Okay... So I have a specular shader working nicely and I'm quite happy with the results. Now for a little added realism, I'd like to add some sort of "lens flare" effect based upon the specular shader. In other words, when a good amount of shine is reflecting off the surface of a mesh, I'd like to have that shine slightly "glow" off it's surface and possibly toward the camera a bit. I don't think I'm looking for deferred shading, since my project is a simple model viewer and requires no background geometry. Just a simple black or gray background works fine for my purposes. How would I go about this? Which additional concepts should I consider implementing? What is the first thing I should research? Here is my current shader:

[source lang="cpp"]float4x4 WorldViewProjection : WORLDVIEWPROJECTION;
float4x4 World : WORLD;
float4x3 WorldInverseTranspose : WORLDINVERSETRANSPOSE;
float3 afLightColor[2];
float3 afLightDir[5];
float3 vCameraPos : CAMERAPOSITION;

struct VS_INPUT
{
float3 Position : POSITION;
float3 Normal : NORMAL;
};

struct VS_OUTPUT
{
float4 Position : POSITION;
float3 ViewDir : TEXCOORD0;
float3 Normal : TEXCOORD1;
};

VS_OUTPUT DefaultVShader(VS_INPUT IN)
{
VS_OUTPUT Out;
float3 objPos = IN.Position;
Out.Position = mul( float4(objPos, 1.0f), WorldViewProjection );
float3 WorldPos = mul( float4(objPos, 1.0f), World );
Out.ViewDir = vCameraPos - WorldPos;
Out.Normal = mul( IN.Normal, WorldInverseTranspose );
return Out;
}

float4 DefaultPShaderSpecular(VS_OUTPUT IN) : COLOR
{
float4 OUT = float4(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
float3 Normal = normalize(IN.Normal);
float3 ViewDir = normalize(IN.ViewDir);
{
float L1 = dot( Normal, afLightDir[0] ) * 0.5f + 0.5f;
float3 Reflect = reflect( Normal, afLightDir[0] );
float fHalfLambert = L1 * L1;
OUT.rgb += afLightColor[0] * (fHalfLambert + saturate( fHalfLambert * 4.0f ) * pow( dot(Reflect, ViewDir), 9 ));
}
return OUT;
}

technique DefaultFXSpecular
{
pass p0
{
CullMode=none;
PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 DefaultPShaderSpecular();
VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 DefaultVShader();
}
};[/source]

So I believe what I'm going for is a simple bloom effect, based upon the overall amount of light being reflected off a given surface. I assume I would need to first calculate the overall amount of light being reflected, then use the output of that to check if it exceeds a certain threshold within the bloom effect. But how would I calculate the overall amount of light being reflected from a surface? Or is there a better way?

Ok, but how would I calculate the scalar value of the effect?
Take for example, with the light shining down from the top:

Fig. 1
Front view, dark top surface (No specular or bloom):


Fig 2.
A bit more perspective, some specular (Full bloom on top surface, medium effect on side, minimal on front):


How would I know how much light is actually being reflected?
And is it possible to affect only certain areas, or would it have to affect the entire view?
Or alternatively, could I make the bloom effect only affect colors with bright hues?

You can't glow outside of the geometry you are rendering, in a straightforward way (pixel shader is only run for pixels on actual geometry).

You could scatter blur to an Unordered Access View from within a Pixel Shader. Although, I wouldn't recommend doing it that way