Affordable and powerful lensflare generator

I purchased this product to replace Knoll Light Factory and so far it works really well. Its certainly a lot more powerful and customizable than I expected for $20 (Knoll Light Factory, by comparison, is $200). Its certainly a fast and speedy app on my MacBook Pro and runs incredibly smooth under OS X 10.8. A big benefit of this over many competing products is LensFlare Studios layers capability. You can add multiple effects without having to make destructive editing choices and can go back and edit layers as needed. I also love the ability to show and hide layers to test out various effects and elements.

Sadly, this app is not compatible with Photoshop as a plugin. It would be wonderful to be able to use LFS within Photoshop itself, but I suspect the limitations of the App Store prevent this from ever happening and is not really the fault of the developer. Additionally, while LFS does support the opening of .PSD files (so long as they are saved with "maximize compatibility" checked), it does *NOT* allow for the export of layered .PSDs. It would be great to open a layered .PSD file, apply lensflare effects, then save it as a .PSD with those lensflares as their own separate layers within the .PSD file.

The user interface is very simple to use. Everything is drag and drop with specific tweaks available at the bottom of the screen. I would like to see the addition of a trash can icon beneath the layers themselves in addition to the "delete lensflare" button with the ability to drag lensflare layers to the trash can to delete them. Photoshop works like this, and after using it for years and years Ive just grown accustomed to this ability. Its "unintuitive" to me to not be able to do the same within LFS. This is hardly a deal-breaker, though it would be my #1 requested feature apart from native Photoshop plugin compatibility.

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase and am really impressed with the full capabilities of LFS. At $20, its a very competent product and the best lensflare generator in the Mac App Store.

jedimacfan about LensFlare Studio