How to Get Rid of Any Color Fringing Using Photoshop

Above is a section of a photo that I took of a blue heron. After I finished working on the photo, I noticed a blue fringe that went around the bird’s head and beak.

Here’s a close up of the bird’s beak, so that the blue fringe can be seen:

The first thing I’ll do is to click on the eye dropper tool in the tools pallet:

Once I have the eye dropper tool active, I’ll click on the blue fringe and the color will show up in the color picker box:

Now I’ll go to Image / Adjustments / Replace Color menu item:

Here, the Replace Color dialog box appears. The color I selected, blue, will already be in the Color box. I’ll Move the Fuzziness slider to the right slowly, until I start to see the blue fringe. The blue fringe will appear white in the Fuzziness box:

What I’m going to do is bring the Saturation slider to the left, to desaturate the blue fringe. I’ll also move the Lightness slider to the left to darken the desaturated line.

Remember, every image is different. The Lightness slider may have to be moved to the left or right, but I’ll always move the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate.

Here are my settings for this image. Look at the bird’s beak. Big difference:

This can be done with any color fringing using this method.

Check it out and see how it works for you. Have fun.

HDR and the Purple Fringe

Have you noticed that after you process an HDR image you get a purple fringe around parts of your image? Sometimes it’s more noticeable than other times, but either way it’s annoying.

Well, there’s no reason to be annoyed anymore, thanks to a Photoshop action called the Purple Fringe Killer. I found this action for free on the Internet. I wish I knew who to credit, but it’s just been floating around. I definitely have found that it’s made a difference in some of my images.

Here is an image straight out of Photomatix and untouched in Photoshop yet. In this image, you can’t really see the purple fringe. You’ll need to zoom in close. In some images it’s obvious even before you zoom in, depending on the colors in the image.

Here I’ve zoomed into the top of the lighthouse where you can definitely see the purple fringe.

Here is the Photoshop action I was mentioning. All I have to do is run the action, and it gets rid of the purple fringe.

Halfway through the action, it asks you to “Press continue if there is red-tinged fringing left”. I always click continue.

Here, the action has finished doing its work. It doesn’t get rid of the purple 100%. But it does do a very good job of getting rid of 95% of the fringing.

I definitely recommend the “Purple Fringe Killer”.

Here are the “before” and “after” images.

Click here to download the action.You should copy the action into the \Presets\Actions folder where Photoshop is installed on your computer.

Enjoy, and have fun with photography!

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