WARNING: This addon is an early release there may be bugs, crashes, and broken features. Please report any issues on Github

Take your Blender renders to the next level with Photoreal Glare - the most realistic glare addon available.

Photoreal Glare goes beyond basic glare and simulates real-world camera optics. Customize glare effects by setting physical camera attributes like aperture, focal length and sensor size. Tailor the look precisely using custom shape and image-based apertures.

Reveal the actual brightness of light sources using photorealistic glints and rays, to achieve cinema-quality results.

Fix renders that look "too sharp", and produce natural-looking images.

Work smarter with preview modes, and accelerated GPU rendering. Photoreal Glare integrates seamlessly into your workflow.

Whether you're working on visual effects, arch-viz, motion graphics, precomputed video game effects, or any project requiring true realism, Photoreal Glare provides unmatched photorealism. Upgrade your Blender renders with Photoreal Glare today.

Compatible with both Cycles and EEVEE.

Examples

No Glare

Photoreal Glare

Default Blender Glare

Before and After

Glare Affects the Whole Image, Not Just Bright Spots

Features

• Physics-Based Realism
• Simulate real camera settings like aperture, focal length and sensor size
  • Or use an existing camera from the scene
• Glare characteristics accurately match real-world lens optics

Custom Aperture Effects

• Use shape and image-based apertures to create realistic diffraction patterns
• Glare rays spread and split based on light wavelength

Streamlined Workflow

• Interactive preview modes to refine glare look
• Animation support for seamless lens effects

Accelerated Rendering

• CUDA support for NVIDIA
• ROCM support for AMD (Experimental)

Cross-Platform Compatibility

• Windows
• Linux
• MacOS (Experimental and CPU only)
  

Installation

1. Open Blender 3.6
2. Go to Preferences > Add-ons
3. Click "Install..."
4. Select downloaded add-on .zip file
5. Check the box to enable the add-on
6. Install CUDA for a NVIDIA GPU or ROCM for an AMD GPU
7. Click the “Install dependencies” button to install libraries needed for the addon to run

For detailed installation instructions view the documentation page.

Performance

The physically-based diffraction effects of Photoreal Glare come at the cost of longer render times. This is the tradeoff for hugely improved realism over basic glare techniques.

Small glare effects that take up less than a quarter of the screen at 1920x1080 can take less than a minute to render and apply on GPU. While large streaks that span the whole screen can take around 5 minutes. These are rough estimates, since time varies significantly based on image size, glare quality, and glare size.

Planned Features

• Animation
• Caching previously rendered glare images
• Performance and RAM optimizations
• Anamorphic shapes and blade count from camera settings
• Wavelength distribution customizations (to simulate various patterns such as lasers, and different camera sensors)

How to Use

Adding realistic glare is easy. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the image editor
2. Open the image to which the glare should be applied to (the image must be a saved file, not a render, so save the render first)
3. On the right side panel go to the "Photoreal Glare" tab
4. Click the "Render Glare Preview" button. This will add a low-resolution glare effect to your image.
5. Adjust the “Glare Settings” until you are happy with the result.
6. When the glare looks good, click the "Render Glare" button. This will render a high-resolution version of the glare effect.
7. You're done! Save your photo with the realistic glare effect applied.

Note: that the input images should be HDR, by default blender creates HDR images in the image editor, when importing images it is recommended to use an HDR format like OpenEXR in 32 bit float.

Note: when viewing images it is recommended to view them with color transforms applied. On the right side-panel go to the "Image" tab, and in the "Image" dropdown menu select "View as Render".

There are many settings to customize how the glare is generated, to achieve a desired look.

Documentation

For detailed instructions check out the documentation page.