Correcting Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic aberration is a lens artifact that can result in fringes in high contrast areas of some photos. The camera lens can cause different wavelengths of light to focus differently, which appears in photos as colored fringing or colored lines on the borders of high contrast areas. Purple fringing can also occur when there is a bright spot of light in front of the lens.

This zoomed-in image shows an example of blue/yellow fringing.

Use the Defringe and Chromatic Aberration tools in the Develop Tools pane to reduce the appearance of colored fringes. Chromatic aberration can be especially useful for photos with architectural details. For best results, it's recommended to use the Chromatic Aberration sliders first, and then the Defringe sliders.

Settings can be set as a preset for future use.

To reduce fringing in an image:

  1. In the Develop Tools pane, select the Detail tab.
  2. In the Chromatic Aberration group, adjust the sliders as described below.

Right-click a slider to reset to the default value.

Chromatic Aberration Options

Fix Red/Cyan

Adjust the red and cyan channels to reduce red/cyan fringing.

Fix Blue/Yellow

Adjust the blue and yellow channels to reduce blue/yellow fringing.

Defringe Options

Defringe strength

Adjust the amount of fringe color you want to remove from high contrast edges. A setting of zero means that defringing is off.

Defringe radius

Adjust the number of pixels surrounding an edge that will be defringed.

Color

Adjust the color to remove from high contrast edges.

View the effects of the changes in the preview window, located at the top of the Detail pane. Move the overlay square on the image to change the area the preview window displays.

See also: