Lens flare
Orbs, streaks, and haze that appear when a bright light hits the camera lens and bounces around inside the glass.
See it
What it is
Light that bounces between the glass elements inside a lens instead of landing on the sensor. It shows up in a few families: ghosts, the chain of colored orbs and polygons (shaped by the aperture blades, so hexagons and octagons), and veiling glare, the milky haze that washes across the frame, lifts the blacks, and eats contrast. Starbursts, the sharp spikes shooting straight off a point light, belong in their own bucket: they are diffraction at the aperture blades, not an internal reflection, which is why an even blade count gives you that many spikes and an odd count gives you double. The anamorphic variant, a long horizontal blue streak, comes from widescreen cine lenses and is the one Star Trek (2009) made famous.
Reach for it when a scene needs a physical light source to feel real: 3D hero renders, product shots with a rim light, dark landing pages with one bright accent, y2k and sci-fi work. Build it as a screen-blended layer whose position tracks the light, not a static PNG pasted on top.
Gotcha: the geometry is not free choice. Ghosts always fall along the straight line running from the light source through the center of the frame and out the opposite side, spacing out as they go. Scatter them randomly and the eye reads fake instantly. The other trap is the Photoshop 'Lens Flare' default, which is one of the most dated stock effects in existence: subtle, low-opacity, correctly placed beats it every time.
Ask AI for it
Add a lens flare from a bright light source in the upper-left of this scene: a small hot core with 6-point starburst spikes, a soft veiling haze around it, and a chain of 4 to 6 hexagonal ghost orbs (varying size, warm gold and cyan) spaced along the straight line from the source through the frame center toward the opposite corner. Composite the whole thing on 'screen' blend at low opacity so it never hides the subject.