for 5 minutes for sun to set down it would be the photo that you wanted, even though it does look natural this way. i have few photos I've taken after more then 20 attempts, go out to the site- check the lighting, angles, sun position, traffic, people around, cars parked etc. to eventually take the photo. may sound like a lot of work, but good photo worth's it.

Well, to be honest, I was just taking random pictures and this one ended up much better than I had expected :lol: Also, if I had waited for the sun to go down, I would've missed out on the rays of sun shining down, which I really like. It's just the blue lens flare that I'd prefer to get rid of Good tips nonetheless!

 

[Remote-Medic]

You can get rid of most of that blue flare with the sponge tool fella, if that's what you want to get rid of mostly..

 

[ddhans]

You can get rid of most of that blue flare with the sponge tool fella, if that's what you want to get rid of mostly..

The problem with this is that the lens flare is still clearly visible, just not blue. That almost looks worse than it currently is because it's not natural.

 

[Paul]

Go back and take it again five minutes later.

 

[Remote-Medic]

Converted to Black and white, used Dodge and Burn along with contrast adjustments and the sharpness brush to try and bring some detail back to the destroyed area's:



As Paul has said, difficult to do much with it because of the flare but try and consider this when taking photo's in future. I think this is about as good as it's going to get. Spent entirely too much time of this lol

 

[chitkaran]

Roof
Instead of using clone stamp or sponge.. why not make a new roof. I mean, use the Polygon lasso, and create a new roof with almost the same color... maybe add gradient overlay... try different blending options and I am sure this should look good.

Windows
And for the windows, select windows from the right hand side as they are least affected by the lens flare... flip them horizontally and paste on top of the left ones. They all look identical hence should not be a problem. The flare left now can be removed by clone stamp with Minimal usage. You might want to fiddle the brightness/contrast of the new Window paste as the left side differs from right side.

NOw, the only part left would be the top of the Gate.. again follow the same technique and it should all look okay.


Hope this helped.

CHEERS !!!

 

[ddhans]

Thank you Remote-Medic and chitkaran for the advice and edit attempt! I'll certainly give your tips a shot and see what I can come up with. This will take me quite a while though because of my lack of photoshop abilities, so I'll need to set aside some time to work on this haha

Thanks again!

 

[Remote-Medic]

Good Luck mate, best way to learn is to get stuck in and try different things. I am sure this is how most of us learned PS

 

[chitkaran]

yes Indeed..

 

[peta62]

I like the picture as it is, it shows something unique. To get the picture without it I would really rather go there to take new one, since all Photoshop work will be time consuming and with some methods I have my doubts whether they are worth the effort.

 

[ddhans]

I like the picture as it is, it shows something unique. To get the picture without it I would really rather go there to take new one, since all Photoshop work will be time consuming and with some methods I have my doubts whether they are worth the effort.

Glad you like it As for going back, it's not worth it in this case. It would take me about 2 hours just to get there and then I have to hope for the same weather, conditions, etc as when I took that photo (almost a year ago)!

Using Photoshop will be time consuming yes, and likely my result will look bad, but if I find some time there's no harm in trying

 

[peta62]

Using Photoshop will be time consuming yes, and likely my result will look bad, but if I find some time there's no harm in trying

Plus you are improving your skills. This discussion made me think again about my "moral" limits with Photoshop. Of course, it depends on purpose, but for example a picture of the house with new roof would loose any meaning of a photo to me other than creating some work of art, I just do not like to change things on pictures as opposed to correct them.

 

[Dom]

This is no way perfect, could use a lot more work to clear things up. The technique I used was pretty much getting rid of the main flare colours by using new layers (set to color mode) and sampling areas from the left hand side of the house (where no flare is) and using the colours to colour over the parts of the building where the flare effects. (also painting over the gold bars and the white windows to restore colours)

(you now have the building colour restored)

For the rest I pretty much rebuilt the roof. I made a selection of the roof again and filled it in with a dark colour, I then went online and grabbed a roof tile texture and placing them over the roof selection - I then changed the blending mode of this to overlay and played around with the opacity until I got the look I wanted.

I then reduced the overall opacity of this layer to bring back some of the grit and dirt on the original roof and a SLIGHT flare showing to give a realistic effect.

Final parts I cloned away where the circles of the flares went over parts of the building, and added the sky for further effect.

Hope this helps.

All the best.

 

[ddhans]

This is no way perfect, could use a lot more work to clear things up. The technique I used was pretty much getting rid of the main flare colours by using new layers (set to color mode) and sampling areas from the left hand side of the house (where no flare is) and using the colours to colour over the parts of the building where the flare effects. (also painting over the gold bars and the white windows to restore colours)

(you now have the building colour restored)

For the rest I pretty much rebuilt the roof. I made a selection of the roof again and filled it in with a dark colour, I then went online and grabbed a roof tile texture and placing them over the roof selection - I then changed the blending mode of this to overlay and played around with the opacity until I got the look I wanted.

I then reduced the overall opacity of this layer to bring back some of the grit and dirt on the original roof and a SLIGHT flare showing to give a realistic effect.

Final parts I cloned away where the circles of the flares went over parts of the building, and added the sky for further effect.

Hope this helps.

All the best.

Oh wow, that looks pretty good If I had the skills to do that it would be a treat just to mess with pictures like this haha....

Thanks for the effort and the description. This gives me more to try out when I give it a shot!

 

[silviotiago]

Why didn't I find this forum before!!??
Took me some many hours to do it in a different and hardest way!!!