nothing adds drama to an ordinary landscape quite like adding lens flare in an earlier video i
explained how to remove unwanted lens flare from this photo because it didn't look very good in
this video i'm going to show how to add dramatic lens flare using the simple photoshop lens flare
filter not only that but i'll share a technique for making this a non-destructive edit so you have
more control if you want to know how i remove the lens flare from the original image i'll share a
link at the end of this video the way to add lens flare in photoshop is using the lens flare filter
but before we apply it we need to copy our image to a new layer because this is a destructive
edit that alters the image pixels if you're working on an image with a single layer just
duplicate that layer but if you have multiple layers in your image use the keyboard shortcut
shift option command and e on a mac if you're using a pc that's shift alt control and e
now we can apply the lens flare filter from the photoshop filter menu under the render section
unfortunately this is an early filter so you don't see a preview on the main image there is a small
preview in the dialog but it can be tricky to line up the flare using this at the bottom of the
dialog are options for different lenses each with a different look i'm going to pick the 50-300 zoom
option for this image if you look closely at the dialog preview you can see there's a small cross
point you can click and drag this with your mouse to change the direction and size of the lens flare
if i drag it around the image you'll see that it rotates around the center point when you're happy
with the position click the ok button to apply the lens flare the problem now is that if i didn't
position the flare quite right i can't change it my only option is to undo the filter and try again
now let me show you how to add the lens flare but with more flexibility first let's undo the
lens layer we've added using the edit undo command this time i'll start by adding a new empty layer
this is where we're going to apply the lens flare filter but because it's an empty layer the filter
won't work the filter only works on layers where there are pixels on the layer what we need to do
is first fill this layer with black using the paint bucket tool from the tools palette after
selecting the paint bucket tool i'll press d on my keyboard this defaults the paint colors back to
being black and white with black as the foreground color now we can click anywhere on the image layer
to fill it with black pixels the next step is what changes this to a non-destructive edit
we need to convert the layer to be a smart object using the smart filters option in the filters menu
once it's converted we can apply the lens flare filter from the filter menu
now rather than using the filter in the render section we're going to reapply
the last filter we used this is the option that appears at the top of the filter menu
it saves us trying to reposition the filter on the image because we can't see the image now that we
have the lens flare on the black layer we still can't see the image the way to fix this is to
change the layer blend mode to one that removes black like the screen blending mode now we can
see the image and the filter is on its own layer but we can refine the lens flare filter further
we just double click on the lens flare filter that's now attached to the layer as a smart filter
when the filter opens we can change its settings until we get the effect we want and because this
is a smart object it means we can make other non-destructive edits let's try adding a
gaussian blur filter to soften the lens flare i'll select the filter then blur and then gaussian blur
when the dialog opens i can set the blur radius and click ok to apply it now the gaussian blur
filter appears in the smart filter list but i can also reopen it to change the settings
let's now add a hue saturation adjustment layer above the smart object
i'll convert this to a clipping mask so that it only affects the smart object layer then when i
increase the saturation it only affects the lens flare which is something i couldn't do before
i can also use the hue slider to change the colors in lens flare this non-destructive technique
is a great way to add drama to your landscape photos using the likes of the lens flare filter
now i mentioned at the start of the video that i went to the trouble of removing the lens
flare from this photo first if you'd like to see that process you can watch it in this next video
it shows how i cleaned up unwanted lens flare using three simple photoshop tools