How to Remove Chromatic Aberration in Lightroom

This article provides a detailed explanation of how to remove chromatic aberration in Lightroom.

Removing chromatic aberration in Lightroom is a crucial step in enhancing the image quality of my photos. To start, I open the image in the Develop module and navigate to the Lens Corrections panel. Here, I check the box labelled “Remove Chromatic Aberration” to correct any apparent chromatic aberrations automatically. This feature is handy for removing purple fringing and green hues that can appear around the edges of objects, especially in high-contrast areas. By eliminating chromatic aberration, I can improve the overall sharpness and clarity of my images, making them look more lifelike and professional. Whether I’m working with landscapes, portraits, or architectural shots, using the lens corrections panel to remove chromatic aberration ensures that distracting colour fringing is eliminated, resulting in cleaner, more accurate photos. This simple adjustment helps my images stand out and maintains the integrity of the original scene.

This article provides a detailed explanation of how to remove Chromatic Aberration in Lightroom.

Chromatic aberration occurs when the camera lens fails to focus all colours to the same point, and is very easy to correct in Adobe Lightroom. Shooting in RAW format and using proper shooting techniques can help minimize chromatic aberration before you even reach the editing stage. Capturing your shot correctly in camera helps reduce the need for extensive corrections later. In this article, I explain how to remove chromatic aberration in Lightroom. Maintaining control over your shooting process and camera settings can help prevent chromatic aberration in your shots.

What is Chromatic Aberration?

You can see chromatic aberration or fringing at the edge of the shadow. Chromatic aberration occurs when the camera lens fails to focus all colours to the same point, as in the photograph below from the Australian Pinnacles. You can see a ghost-like green colour fringe at the bottom and a purple colour fringe at the top of the shadow’s edge when you look closely at the shadow of the Pinnacles rock formation photo. Often, a purple hue or green hue may be visible as a purple fringe or green fringe along sharp edges in high-contrast areas. This unnatural phenomenon is a chromatic aberration or, as some photographers call it, “colour fringing.” Chromatic aberration occurs because different wavelengths of light are focused at slightly different positions on the sensor, resulting in colour fringing at the pixel level. We need to remove chromatic aberration in Lightroom. The fringe colours can vary between green, purple, red, blue, yellow, and magenta. You will commonly see this “fringing” effect in high contrast areas where dark edges are adjacent to the photograph’s bright regions.

Identifying Chromatic Aberration

Identifying chromatic aberration is the first step in removing it from my photos. Chromatic aberration occurs when a lens fails to focus different wavelengths of light onto the same focal plane, resulting in colour fringing or a colourful glow around objects. This distortion can appear as purple, green, blue, or yellow hues and is often noticeable around the edges of objects, especially in high-contrast areas. To spot chromatic aberration, I zoom in on my image to 100% and carefully inspect the edges of objects for any unnatural colour outlines or fringing. High contrast areas, such as where a dark object meets a bright sky, are particularly prone to this issue. I also look for any purple or green tints that may appear along the edges, as these are common signs of chromatic aberration. By thoroughly examining my photos, especially in areas with strong contrast or fine detail, I can quickly determine if chromatic aberration is present and decide whether to use the lens corrections panel in Adobe Lightroom or the correction tools in Adobe Photoshop to fix it. This careful inspection ensures that I catch any colour fringing before it affects the overall quality of my images.

What causes Chromatic Aberration?

Chromatic aberration occurs when the camera lens fails to focus all colours to the same point. Here is a great in-depth article by Photography Life if you are interested in a more technical explanation of the physics behind chromatic aberration.

Colour fringing in lenses is a common problem. The optical characteristics of every lens are different. For example, zoom lenses with adjustable apertures tend to exhibit this problem more often. In my case, the fringing occurred in my Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5–5.6 lens. But this is easily correctable in Adobe Lightroom. Sometimes, only a slightly noticeable chromatic fringe appears, which can be fixed with minor adjustments to the correction sliders. You can also create custom presets or actions in Lightroom to correct chromatic aberration, thereby creating a more efficient workflow. Creating these presets can save time and ensure consistent results across multiple images.

How to automatically correct chromatic aberration in Lightroom

Chromatic aberration is relatively easy to correct in Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Scroll down and open the ‘Lens Correction Panel in the Develop module.’ This panel has two sections: the ‘Profiles’ section and the more advanced ‘Manual’ section. Adobe will automatically preload the profile for all primary camera and lens models. If your lens was not selected, you can browse and pick it yourself by clicking the right arrow icon, which displays the supported camera lens manufacturers and models.

If you look at the illustration below, you will see that Adobe Lightroom has loaded the correct lens profile for my Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5–5.6 lens. Now click the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ box, and Adobe Lightroom will automatically correct the colour fringing.

If chromatic aberration is still visible, especially on the right-hand side of the image, you may need to adjust the correction manually. In the Manual section, you can use the slider to adjust the amount of chromatic aberration correction until the colour fringing is removed.How to manually correct colour fringing in Adobe Lightroom Lens Corrections Manual Palette

Since Adobe has built lens profiles for all major camera manufacturers, it is rare to find a situation where selecting the automatic chromatic aberration correction produces suboptimal results. However, for more precise control, you can switch to the manual tab in the Lens Corrections panel.You can use the panel’s sliders to correct for green and purple fringing manually, or you can select the eyedropper and sample the area with the most noticeable colour fringing in the photograph. Once you sample the purple and the green regions, Adobe Lightroom will attempt to correct the colour on the edges. You can specifically target and adjust the green fringe colour using the sliders provided in the manual tab. Then you can fine-tune the colour de-fringing amount and hue using the sliders provided.

Finally, check your photograph by zooming so that you can verify all offending colour fringing has been corrected.The final result is achieved using the manual method, which begins with the eyedropper and is then fine-tuned with the sliders.