Rings Around The Sun

[Skedaddle]

How do i get rid of rings about the sun? Do I use a filter?

 

[Josh66]

...Not sure that you can.

A polarizer might help, but then again - it could also make it worse (one more surface for the light to bounce off of).

A polarizer is the only thing I can think of that even has a chance of working though.

 

[Sherman Banks]

Is this straight off the camera? That looks to be posterization (or banding). You can read up on it here. I've read that you can manually add noise to the image to reduce banding but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Battou]

It's lens flare and O|||||||O is right, polerizer is your best bet but not a cure all, may even make it worse.

 

[Sherman Banks]

What are you guys seeing that I'm not? Are you all referring the circular steps in coloration as you move in towards the sun?

 

[Skedaddle]

I did make it a little darker to attempt to get rid of the rings but it only made them less prominent.

 

[Josh66]

What are you guys seeing that I'm not? Are you all referring the circular steps in coloration as you move in towards the sun?

Yes.

That's lens flare (I can see how it could look like posterization though).
It just doesn't look like your typical lens flare because it's straight on.


EDIT

...and now that I think about it, I'm not sure that a polarizer would do anything at all (it needs to be at an angle to the light - this is straight on).

 

[Battou]

EDIT

...and now that I think about it, I'm not sure that a polarizer would do anything at all (it needs to be at an angle to the light - this is straight on).

On the contrary, it is at an angle, just a shallow one, note the rings appear around the reflection in the surface of the water as well. Lens pointed straight ahead and hard light sources both above and below the lens.

Straighton will not procuce flare like that

example

 

[Skedaddle]

Ok, thank you for the replies. Next time I'll try taking one at an angle to see if that fixes it.

 

[UUilliam]

what i done:

duplicate image
Gaussian blur until no rings are visible.
select the un edited layer
Select > colour range - modify it to the best you can to try and select only the area you want to edit (if your image has a high contrast like this one it is pretty easy, i set it to 100% on this image)
while the selection is active, put a mask onto you edited layer then just paint out what you dant want blurred

 

[SrBiscuit]

yeah im not seeing lens flare either...im also seeing posterization.
one thing that supports, i think, this theory is the fact that it's echoed in the reflection...isnt it?

 

[Josh66]

one thing that supports, i think, this theory is the fact that it's echoed in the reflection...isnt it?

It is, but I think the reflection is also bright enough to cause flare.

 

[adamwilliamking]

I think it looks cool... .. .. .

 

[KmH]

Uhhhhhhh, UUilliam,

He has requested people not edit his photo's but you did a good job.

 

[SrBiscuit]

one thing that supports, i think, this theory is the fact that it's echoed in the reflection...isnt it?

It is, but I think the reflection is also bright enough to cause flare.

good point.

it does seem unlikely to me, however that 2 instances of lens flare would be DEAD center. it really just looks like a posterized gradient to me, but i could be wrong...it;s been known to happen