Chromatic aberration: What is it and how to banish it from your life

Text and photos by Heather Cline 

Snowy egret with fish Snowy egret with fish

If you have taken a photo and noticed a hideous outline of coloration between high contrast parts of your image, you have fallen victim to chromatic aberration, also called chromatic distortion or color fringing. This occurs when your camera's lens is unable to focus all colors of the wavelength to the same point. It's an annoying side effect but it can be prevented or eliminated in post-production tools such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, etc. This post will explain how to overcome this nasty disease, and because this may be a dry topic for some, I'll do my best to inject humor and interesting photos along the journey. 

It's worth noting that if you are sharing smaller images online, this effect may not be as noticeable as it is when enlarged or printed.  

Avoiding Chromatic Aberration

There are a few ways to avoid this phenomenon.

• Use a high-quality lens: this one is easier said than done. Camera equipment is not cheap so unless you have unlimited funds, it may be tempting to buy a less expensive lens. I am a proponent of buying the best possible gear you can afford for multiple reasons. They tend to be more durable in tough conditions, they last longer and yield better results. There are plenty of great used high-quality lenses for sale too! 
• Avoid using wide-angle lenses: this one almost sounds silly, especially if you shoot landscapes. Having said that, the wider the lens the more you risk inviting chromatic aberration into your life. That doesn't mean you have to give up wide angles completely, you might just want to move from a 14mm to a 55mm lens. 
• Shoot using a smaller aperture: this is also referred to as a higher f-stop. The terminology for apertures can be confusing but in simple terms, an aperture of f1.8 is much larger/lower than f8. This means you will need to increase your ISO, increase your available light, or shooting at a slower shutter speed to compensate. 

Black Tail Doe Black Tail Doe

Fixing Chromatic Aberration After The Fact

If you are Lightroom user, the process is super cinchy:

1. While in Develop mode, navigate to the right navigation and locate the panel called: Lens Correction.
2. Once this is open, there are two options at the very top called Profile or Manual.
3. Make sure Profile is selected if not already.
4. Check the box called: Remove Chromatic Aberration.
5. Once this step is complete, zoom into the image to see if that took care of the issue.
   1. If it did, you're done!
   2. If not, switch from Profile to Manual, select the eyedropper tool and click on an area of the image where the chromatic aberration is occurring. Lightroom will automatically move the defringe sliders on this panel to further correct the issue. If this still isn't enough, you can move the defringe sliders manually to make additional adjustments. 
6. If this still doesn't resolve the issue to your liking:
    
   1. You can use Photoshop to clone out the remaining chromatic aberration, but this is a bit more labor intensive than this easy Lightroom fix. 
   2. You can also consider converting to a monochrome image where chromatic aberration is a non-issue.
       

River Otter River Otter

Now you know what chromatic aberration is, why it happens, how to avoid it and how to fix it, you can go on to create stellar images without that funk getting in the way! Happy shooting.