Need help to remove lens flare in clear blue sky

[koonyue]

Hi,

As you can see, the image has lens flare right in the middle of the clear blue sky, I want to remove it and make itblend perfectly with the surrounding sky, but seems not so easy.

I can get near perfect result with healing bursh, but when view 100% or print it out, the area of lens flare is not completly smooth.

Any suggestion? So far I have try healing bursh and frequency separation technique, is there any better way?

Thanks

[Fernando García]

Have you tried using both techniques in different layers?

You can also try content-aware fill (if necessary, several times) or the clone stamp tool.

[howardm]

Content-aware fill is my new go-to.  If not for complete solution, then as a almost always a really good starting point.

It should have no problem at all w/ that flare.

[TonyW]

This should not really be a problem in any version of PS.  Healing brush not the best tool for this perhaps, as you have discovered.

If you have a version with Content Aware Fill then this will work fine as far as I can tell on the example posted here.

Otherwise you may want to try the Patch tool.  Just select an area around and just outside the flare then move the selection (click and drag) horizontally to the right and release (this is the way I did the attachment)
Also note there is more than one area of flare as shown in the Red channel view