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Lens flares have two big problems, apart from the fact that lots of people see them as old-fashioned and something you don't use anymore. Hehehe:
1/ problem 1: it can be tricky to position them correctly. BUT: iun Photoshop I Alt-click on everything. So I alt-clicked on the preview image in the dialog box and a smaller dbox showed up, allowing me to fill in the exact co?rdinates. So I undid the flare, and, after positioning the cursor exactly where I wanted it, I looked at the coordinates manager and noted the x and y value. Back to the lensflare dialog and alt-click, and I filled in the values I had noted. And the flare positioned itself exactly where I wanted it. Now this is fun!
Just wonder how many other filters react to hidden alt/option clicks on the preview image in the dialog box. Who tries it out with me?
2/problem 2: once you have applied this filter, it has changed your layer. So everything you do afterwards, and in the creative flow you may well want to tweak, and even change things, ifluences the lens flare also. It should be on a separate layer. Alone. An empty layer wouldn't work, coz "no pixels were selected". Indeed: it was completely transparant. I tried a black layer, and the blend sliders, but no deal. So the layers had to be blended using blend modes. DARKEN was quite interesting, and inspiring, but not really what I wanted. SCREEN indeed looked better, a lot even, but some detail in the lighter parsts was lost. So I tried HARD LIGHT, and that gave me a combination of both. Then I remembered that HARD LIGHT makes dark pixels darker, light pixels lighter, and medium grey is simply neglected.
I created a new layer, filled it with medium grey, and put the flare on that. Hard light, and voil?: the flare on it's own layer.
With the option to select it, distort it, inverse it, apply filters to it etc etc etc... now that's even more fun!
Then, by pure coincidence, I opened the Layer menu. When you open a new layer from here, you get a dialog box with blending modes et all. I clicked on hard light, and saw that you can choose to fill the new layer with medium grey.
Sigh...I had, once again found something the engineers had foreseen.
Right. Still: it is a useful trick.
The moment I started reading I was thinking "I hope that he doesn't mention 50% grey layers otherwise I have a nice lens flare trick to share too".
But yes, you already figured it out
I use layers filled with 50% grey quite often. Things I for example use it for are non-destructive dodge and burn and non-destructive noise, but there are many other possibilities.
I just wonder if someone else knows some more "50% grey layers" tricks.
Wow, thanks for the tip, Erik. I normally use a black layer with a screen blend, but 50% gray with hard light should work a lot better for most things.
Yes, and another advantage is tha when you invert, the background doesn't change!
Gaussian: indeed, medium grey is very interesting for many uses. But I never thought that the layer meny>new would include an option to set the layer to it when you choose Hard Light.
Lens flares 
maybe ps 8?
Linear Mode
