Correcting Lens Flair in Photoshop

[wofsy]

Is there a handy way to correct lens flair in Photoshop, specfically, when shooting towards the Sun creates distorted color and contrast in ugly patches? An example would be a sunrise shot where a patch of flair makes the sand too orange and dampens the contrast in the ripples.

I have tried sliding the area toward blue and reducing saturation and then throwing in a small brightness correction. This sort of works but feels very Klugey.

[MarkL]

I've often struggled with this, it seems easy but the varying contrast loss quickly makes it difficult. My best results have been cloning from a similar area and then using content aware fill or patch tool (sometimes both). I prefer that lenses make defined blobs of flare rather than large areas of veiling flare as a result.

You may get better answers in the post-processing forum since at capture about all you can do is use a hood with a clean lens and no filters.

[Paul2660]

I have never found a very good way to remove these issues. As previously noted content aware can some times help depending on the subject matter.

I shoot or with one of the worst offending lenses the Nikon 14-24 and it will almost always be an issue.

I will try to block the sun with my finger for one frame or two which will remove l the flare damage then combine the files later. Easy to do when on tripod and a bit tricky hand held bit can be done. 

Paul

[Herbc]

when I was shooting LF a lot we always carried a big umbrella, but that means a helper on hand.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I will try to block the sun with my finger for one frame or two which will remove l the flare damage then combine the files later. Easy to do when on tripod and a bit tricky hand held bit can be done. 

Yes, this is a much better method than attempting to 'fix' things afterwards by cloning/healing, dodging/burning, and such. Panorama stitching software may come in handy when combining two shots, one with one without flares, but it's still not straightforward if the local contrast around the flares is changed a lot. Blend if layer functionality in Photoshop may help to avoid lots of manual masking of the registered layers.

Cheers,
Bart