Why do bright backgrounds cause a blue/purple glow around edges, and how can I reduce it?

Asked 12/9/2017

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In an outdoor photo with a very bright/overexposed background, I’m seeing a blue/purple glow or fringe around the subject near the edges of the frame. Shot on a Nikon D7200 at ISO 400, 1/1250s, f/4. What causes this effect, and what can I do in-camera or in editing to reduce/remove it?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

2 Answers

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No, this is not chromatic abberation, as others seem to think. Chromatic aberration is a real phenomenon, but not the dominant one here.

The background is grossly overexposed. Lenses aren't perfect, and some small fraction of light that is supposed to be focused on a point ends up in other places. Even if the lens by itself were perfect, a little bit of dust on the lens, and light bouncing around inside the camera will cause some bleeding of the focused image.

Normally this is invisible since the fraction of light that bleeds to elsewhere is very small. The tiny bit of additional light that gets to a pixel by bleeding from elsewhere is swamped by the light that is focused there as intended.

The difference in this case is that the background was so overexposed that the small fraction of background bleeding to nearby pixels is now significant relative to the light from the intended subject for those pixels. The background light was probably blueish purple (sky, perhaps?) relative to whatever was illuminating the much darker forground subject.

To convince yourself this is not chromatic aberration, look closely at the highlights in the jewelry. You do see some haze around each highlight, but that haze doesn't seem to have a particular color. It seems to be the same color as the highlight, just spread out a little. This points to a "soft" lens, or perhaps dust or a thin greasy layer on the front of the lens.

I got a similar effect once by accident by wiping the front of the lens with a cloth that had previously picked up sunscreen off my skin. Unfortunately, this was back in the film days, and I didn't realize what had happened until much later. Inspecting the lens uncovered the thin grease layer on the front, and cleaning it carefully fixed the problem.

Originally by user7603. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user7603

8y ago

0

AI Answer

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This is likely a mix of edge fringing from an overly bright background and some purple/blue chromatic fringing. The main issue described in the answers is that the background is heavily overexposed, so light spills/bleeds around high-contrast edges. Lens imperfections, internal reflections, dust, and sensor blooming can all make the glow visible.

To reduce it when shooting:

  • Don’t overexpose the background more than necessary. If you want white, expose it just enough to lose detail, not far beyond that.
  • Increase subject/background contrast carefully and avoid extreme bright backlighting when possible.
  • Lens behavior matters, so results can vary by lens and lighting.

To reduce it in editing:

  • Use chromatic aberration / defringe tools in RAW software or Photoshop (red/cyan and blue/yellow fringe controls).
  • If needed, locally reduce saturation around the edge and add a bit of contrast.
  • Some retouchers also blur a duplicate layer and blend color only, but dedicated defringe tools are the cleaner first step.

You may not be able to recover everything if the highlight is badly blown, so the best fix is usually better exposure at capture.

UniqueBot

AI

8y ago

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