I read an article by Katelyn James (go figure.. She’s my fav) a while back that discussed chromatic aberration. I had never seen it before nor had I ever experienced it in my images. I had this shoot last weekend (my own portraits mind you – such a weirdo) and didn’t notice anything weird in the original RAW images or the high resolution in Lightroom. BUT when they were uploaded to my blog I noticed something funny at first as I kept looking at them the more I noticed it.

Glowing green trees. Darn you chromatic aberration. Except it had been so long since I read the article that I couldn’t remember what it was called AND was doing Google searches for chrome abrasion (Totally wrong Caitlin.. Totally wrong). So after a long search on Katelyn’s blog I found it.

Chromatic aberration shows up more so with low resolution images (aka facebook or blog images) and when shooting with a low f stop number (my new 50mm f/1.2 has a greater chance for this verses my 24-70 f/2.8) – It also has something to do with the thickness of the glass as it appears towards the edge of the image as that is where the glass is the thickest. So when taking a vertical shot (much like the one below) you can run into chromatic aberration on the tops and bottoms of your photo verses a horizontal as it would be likely to show up on the sides. Chromatic aberration can also appear as a purple hue. I haven’t found the purple yet but the green is enough to drive me bonkers. I did a lot of reading on the issue and it’s just something beyond my IQ but that is what I gathered for a best explanation.

See the green glowing?! & clearly I am a Wacom circle drawing professional artist… Michael said so..

I had to take it one step farther in Lightroom 4 though… Lightroom 4 no longer includes the color sliders for manual manipulation (wahh).. So what I did is use the brush tool and paint over the areas with chromatic aberration.. THEN scroll where the brush tool sliders are.. Adjust the Moire slider and that should do the trick! Yay!

Anyway it’s not that big of a deal and non photog folk probably wouldn’t notice it but now I’m on the hunt for radioactive trees. I also may have missed a section by my head but I’m too lazy to re-do it! Ha!