How to create fake bloom in Photoshop
Bloom is a popular effect, used a lot in computer games to cover up boring areas. The effect is a simulation of bright light flooding a camera lens creating blurred washed out areas. Used well, bloom can be a very powerful effect, especially for landscape or interior photos
Here’s my take on how to create fake bloom in photoshop.
First duplicate your original layer.
Now go to filters/blur/lens blur. Set the radius high, around 80 or so and adjust the specular highlight brightness so the brightest areas of the photo blows out. Play around with curvature and rotation if you like. Be aware that the lens blur filter is dog ass sloooow so expect to wait a while on large images. Ok the changes.
The reason we use lens blur and not gausian blur like so many other tutorials is that we want to emulate as closely as possible the effect of bloom in camera and gausian blur will just not be realistic.
Now turn of all but this new layer, we are going to use it to create what is called a “found mask”, a mask that is derived from the image with no brushwork. Go the the channels palette and select the blue layer and drag a copy of it to the new channel icon below the channels palette. Name your new layer “bloom mask” and then hit control+m to open up the curves dialog box.
In the curves dialog box grab the black input triangle below the grid and drag it a bit towards the middle, you want to make the black areas of the bloom mask channel black, don’t go to far as that will create harsh transitions. Grab the white input slider and drag that a bit towards the middle also, not to much, just enough that you see some of the brightest areas go all white. Ok out of the curves dialog box.
Go back to your layers palette and delete the blurred layer, we are done with that. Select the original layer and hit control+j to jump a new copy of it. With the new copy selected, go back to the channels palette and control+click on the bloom mask channel to create a selection from it.
Go back to the layers palette and now click on the add layer mask icon below the layers palette and you have created your “found mask” layer.
Set the layers blending mode to screen and watch the bloom come alive. If the bloome areas are to sharp, select the layer mask and hit it with some gausian blur to smooth it out. You can also try selecting the layer and add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and adjust the colors to be a bit more yellow to simulate sunlight bloom better.
If you realy want to hit this effect over the head, select the channel mask on the layer and drag it to the trashcan icon, when asked, select “apply mask” before deleting. Now select the bloom layer and add some motion blur, adjust the angle of the motion blur so it follows the direction of the light, this creates cool “god rays” and can look amazing on sunshine landscape photos, if the rays become to streaky, hit the layer with some gausion blur after you apply the motion blur.
You may also want to try some other blending modes than screen to see if you get effects that you like, the possibilities are endless.
