BTW, "blooming" is caused by excessive brightness when it temporarily overwhelms a sensor in digital photography and creates a flare. Bright headlights and streetlights can cause blooming. CPLs do not cause blooming. If anything, because they act like neutral density filters and reduce the amount of light entering the lens due to their "exposure factor" they can potentially reduce blooming slightly.
Another form of "blooming" is caused by a film of dirt or fingerprint smears on the lens or CPL - or similarly, a dirty windshield. This type of blooming is a form of diffraction spike caused by bright point source lights but look more like in this photo from the diffraction spike entry on Wikipedia. Both optical blooming from diffraction (starbursts) and electronic blooming from excessive brightness (flares) can happen simultaneously. Again, CPLs do not cause optical blooming unless they are dirty.
