?? There is a burst of sunlight over her left shoulder, admittedly added with Luminar AI. A coloured flare could have been added in Photoshop, but I didn't want extra colour or a yellow tint in the render. Also, there is an option for adding flares within DAZ: https://www.daz3d.com/epic-props-dynamic-lens-flare-starburst-for-iray

However, it's a bit of a pain in the backside because of the options and it's much quicker in postwork.

How do you think I could have done the sun effect differently?

Edit: right shoulder

Sorry for the term, I thought more about the lens flare than the sunflare... well, the artifacts of colours coming from the sun through the lens system. And it was not a blame about the picture which is really good. I don't think I could have done better except by cheating in post-work...

Is this what you had in mind? https://sta.sh/0wbhg8gzo9w

Yes, definitely!

Ok then, I get the idea (which I had discarded when postworking).

Sorry to be that persitent, but why exactly do you feel this is better: the red flare around the sholder is ok for me, but i found the rest of the reflections disturbing the overall color scheme, thus more of a distraction than a bonus. But I am willing to learn.

(Will keep the postworked image for one more day and delete it then)

In fact, I did a lot of photography before doing computer graphics. Also, I tend to establish a difference between a purely graphic image and an image which approaches photographic reality (as I can make a difference between a painting and a photo). When I saw this image, I immediately thought of these computer-generated pictures that the cinema produces: the improbable encounter between a person of a primitive ethnic group and a robot resulting from advanced technology, with the sun preventing the person to fully believe what is standing close to him/her. And the image quality is so realistic that my eye (and my brain) expects to see the artifacts of a real image: the lens flare of an image taken against the sun. Lens flare is an optical defect which harms the quality of a photo, and reproduced in a 3D picture, it is also a defect which harms the image too but which enables it to get closer to realism (in a way a standard brain can view it).

This was the subject of my very first comment. And for me, (my assessment as a spectator) I prefer the second image which has the "defect" (of colors) of being more realistic (the second image is not better, I just like it more) . But as a creator, I completely respect your choice to be less concerned with reality and favor color balance. We both know that the published images that people prefer are not the ones that we prefer as designers...

Thanks for your detailed response. Like parents who cannot find faults with their offspring, an artist should always question his dabblings. Though I don't create renders primarily for others, but for my own distraction, the concept of creating deliberate optical "distubances" is an intresting concept which may make realistic renders better. Thanks again for the insight.

Ha. Somebody has read this thread https://www.renderhub.com/gallery/47040/paying-homage

One of my favourite sayings is "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." No matter how you arrived at the result, as long as you (and possibly others) like it, all is fine. It just fitted the conversation, so I thought it would be beneficial.