Ruinous flare in my pic

[superkully]

Hallo,

I've got a photo which no matter what I do (limited skills) with in CS2 I can't remove some orange flare in the bottom right hand corner of.

Anyone got any ideas?

Here it is (Canon G5 with a cheapo Hoya Circular Polariser which is probably where the flare came from):

http://www.asgt99.dsl.pipex.com/IMG_2142a_forweb.jpg

Thanks,
kully

[andrewaaa5]

I'd say it is always nice to have a bit of 'flair' in a picture : )
It is a lovely pic by the way, but I am not too sure how to tackle the flare. Where was it taken?

[superkully]

Hallo Andrew,

I like a bit of flare if it looks nice, like here:

http://www.asgt99.dsl.pipex.com/IMG_2143b_forweb.jpg

Perhaps I'm being fussy for no reason, but I just don't like that blob in the first photo.

BTW Both these photos was taken in Asturias, Spain on Christmas Eve. This is the reservoir that serves the capital city (Oviedo) of the province.

[Bryan Bedell]

I'd say create an alpha channel that overlays the flare, blur it and shade it so it perfectly ovelays the flare, and then turn it back into a selection area and use the 'color' slider to nudge the color. Very tricky, but it can be done.

Or look in the separate R/G/B channels and see if there's one where it's way more obvious than others, then use the burn/dodge tool to even it out in that layer, that might make it less noticeable.

I would have never noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out heh.

[dbump]

Probably not the answer you want, but I agree with Bryan--I wouldn't have noticed. Actually, I still can't see it--maybe the lighting in my office right now isn't helping matters. It's a gorgeous shot. I'd save the time on CS2 and instead browse to bhphotovideo.com and buy a multi-coated polarizer and a collapsible rubber lens hood ;)

[Robert_Lay]

Hallo,

I've got a photo which no matter what I do (limited skills) with in CS2 I can't remove some orange flare in the bottom right hand corner of.

Anyone got any ideas?

Here it is (Canon G5 with a cheapo Hoya Circular Polariser which is probably where the flare came from):

Thanks,
kully

Very strange! I have searched carefully all around the lower right hand corner of that image and cannot see anything that remotely resembles lens flare.

However, what I do see are artifacts all over the image, especially around the major boundaries (mountains with sky, etc.). It's hard to say for sure from where these artifacts arise, but they sure look like artifacts from repeated JPG compression saves.

If this image has been saved more than once as a jpg during processing, then that is probably the reason for what I'm seeing.

[Bryan Bedell]

It took me a while to see the flare... the bottom right corner has one very dim orange circle over it, about 1/4 the height of the photo… It's more noticeable where it overlaps the reflection of the mountain, less so over the water.

B.

[superkully]

Thanks for all the replies.

I have been repeatedly saving this as a JPG as I removed some power cables that were running very prominently from the left to that on the right.

Then I "went a bit mad" with the unsharp mask and then did some healing to get rid of localised shiny highlights... Then I zoomed back out to look at it all and saw that over-processed look on the mountains, and then realised the 'undo' didn't go back far enough to reach the unsharp mask applications - ugh!

Time to start again I think...

I'm going to leave that flare in the corner as it is - as you've all said I think it's a case of me only noticing it because I know it is there.

[Terrywoodenpic]

Thanks for all the replies.

I have been repeatedly saving this as a JPG as I removed some power cables that were running very prominently from the left to that on the right.

Then I "went a bit mad" with the unsharp mask and then did some healing to get rid of localised shiny highlights... Then I zoomed back out to look at it all and saw that over-processed look on the mountains, and then realised the 'undo' didn't go back far enough to reach the unsharp mask applications - ugh!

Time to start again I think...

I'm going to leave that flare in the corner as it is - as you've all said I think it's a case of me only noticing it because I know it is there.

I save all my Jpeg's to tiff's before I work on them, then I save a final Jpeg version as well. That way you can save as many times as you like.
Otherwise start by saving as a psd file as soon as you open the Jpeg. same result.


On the screen your flair is not a problem , but it could be in a print.

Ddump is right about the lens hood and filter, good ones save hours of work. It is always the best shots that get spoilt.

Terry

[Robert_Lay]

Thanks for all the replies.

I have been repeatedly saving this as a JPG as I removed some power cables that were running very prominently from the left to that on the right.

Then I "went a bit mad" with the unsharp mask and then did some healing to get rid of localised shiny highlights... Then I zoomed back out to look at it all and saw that over-processed look on the mountains, and then realised the 'undo' didn't go back far enough to reach the unsharp mask applications - ugh!

Time to start again I think...

I'm going to leave that flare in the corner as it is - as you've all said I think it's a case of me only noticing it because I know it is there.

I apologize for not seeing the big blob before. Bryan's description of it prompted me to turn up the brightness quite a bit and then I could see it, very faintly.

It would be a daunting task for me to work that out with Photoshop, but I guess for someone with better skills and perseverence, it could be done.

I have two other points that I would like to make, though. First, the sun was sufficiently off-axis that the lens flare could have been avoided by a lens hood. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lens hoods are one of those things that just became a part of my kit many years ago, but I guess each generation of photographers has to learn it the hard way. They really work.

The other point is that we were correct about the multiple saves in JPG. That can be a problem, as you have found out. Just for the record, it is a good practice to take the JPG out of the camera and immediately save it as 16 bit PSD or TIF. In that way, the subsequent manipulations and saves in that same format will not result in undesirable artifacts. The very last thing is to make the conversion back to 8 bits per channel and save in the final size as JPG. When you need a different final jpg for another purpose, you must go back to the last TIF or PSD and start the final save process from there.

By staying in the 16 bit world you avoid all of those problems. The one thing that I am not sure of is whether the final sharpening should be done while in 16 bit mode or after conversion to 8 bit mode and before saving as JPG. I don't know that it makes any difference, but unless someone else knows for sure, I would do it in 8 bit mode, after any sizing and just before the save to JPG.

[Terrywoodenpic]

By staying in the 16 bit world you avoid all of those problems. The one thing that I am not sure of is whether the final sharpening should be done while in 16 bit mode or after conversion to 8 bit mode and before saving as JPG. I don't know that it makes any difference, but unless someone else knows for sure, I would do it in 8 bit mode, after any sizing and just before the save to JPG.+

Theory says it should be the last thing you do per use.
Big picks need different sharpening than little ones in the used size.
In practice life is too short.
who wants lots of versons cluttering up the hard disk.
But if all your saved files are all unsharpened, and you only do it each time you use the file you would have perfection.

Terry