What is longitudinal chromatic aberration? The type of chromatic aberration you’re dealing with depends on what’s happened when your camera lens has tried to process the light.Īlso known as: Axial chromatic aberration Let’s now look at the two types of chromatic aberration, so you can easily recognise them next time you see imperfections in your shots. For example, shooting high contrast scenes – such as a skyscraper silhouetted against a blue sky – is likely to create chromatic aberration. One of the main causes of chromatic aberration from a photographer’s point of view is failing to set the right camera settings or to make the right choices about where to shoot. What is the cause of chromatic aberration? Various wavelengths of light travel through the lens at different speeds, making it difficult for some lenses to focus each hue on the same focal plane.Īnd this failure of a camera lens to focus white light’s different wavelengths onto the same focal point causes chromatic aberration – or to look at it visually, a blur of blue-yellow, red-green or magenta-purple fringing around the edge of objects in your photograph. This is due to the refractive index (put more simply: the way light passes from one medium to another – i.e. It draws light to a fixed focal point before sending it onto the camera sensor to make the image.īut this light can be hard to control. The lens is one of the most important components in your camera. Thankfully, there are many ways to counter both types of chromatic aberration – mostly by paying particular attention to certain camera settings, your photographic composition, and shooting conditions.Ĭhromatic aberration is all about how the camera lens handles light. Colour blurring in the foreground and background of your focal point.Outline of colour (red/green/blue/yellow/purple) along the edges of objects.But these are the key indicators of chromatic aberration: It can be difficult to tell what has caused imperfections in your photograph. We’ll talk in greater detail about each of these later. Lateral – occurs when different wavelengths of colour land at different points along the focal plane.Longitudinal – occurs when the lens fails to bring different wavelengths of colour to a fixed focal point.It’s also important to know there are two main types of chromatic aberration: We’ll talk more about this in the next section. “Looking back through old photos, I notice fringing and I am horrified that it’s been in there the entire time.”Ĭhromatic aberration relates to your camera and more specifically its lens and how it processes light. It’s because it often occurs at the edge of an image and objects within it that it’s known as colour fringing. Each type of aberration causes different colours of outlines along an object’s edge. Often, chromatic aberration appears along metallic surfaces or where there is a high contrast between light and dark objects – such as a black wall in front of a bright blue sky. Generally, it creates an outline of unwanted colour along the edges of objects in a photograph. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions.Chromatic aberration, also known as colour fringing, is a colour distortion that will leave visible imperfections on your photographs. Every photo is different, so it sometimes helps for you to make a big initial adjustment in one direction (cyan CA becomes red CA and vice versa) and then slowly go the other way until the CA is removed satisfactorily.įor this particular photo, I had to dial in a -10 for the red / cyan CA adjustment. Step 3: Adjust the Red / Cyan chromatic aberration slider until as you see the CA disappear. Step 2: Grab the scroll bar on the right and scroll through the list of adjustments until you come to the Lens Correction section. Step 1: With the photo open in Lightroom, click Develop. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has a handy tool that you can use to quickly remove chromatic aberration (CA) in photos.įirst, click the thumbnail below to view a large version (open it up in a separate browser window if necessary) of the screen capture that I’ve done to show you the steps.ĭo you see that there are traces of red / cyan CA around the edges of the building?
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