Lunatic Fringe

Dear Debbie,

I read somewhere that removing or repairing fringing on high-contrast photos is a snap in Photoshop, but I don't remember if I ever saw the solution spelled out.  Any suggestions?  I use Photoshop CS (8.0).

Sincerely,
A Fringe Element

***

Dear Fringed,

That weird colored fringe, be it purple, cyan, red, blue, or green, that shows up when you shoot a dark-colored object against a bright background is ugly, and it's a tell-tale sign of a digital image. Photoshop CS2 has a filter for dealing with fringe that's easy to use. But since you're on CS, you can shoot RAW and use Camera RAW to get rid of the fringe. If you need to fix a JPEG you have two choices: Do it the old-fashioned way or ignore it. Here are Photoshop's three methods:

The Lens Correction Filter
In Photoshop CS2, go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction. Go to the bottom of the screen and unclick Show Grid so you can see what you're doing. Then move the appropriate slider, under Chromatic Aberration, to get rid of it.

[Before]

[After]

Camera RAW
To get rid of aberration on a RAW file, open it in Camera RAW (Adobe's RAW converter). Hit the Lens tab, then move the sliders to fix the bad color.

[Before]


[After]

The Old-Fashioned Way
Before we had all this modern technology, we had to walk to school everyday in the snow, uphill both ways. And we had to get rid of chromatic aberration by hand. To find out if this is worth the trouble, print out your photo and back up. Can you see the problem? If it still bothers you, open the file and grab the Sponge Tool (it's hidden under Dodge and Burn in the toolbar).

[Finding the Sponge Tool]

Set it, in the Options Bar at the top of your screen, to Desaturate, and zoom and take the all the color out of those ugly edges. Since it's such a small area, no one will notice it's monochrome.

[Getting rid of the problem, slowly.]

Hope that helps, and good luck,
Debbie

Comments

[Roger Johnson]

How do I get rid of fringing in Photoshop Elements 4 (I've bought PE5, but I'm not allowed to open it until Christmas...)? I opened a RAW file, but there is no Lens tab shown.

[edwi]

I'm an Artist an a photographer, I just want you to teach me the process of color separation method in photoshop? I am planing to Print my photos on t-shirts tru silkscreen printing? thanks Debbie.