user: Give a detailed overview of Inputs: syntax, arguments, return values, common patterns.

assistant: Image
:   Standard color input.

Glare Type
:   Defines the type of glare effect applied to the image.

    Bloom:
    :   Simulates the soft glow around bright areas due to light scattering in eyes and camera lenses.

    Ghosts:
    :   Creates multiple overlapping glare artifacts resembling lens reflections or a hazy glow.

    Streaks:
    :   Produces bright streaks radiating from highlights, commonly used to simulate lens flares.

    Fog Glow:
    :   Simulates the soft glow around bright areas due to light scattering in eyes and camera lenses.
        This glare is a more physically accurate version of *Bloom*, creating a softer,
        more realistic glow at the cost of increased computation time.

    Simple Star:
    :   Similar to *Streaks*, but produces a simpler star-shaped glare effect.

    Sun Beams:
    :   Simulates the effect of bright light getting scattered in a medium
        [(Crepuscular Rays)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular_rays).
        This phenomenon can be created by renderers, but full volumetric lighting is
        a rather arduous approach and takes a long time to render.

    Kernel:
    :   Applies a custom convolution filter using a [kernel](../../image_kernels.xhtml)
        defined either numerically or from an image.
        This mode allows the creation of user-defined glare or diffusion effects
        by specifying the shape and intensity distribution of the kernel.

Quality
:   Controls the resolution at which the glare effect is processed.
    This can be helpful to save render times while only doing preview renders.

    High:
    :   Full-resolution processing for best quality.

    Medium:
    :   Uses a lower resolution to reduce computation time.

    Low:
    :   Fastest processing but with lower detail.

### Highlights

Threshold
:   Defines the minimum luminance required for an area to contribute to the glare effect.
    Lower values include more areas, while higher values restrict glare to the brightest regions.

Smoothness
:   Controls how gradually pixels transition into the glare effect.
    Higher values create a smoother highlight extraction.

#### Clamp

Clamp bright highlights defined by the *Maximum* input.

This can help create a more consistent looking bloom effect when there is a large variations in luminance.

Maximum
:   Clamps the intensity of the highlights to this value.

### Adjust

Strength
:   Adjusts the overall intensity of the glare effect.
    Values greater than 1 boost the luminance of the glare,
    while values less than 1 blends the glare with the original image.

Saturation
:   Modifies the color saturation of the glare effect.

Tint
:   Tints the glare effect, allowing for colored highlights.

### Glare

Size Bloom Fog Glow Sun Beams
:   Defines the relative spread of the effect across the image.
    A value of 1 makes the effect cover the full image, while 0.5 restricts it to half, and so on.

Streaks Streaks
:   The number of streaks radiating from highlights.

Streaks Angle Streaks
:   The angle that the first streak makes with the horizontal axis.

Iterations Ghosts Streaks Simple Star
:   The number of ghosts for *Ghost* glare or the quality and
    spread of glare for *Streaks* and *Simple Star* glare types.

Color Modulation Ghosts Streaks
:   Introduces subtle color variations, simulating chromatic dispersion effects.

Fade Streaks Simple Star
:   The fade-out intensity of the streaks.

Diagonal Simple Star
:   Rotates the *Simple Star* streaks by 45° for an alternate pattern.

Sun Position Sun Beams
:   Source point of the rays as a factor of the image dimensions.

Jitter Sun Beams
:   The amount of jitter to introduce while computing rays,
    higher jitter can be faster but can produce grainy or noisy results.

Kernel Data Type Kernel
:   Determines how the kernel is defined:

    Float:
    :   A numeric kernel defined by the *Kernel* input socket.

    Color:
    :   A full color image used as the kernel, allowing for more complex filtering patterns

Kernel Kernel
:   When the *Float* type is selected, this input defines the numeric
    [kernel](../../image_kernels.xhtml) values.
    When the *Color* type is selected, an image input can be connected
    to provide a grayscale or color-based convolution kernel.