How to fix chromatic abberations in Lightroom 4.1

[Brownbear]

I've been trying to capture a photo of these green parrotlets in flight (rare, beautiful endangered birds) for quite some time, with my Sony Alpha 200 DSLR...

As you can see from these shots, their is a blue/purple line around the edges of all the birds





I just purchased Lightroom 4.1 for help with this but when I use the fringe tool, selecting for purple and/or magneta it turns the birds yellowish and these birds should be green.



Thank you in advance.

At one point while trying to edit, I believe I tried correct white balance and the birds turned green but I could not replicate the correction. Can anyone advise on what I am doing incorrectly?

[kdoc856]

Hi, Christina

I start this type of correction by going straight to the Lens Correction Panel, then selecting the Color panel, and click on the Chromatic Abberation box. Often that is all it takes. But if the fringing is a type other than CA, this wont help, so the next step is trying the Dropper Tool: just scroll the dropper over the color you wish to be rid of, and then click when the dropper identifies a color it can correct and indicates so by lighting up.

If this has no effect, you'll need to make a Hue Tool correction. The range the algorithm uses tends to be quite narrow by default. So pulling the right slider of either the green or purple hue panel (whichever color you're trying to be rid of) further to the right widens the range and often times works perfectly. If it doesnt, play with the range of both sliders till you are the happiest you have ever been The Color Panel is a new addition to the Lens Correction Panel in version 4.1, and I think it is just about amazing. And that's about all I know 'bout dat, so I sincerely hope this was clear and helpful.

Good luck,

Kevin

[Brownbear]

Thank you, Kevin

Your directions took me further than before, but the lightroom program does not have an option for me to select my lens
Sony Alpha 18-300 mm - It only offers the Sony 18 mm- 200... I tried it anyway and it does remove the fringing but it does effect the colour of the birds (they look paler than in real life)

I also have a Tamron 200-400 mm lens which is not available in the lens correction profile.

Does this matter?
Thank you

I also have a Tamron

[Brownbear]

Here is my result using the lens correction tool, first which removed the fringing but made the birds too pale...

I think I tried the dropper tool next with no effect, and then the green hue but I can't remember. The photo looks better but now the birds are too yellow

[kdoc856]

Christina,

Clearly you are making progress here. First of all, I am assuming you shot this in RAW and not JPEG. I think you've essentially solved your fringing issue, and are now dealing with white balance and color curves adjustments. I rarely shoot JPEG, and have had little satisfying experience correcting white balance for JPEG images.

The lense profiles are very distinctive for each lense, and I dont think we can substitute a "similar" lense. Adobe keeps a data base for lense profiles that private citizens have created and contributed, and you may be able to find your lenses in that list. Sony provides a disappointing few lenses to the LR database, unfortunately. I dont have the link to the Adobe site off hand (I'm at work) but if you just Google "Adobe Lense profiles" you can easily find it. Best of luck to you.

Kevin

[Brev00]

Cristina,

What camera are you using? I ask this because I use Elements 9. Since it does not have a feature to reduce ca's, I use Nikon's free View NX2 software. Its very simple feature works on 75-80% of my ca issues. It often does not resolve the problem 100%, it makes often makes a vast improvement. For simple cases of fringing or ca's (let's say a white daisy on a green background), I go to Adjust Hues/Saturation on Elements and click on cyan, blue, and/or magenta and reduce saturation and lightness to see what has the best effect (mixing sliders can work, too). One has to be careful that those hues are not in the rest of the image or one will have to use a more selective approach.
Another approach that might work great with these ducks is to convert to black and white. You will lose the impact of the colors, but it might still make an effective photograph.
Now that you have Lightroom, I expect you will soon be able to use it to easily beat this problem. I plan on adding LR4 to my software kit in the near future. I guess the ca's are not automatically cured by the automatic lens correction option?

[Brownbear]

Hi Kevin,
Slowly but surely, and hopefully with more luck this summer I will manage a sharper shot.

I shoot raw and jpeg (because I don't edit much and don't have much experience editing photos - so if it helps to see the jpeg) For this shot I used f8 1SO 400, SS 1/2500... white balance (auto) but I usually use sunlight because it is almost always sunny here... matrix metering

I can't remember my specific edits but yes, it was with the raw photo, using adobe elements 9. I opened the photo in raw, and probably tried hitting the auto fix (but it usually increases the exposure and contrast (for fringing too much), so it is likely I used default sharpen 25% and then I likely increased the exposure a bit, and increased the clarity. The white balance was fine in the original shot, before I tried the chromatic abbe ration fix in lightroom which made them too yellow.

These are Mexican Parrotlets (maybe green rumped) and when I googled them I see that they are paler on their undersides and have some blue in their wings but I can't find a photo of them in flight so I don't really know how they should look beneath their wings, (and they fly fast and high so I can't see the colours either when they fly overhead either) however their top sides are very green, not yellow.

I will google the lens, and I have printed everyone's suggestions and will play with the photo next week (and see how I do)



I have photoshop elements 9 and it does not have a fix for chromatic aberrations, that is why I bought lightroom 4.1 so now I have another program to learn.

Thank you everyone.

[Brownbear]

Hi Larry,

I have two cameras, a Nikon D80 (Tamron lens 200-400) and a Sony Alpha 200 DSLR (55-300 mm Sony lens)..

For this particular shot I used my Sony and have returned to using this for birds in flight, because the long lens is so heavy it is hard to pan the birds and get them in focus. Both the Nikon and Sony cameras give me chromatic aberration problems with birds in flight against a blue sky.

Someone else on this forum advised me on Nikons View NX2 software so I will check it out soon. Thank you for sharing.

I think the Lightroom program is a great fix (from what I have read) for newer lens and cameras it is an automatic fix. It seems that my cameras and lens are too, old to be listed on Lightroom 4.1 (or I'm doing something wrong) but it definitely helped following the advice I have received here, so I will just have to figure it out, and try NX2 as well.

Thank you. I will also try converting the ducks to B&W.

[Brownbear]

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lensprofile_creator/