I agree here. Bloom gets way overused, mostly because its practitioners haven't thought much about why (if ever) it actually occurs in real life. As EQ points out, "bloom" is NOT the same thing as lens flares or volumetric effects. This is often a point of confusion. Bloom occurs from light scattering either on the lens…
To me bloom is all about perceptual brightness and increasing the dynamic range that a frame can represent. Monitors only go from black to white and if you want to depict something higher than white, you're screwed unless you can increase the exposure of the camera or use bloom. Exposure increases run the risk of making…
Bloom in games isn't really based on any sort of physical or optical camera effect. It's a simple post process that works by creating a copy of the rendered frame, blurring it, and then adding it back on top (usually resulting in bright areas becoming brighter). Pior's example image is using a diffraction filter which…
Vasaline on a lens is similar, but you don't see the "bloom" like effect in all situations. From the same site, with more neutral lighting the effect is much less pronounced, whereas with bloom, it's pretty much always on. Bloom is a very simple effect and can't account for the direction of light rays/flare which is a…