Tag Archives: purple fringe reduction

Technical Epilogue: On the Purple Fringe

A problem that arises in high contrast photography is purple fringing due to short wavelength light being refracted around a dark/bright transition. This is different from chromatic aberration of the lens which results in green/purple fringing at such transitions. The latter can be largely removed by resizing the red and blue channels. The classical fix for pure purple fringing has been to use Darla’s Purple Fringe script for the GIMP, but the results are rather modest and require fiddling with afterwards, as shown in these two images:

Lake Waikaremoana
Fig. 1: Lake Waikaremoana, March 20, high contrast snapshot with substantial purple fringing
Waikaremoana Darla PF
Fig. 2: Purple Fringe reduction with Darla’s Purple Fringe for GIMP. Note residual fringing

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