   Bloom
  I have added a bloom effect to my sun using post process blur algorithms, mainly because I like how it looks when the light bleeds through around mountains/trees.  However, there is an issue in that my sun becomes too bright after I add in the bloom.  I know bloom is for very bright sources, but it is affecting my sun gradient.  Any ideas on how to fix this?   
  One solution is to mask the sky out of the post processing effect so that the bloom only effects the terrain/trees etc.The other one is to try and use different blending modes. Additive blend tends to blow out values too readily. A screen blend might be better ((1-A) * B + A)   ;  dont draw the sun into your main rendertarget, just in some seperate copy that you use as source for bloom and then you can apply the bloom-texture to the main color target that had no sun.   ;  I second Exorcist's recommendation to use "screen blending" if you aren't doing so already. It's the most useful thing in the world (only slightly exaggerating);  Subtract the non blured buffer (the one you had before bluring) from the blured before doing additive blending. This way you only add what bleeds from the non blured buffer.   