How to Correct Chromatic Aberration Quickly and Easily
photo by aluxum via iStock
The manner in which lenses are constructed can cause colored fringes to appear in the image along hard edges.
These artifacts are known as chromatic aberration, which occurs when a lens refracts wavelengths of light onto different planes.
This short tutorial explains how to correct chromatic aberrations. We’ll be demonstrating the process using Exposure Software.
If you don’t own Exposure, you can download a free 30-day trial to give it a spin!
Step 1: Find a High-Contrast Edge
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
Chromatic aberrations appear in high-contrast areas along edges, so that’s where you need to look to find the offending color fringing.
The first step in how to fix chromatic aberrations is to zoom in to 100 percent (or more) in Exposure on an area with high contrast so you can easily see where the color fringing has occurred.
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Step 2: Select Your Lens’s Profile
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
The next step in how to correct chromatic aberrations is to use your lens’s specific chromatic aberration profile.
These profiles are designed to correct the chromatic aberrations that each supported lens creates.
The profiles make corrections automatically, however, there are manual controls you can utilize to dial in a more specific level of correction.
Step 3: Reduce Color Fringing
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
The Blue and Red sliders should be used to reduce color fringing if the lens profile didn’t take care of it on its own.
If green or purple fringing is evident, make an adjustment to the Blue slider. When cyan or red fringing has occurred, adjust the Red slider.
In most cases, only these sliders will be needed to eliminate fringing. But, if additional adjustments are needed, you can use the Corner Color sliders to enhance or diminish the strength of corrections made in each corner.
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
Quick Tip: Exposure allows you to save lens correction settings as a preset, that way you can speed up the process and have a quick chromatic aberration fix. Select the gear icon at the top of the Lens Correction Panel to access the preset creation menu. Once saved, your lens preset will include all the settings in the panel, including chromatic aberration correction, vignette, and distortion.
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Step 4: Advanced Color Fringe Removal
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
In most cases, the first three steps in this process are enough to correct chromatic aberration.
However, sometimes fringing needs more attention to effectively remove it. That’s where Exposure’s Defringe Panel comes in.
The Defringing tool corrects colors that remain after chromatic aberration correction has been utilized.
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
Exposure makes this process easy because color fringes can be removed from all the edges in the photos (and for all colors) simultaneously. If you want more control, however, you can select each hue individually and correct each color on its own.
Just like in the Lens Correction Panel, you can create presets in the Defringe Panel to speed up the process of removing fringing for your particular lenses.
YouTube Screenshot/Exposure Software
Quick Tip: If Exposure does not have a chromatic aberration correction lens profile for your particular lens, you can use the Defringe Panel to remove chromatic aberration. Just set the defringe settings to match the colors of the fringing in the photo and the Defringe tool will remove them.
Removing chromatic aberrations really has never been so simple. With just a few clicks, you can easily take care of color fringing, and best of all, you can save your settings as a preset and automatically take care of these common issues when editing future images taken with the same lens.
If you need a refresher of these steps, check out the video above by Exposure Software.
Ready to try Exposure for yourself? Learn more about Exposure and download your free trial!
