hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to talk all about
chromatic aberration aka fringing why it occurs how to avoid it and how to fix it if you have it
if you're new here then hi i'm jess probably should mention though i really don't like saying
it that i am actually quite a good photographer multi-award-winning international portrait
photographer i usually photograph animals but i also photograph other things as well
and basically this is my youtube channel where i certain chat about stuff that hopefully is helpful
to improve you guys in photography as you move forward we've also got an online learning platform
and courses and all sorts of other stuff it's not just me here we also have a team and they all
are amazing so if you want to join us for the ride hit the subscribe button hit the
bell icon the bell icon will give you a notification every single time i upload
a youtube video i upload every single week and sometimes one that if i feel like it
usually always on a friday at 12 noon i've not missed one yet for the last near two years so
hopefully i won't be missing one anytime soon now chromatic aberration or fringing is a really
common phenomenon it's caused by the optics in your lenses so why does it happen well essentially
light is made up of different colors just you know as a general fact of life hence rainbows exist
because of how light works different wavelengths of light travel at slightly different speeds
and as your lens is pulling the image data from the scene and pulling all that light in there
to hit your sensor to take the photograph those different light bits can be focused at slightly
different times that is chromatic aberration it is a wavelength issue in terms of the color of the
light that's coming through the lens and how it's been focused on the sensor at the end and so that
is chromatic aberration there is a lot more to it there's different types of chromatic
aberration i'm not going to go into that now but i will include some information in the blog post
i'll link below anyway so why does it happen it tends to happen if you've got low quality lenses
if you're shooting with your lenses wide open and usually that is paired with a high contrast scene
so the image that we've got as an example today has been sent in by one of our premium members
and she's really struggling with the chromatic aberration that's at play so i'm going to show
you the example that we've got here because we've got a super high contrast scene
we've got very bright area of white snow and then a black dog so the area where those two meet where
the white meets the dark we've got this fringing you can see purple fringing here and you can also
see green fringing here usually fringing will be either purple or green or pink or green or pink or
teal or some variation of those two colors it just tends to be those colors most often you'll
see this on branches where they're kind of backed by bright light again high contrast area but it
can show up in all sorts of other places so before we look at how to fix it in an image let's look at
how to avoid it so that hopefully you won't have it in the future now number one is to purchase
and invest in good quality lenses but every lens can suffer from chromatic aberration at times so
you can't actually 100 percent be confident that you'll always avoid it what you can do is be aware
of the situations that cause it and then if you see it occurring just stop down your aperture
make that f number a little bit bigger so that the hole in the lens becomes smaller therefore it does
help to concentrate that light a little bit better another thing to be aware of is zoom lenses so if
you're using a zoom lens and you're having this as a result and you're all the way at 200 mil on a 70
to 200 or you're all the way out at 24 mil on a 24 to 70 the focal length extremes usually have worse
exhibiting of chromatic aberration so just alter your focal length a little bit if you've got a
zoom lens and sometimes that is enough to improve it so aside from all of those different things you
still can't completely always 100 avoid it from happening so of course we can put those things
into place but what happens if you do end up with an image where you've got fringing you've got this
chromatic aberration how do you remove it well you can remove it in either lightroom or in photoshop
and or other programs are available i'm just going to go through a very very simple straightforward
step by step in photoshop to allow you to have then further control of the image as always in
photoshop i usually always will duplicate the background layer because it just makes sure that
there is a safe layer handy so that we can go back to it or mask through or whatever you want to do
if photoshop is terrifying maybe consider having a look at the photoshop for beginners video which i
will link above which goes through the three basic elements of photoshop that everybody needs to know
to feel more confident we also have a photoshop for beginners online course i'll link that above
too which goes through things in a little bit more detail so that you can leave confidence follow a
photoshop tutorial on the interweb from whomever you would like to follow so anyway that's that
now what i want to do is open a camera raw filter okay so i'm going to go up to filter
and choose camera raw filter it's worth noting at this point that camera raw filter practically
mirrors lightroom both classic and also cc so these tools are available in all of them
you just need to go and find them in lightroom classic you need to be in the develop module
and then again you just want to be following down the chunky sections at the right hand
side so we're going to go and go past basic ignore everything all the way down to optics in here okay
so when we get to optics what we want to do is go ahead and drop down the d
fringe section with the d fringe section open i'm then going to zoom right up in on my fringing
so we should be able to see these fringy bits these colored line edgy bits and this is the
bit that we're wanting to tackle so then all that we need to do is grab the little eyedropper here
grab on to that go ahead and put your eyedropper over an area of fringing and then just click once
and just like that the pink fringing has been completely taken care of okay you can adjust
your hues if you want to do what you need to do on that front so that is one with one done go ahead
and click okay and then we're literally going to go back in again if you've only got one color of
fringing then that should have sorted it continue on with your edit and continue on with your life
everything's fine but if you've got two colors we're just going to go back up in there filter
camera raw filter and then we're going to go zoom me up in there zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom all
the way over to here grab onto that eyedropper in the defringe go over the colour make a good click
on that and that will be resolved so now we've got no colour fringing we've gone from the before to
the after let me zoom up in even closer before after before after in a few clicks you could
because we've got this little bit of a haloing around the edge you could go in and soften that
off with the clone tool with whatever tool you want to do that's absolutely fine but in this
instance that fringing is cured fixed and avoided so guys realistically that's it for chromatic
aberration that's all i'm going to cover off today so we've gone through why it happens how to avoid
it and how to correct it if you've got it if this video was useful for you please do let me know
let me know it was helpful share it with somebody else just you know let us know hit
the like button any interaction that is made on the youtube video itself really helps us in terms
of the youtube algorithm so i would really appreciate any likes shares or comments and
subscribes and bell icons and just you know anything else really because that would be
super i hope you're all safe and well i'll see you all soon see you next friday and goodbye