manually creating automatic lens flares in after effects

Todd Pitts of cypruscreekdigital.com shows how to create an automatic lens flare by using colorama to select the brightest parts of the image and to create the glows, and directional blur to create the anamorphic streaks. Realistically there are plugins such as knoll flares, and vcp optical flares that can create all this quite effectively, however this tutorial is interesting in that the techniques used are foundation for any type of effects work…. so a good watch!

Tutorial – Automatic Lensflares in AE pt.1 from Todd Pitts on Vimeo.

Tutorial – Automatic Lensflares in AE pt.2 from Todd Pitts on Vimeo.

Tutorial – Automatic Lensflares in AE pt.3 from Todd Pitts on Vimeo.