Create a Sunflare or, Sunburst effect in Photoshop

Creating a sun flare, or sunburst effect in Photoshop is easy if you use someone else’s brush.

My signature landscape style is to shoot straight into the sun.

You can replicate the effect in Photoshop using a brush and some layer styles namely: Inner Glow and Outer Glow.

Or, you can use lens flare filter in photoshop. Personally I don’t like this method;

First, you need to find a brush. There are plenty of free brushes for download. I use www.brusheezy.com. There are other sites like www.deviantart.com, to name a few. Some brushes which are labelled Lens Flare can also be very useful.

You can also download both my lens flare photoshop brush and style below:

I have created a Layer Style to download, from Creative Cloud here. This Style works for me, with some tweaking. To load the Style go to Window/Styles, to open the Styles Panel. In the Styles Panel, click on the panel menu then go Load Styles, and locate my file.

The process is:

1. Download the Brush

The brush will have the extension .abr. Anything else that comes with the download will not be required.

Double-click the file, to load the brushes into Photoshop, which will return you to Photoshop if it’s open. Even if Photoshop is closed, it will open the program with the brushes already loaded.

2. Create a New Layer

Create a new layer above your image. Control (PC) or Command (Mac)/Shift/N, on your keyboard is the quickest method.

3. Select the brush

Press B on your keyboard or, click the brush icon in the tools panel

Press F5 on your keyboard to bring up the Brush Panel. Click on the Brush Presets panel and click on the Panel Menu icon

and click Large Thumbnail. Scroll down to the end of the brushes to see the brushes you’ve just downloaded. Pick a brush. Even with ‘Large Thumbnail’ ticked, the icons will be very small – but you will get a rough idea of the brush’s shape.

4. Pick a Colour

Click on the foreground colour picker from the bottom of the tools panel, or use the Swatches panel.

Pick a  warm colour like yellow, or orange, that is not too intense. If you bring your cursor outside of the colour picker, you can sample a colour from the sky in your image, with the eyedropper.

5. Use the Brush

The brush will have a set size. You will need to resize the brush using:

The left square bracket key [ to make the brush smaller.

The right square bracket key ] to make the brush larger.

Click down once only with the brush, to create the Sun Flare. It won’t look much until we change the Blend Mode of the layer.

Tip: Use Control or Command/A to select the whole layer.  Then, as you experiment with the different brushes and colours,  just hit the backspace/delete key to clear the layer.

We now change the blend of the brush layer. Usually, Screen or, Overlay work the best. Only experimentation will tell, usually Lighten, Screen, Linear Dodge (Add), Overlay and, Soft Light. The overlay blend mode will intensify the colour. If it does intensify the colour too much, go back and paint with less intense colour. I would say that normally, Screen, works best.

6. Use Inner Glow and Outer Glow using Layer Styles

Now we are going to experiment with Layer Styles using the Inner Glow and, Outer Glow settings.

To access Layer Styles

1. Layer/Layer Styles/Blending Options
2. Click on the fx icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel
3. Double Click on the layer in the Layers Panel on the grey area, not the Name or, Thumbnail.

Tick Inner Glow and notice the effect it has on your image. Make sure you have Preview ticked, and you have Reset to Default.

Inner Glow

These are my settings for the Inner Glow below. A lot depends on the brush you have used. Inner Glow has a very subtle effect on a brush like I’ve used here. I use Inner Glow as it adds some subtlety to the effect, giving it extra depth. To be honest, you could probably omit Inner Glow, but as I said it can create a more realistic effect.

The thumbnail box below the preview is a good indicator of what changes you are making.

The settings you should change are:

1. Colour: either White or Yellow. The centre of a flare is usually bright.
2. Opacity: Obviously.
3. Technique: Experiment with Softer and Precise.
4. Choke: As it sounds allows you to expand or, choke the spread of the glow.
5.  Source: Centre or, Edge, experiment.
6. Size: Keep your eye on the Image, and the Thumbnail box below the Preview tick box.
7. Quality: These settings don’t have a massive effect. But, experiment with the Contour, then the Range, in that order. With the default Linear Contour, the glow will be uniform. Changing the Contour to anything else will change how light flows. Just imagine how light flows across the surface with hills and valleys in it. The Contour settings have a more marked effect on the Outer Glow.

Outer Glow

The Outer Glow will have a more marked effect.

The settings you should change are:

1. Opacity: Obviously.
2. Colour: I have picked an Orange colour
3. Size: Keep your eye on the Image, and the Thumbnail box below the Preview tick box.
4. Contour: Linear will do (which is the default). But, Experiment with different Contours. Pick the Contour first, then adjust the Range. It can create an interesting flare effect. I’ve chosen Rounded Steps with a Range of 35%.

7. Opacity and Fill

• Opacity affects the transparency of the whole Layer.
• Fill affects the transparency of the brush, not the Layer Styles.

To make the image more realistic, you will need to reduce the Fill first, then the overall Opacity.

On the image below the Fill was: 78%, and the Opacity was: 88%. Whilst not perfect, it’s not bad. So much depends on the brush you use and skill of the brush’s creator. Of course, now you’ve got your layer Style setup you copy the fx Styles (by dragging the fx symbol up to the new layer), and try a different brush/colour combination, and experiment with Layers Blend mode.