Removing lens flare help

[gardy]

Good evening. Im looking for a little bit of help here, i took this photo a week or so ago and all turned out pretty well. The problem i have is there is slight lens flare around the street lamps, and im at a loss on how to remove it. Im pretty well versed in lightroom and just got a copy of Elements 11 but have no experience in doing anything like this. Is there anyone here that could give some guidance or where to start with this, or possibly know of a tutorial that would help? Ive never done many landscape style shots or long exposures and am real happy about how this turned out. Everyone i talk to thats seen it said they really dont think it distracts from the image but it bugs the crap out of me!! thanks!

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20130112-_DSC0112-2 by gardy90, on Flickr[/img]

 

[KmH]

I wouldn't bother even trying to remove the lens flare, because I don't think it can be done such that the edits aren't noticeable.

Was there a UV or clear filter on the lens? I wonder because of all the 'spikes' around the lights.

 

[gardy]

nope no filter at all, im sorta surprised at the flare being there since i was using my 24-70 and since ive gotten it have never seen flare in any photo ive taken. So would you say that its not too distracting?

 

[cgipson1]

some careful cloning... and brush touchup! Very much a quickie since I am work! Not perfect.. but with more time and effort it could be done. Of course I have no idea what the lights actually looked light.... so just guessing.

 

[gardy]

some careful cloning... and brush touchup! Very much a quickie since I am work! Not perfect.. but with more time and effort it could be done. Of course I have no idea what the lights actually looked light.... so just guessing.
View attachment 32601

thanks, i had done a bit similar to this (tho not as good) and really would like to keep the starburst effect it was originally, maybe im being over critical of it and should just be happy with the original lol
been playing with it all day and cant seem to come up with any way to keep the starburst effect while getting rid of the flare, maybe i need to go find some photoshop classes or just be happy with my work without photoshop, which i have been until now lol

 

[cgipson1]

Oh... so you only wanted to kill the flare? Ok.. I misunderstood... let me try again!

 

[cgipson1]

Ok.. how is this?

 

[KmH]

Looks good Charlie.

 

[cgipson1]

Looks good Charlie.

Thanks, Keith.. can you tell how I did it?

 

[gardy]

That is exactly what i was going for!! could you give me some insight on how you did it so i can attempt it? Thanks

 

[KmH]

Looks good Charlie.

Thanks, Keith.. can you tell how I did it?

Tell the OP how you did it.

 

[cgipson1]

That is exactly what i was going for!! could you give me some insight on how you did it so i can attempt it? Thanks

Sure! Cut and paste and blend, of some of the existing non-flared light rays.



That is how I did the tallest light.

The middle height light I look the left side, flipped it and pasted on the right side.

The short light I took half the middle height light and pasted on the right side.

I had some extra after the cut and paste.... and since they were still all in layers, used a soft delete brush to blend.

 

[gardy]

so each time you cut out and rotated it was in a new layer?

 

[cgipson1]

so each time you cut out and rotated it was in a new layer?

I made a backup layer of the main just for safety and worked on that. But Yes.. I would mark it out with the Lasso tool, then copy, paste, move, rotate, position, rotate more if needed, then soft delete brush it to blend it in. Then lock down the layer..

Did each one that way.... only took about a couple of minutes since I wasn't trying for perfection....

 

[480sparky]

My method would have been to simply copy the entire original, then rotate the copy. Clone from that onto the original.