How To Rectify Chromatic Aberration? (2023 Updated)

Hey, Welcome to Camlense. Today we will be talking about How to Rectify Chromatic Aberration. For this, we will, first of all, understand what chromatic aberration is. Chromatic Aberration is also known as Color Fringing or Purple Fringing. It is a color distortion in which an object’s edges are outlined with unwanted color. It occurs when the lens can’t focus all wavelengths of color to the same spot.

How To Rectify Chromatic Aberration?

We can rectify chromatic aberration by using adobe photoshop. For this purpose, we can use the chromatic aberration removal tool by moving the slider to the right until the color fringing is eliminated.

How To Correct Chromatic Aberration?

There are a few ways to correct chromatic aberration. One way is to prevent it before happening. Another way is to correct it using Photoshop or any similar technology.

Here’s how you can rectify chromatic aberration in Photoshop:

There are two ways to rectify chromatic aberration in adobe photoshop. One is to use the chromatic aberration tool and the other is to use the “Defringe” tool. Let’s discuss the first method first.

  1. First of all, open the image in adobe photoshop and zoom into the specific area with purple fringing.
  2. In adobe, you have a Filter Menu in which you have the “Lens Correction” option. You need to click this option.
  3. After clicking lens correction, a dialogue box will show up. You will find a “Custom” tab. Click on it.
  4. After that, you will be taken to another tab where you will see Chromatic Aberration. Below that, you will see a slider to increase or decrease the fringing.
  5. By moving the slider to right, fringing will decrease and vice versa. So, to decrease the fringing and increase correction, keep moving the slider to the right until you feel that the color fringing is gone.
  6. After that, your photo will be free of chromatic aberration. Click “OK” to apply the final correction to the image.

Another method to correct chromatic aberration in Photoshop is to use the “Defringe” tool. Here’s how.

  1. Same, open the image in Photoshop and zoom into that area where you can see more color fringing.
  2. Instead of selecting “lens correction”, select the Magic Wand from the toolbar.
  3. After this, you will have to click on the area of the chromatic aberration. After it, look for New Adjustment Layer from the Layers Menu. There you will find the hue/saturation option.
  4. In the hue/saturation dialogue box look for the Master dropdown menu and select Magentas or Cyan. These two should be considered on the basis of the color fringing that you are facing.

Now below, you will see a similar slider, and to solve aberration and increase correction, move the slider to the right. When the purple fringing is completely disappeared, try adjusting saturation and highlights if possible.

Prevention Of Chromatic Aberration

There are several ways to prevent chromatic aberration before it can happen. Some of these are given below:

  1. High-contrast scenes generally produce chromatic aberration, so try to avoid high contrast.
  2. Chromatic Aberration is the purple fringing so if you are using a black-and-white filter, you won’t see any colors, not even purple, and thus you can get rid of chromatic aberration.
  3. If your subject is not in the middle of the frame, it will be more affected by aberration. So, to decrease the impact of chromatic aberration on your subject, try to place it in the center of the frame.
  4. Chromatic aberration is in simple words purple fringing, so if you are using black and white colors, you can eliminate purple fringing.
  5. Avoid using lenses with very long and very short focal lengths.
  6. There are special glasses available to reduce aberration. These are called low-dispersion glasses. With the help of fluorite, they can reduce aberration too.
  7. Another way is to reduce your aperture. So, as the amount of light reaching your sensor is decreased, it will also decrease the chromatic aberration. You can change ISO and shutter speed to compensate for these changes.
  8. Try using the achromatic lens. This lens converges red and blue wavelengths on a single plane and thus reduces color fringing.
  9. New technologies are available in camera software which helps a lot in decreasing and fixing chromatic aberration. Smartphone cameras are getting advanced and coming with many new features to fix photography problems, and fixing this aberration is one of them. Also, new cameras of Nikon, Panasonic, etc. have come up with these features to remove color fringing.
  10. Using expensive high-quality lenses, no doubt solves the color fringing problem. If you are using cheap low-quality lenses, it is prevalent that you will suffer from color aberration.

Another way to get rid of chromatic aberration is to fix it in post-processing software e.g., photoshop or Lightroom, etc. They provide different features for solving the color problem. They feature certain corrections to solve or eliminate chromatic aberration.

Conclusion

While concluding our post, we can finally say that it is better to prevent chromatic aberration while taking photos via taking certain steps shown above. But even if you click a photo with aberration, there are ways to rectify it using adobe photoshop. Furthermore, if you have any queries feel free to ask in the comments.

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