By Charlotte Reeves

Have you ever tried shooting with backlight and ended up with an image that is "flared-out"? This can happen when direct sunlight hits the end glass element of your lens and messes with the optics inside, giving you an overly bright, low contrast image - often with flare "artifacts" - circles of colour or rainbows.

While I don't mind a little controlled flare in a backlit image, the contrast and brightness can ruin the image - if you don't know how to fix it in the editing process! It's tempting to just use the Dehaze slider in Lightroom to "fix" the issue, but in this video I'll also show you what you need to do to make the image look it's best, BEFORE you even touch that slider.

I'll also show you how to get rid of the stubborn red colour cast that often persists in black fur after "fixing" a flared-out image. HINT: It's best to address this in Photoshop instead of Lightroom.

So next time you end up with a flared-out image, you can fix it instead of giving up and tossing it out!

If you like these quick tutorials, you'll love our premium Unleashed Edits - full start-to-finish editing tutorials in Lightroom and Photoshop. These are available in our membership (along with a tonne of amazing pet photography education). We hope to see you there!