Cromatic Aberration

[Jornerik]

Hello.

 

Affinity Photo is a great program, but in an important area, there is a problem. Affinity is much worse than Photoshop, Lightroom and especially Photo Ninja to eliminate chromatic aberration.

 

For example, when using my Canon EF-S 24mm f / 2.8 STM which has a lot of chromatic aberration, I had to develop my Raw files into Photo Ninja and open them as TIF files in the Photo Persona directly if there is need for more adjustments.

 

It is the only area where I think Affinity Photo really have something to improve. A free program as Rawtherapee makes it much better. Try and compare Rawtherapee and Affinity or even better Photo Ninja! There is a huge difference in favor of Rawtherapee and especially Photo Ninja. I hope Affinity will do something about it so that I only need Affinity Photo in future

[James Ritson]

Hi Jornerik,

 

I've not had an issue with removing fringing or CA from photographs, but then the CA filter is for very specific purposes. You might find the Defringe filter is more suitable for the majority of cases. Have you got a sample image you might be able to upload?

 

If you have a look at the Defringing and CA video (https://vimeo.com/133350551) that should give a clearer indication of which filter you'd want to be using. Also check out using the Live Defringe filter (https://vimeo.com/161043323) which might help with selective defringing.

 

Hope that helps!

[Jornerik]

It is true that you can remove the colored edges using defringe, but it requires some work. In RawTherapee, Photoshop, Lightroom and Photo Ninja choose Chromatic Aberration and the problem is solved without you having to do anything and the result is better than what you can achieve in Affinity Photo's Develop Persona. You are welcome to get one of my Raw files, but the size is approx 28 MB. I would also like to send you two JPG images one developed in the Photo Ninja and another in Affinity's Develop Persona

[Jornerik]

I have tried to achieve the best possible result in Affinity Develop Persona with the help of defringe function and of course with chromatic aberration enabled

 

In the picture developed in Photo Ninja I have not adjusted anything.

JPGER.zip

[James Ritson]

Hi again, thanks for attaching the files, I managed to defringe areas of the image which I thought you would be referring to, see the attachments for full-res versions:

 

 

 

Any chance you might be able to provide the original RAW file? That way I can help further and see if we can get some good results!

 

Thanks,

James

[David4]

AP's RAW is not much good for the kind of digital capture I do.   I must use Lightroom 6.5.1, or Raw Photo Processor 64.     

 

Kind Regards,

 

David

[Jornerik]

It is true that with a lot of effort you can achieve a good result, but in the other editors, you can achieve better results by enabling chromatic aberration and not do anything else.

 

I have tested Affinity Photo with other Raw files. It is quite obvious that the chromatic aberration in Develop Persona almost have no effect in some Raw files and only using defringe gives a useful result. 

 

I have attached a Raw file from a Canon S95 compact camera. It gives Affinity Photo great problems. In the outer third part of the image has Develop Persona (enabled Chromatic aberration) hardly any effect

IMG_3294.CR2.zip

[Jornerik]

It's a great program and for us photographers the best thing that has happened in this field for a long time !!!

 

It surprises me anyway that there apparently are no users with the same problems as I have had with Cromatisk Aberration in the Develop Persona. Free program as RawTherapee and surprisingly also DarkTable do a better job. Try the Raw file I have attached. Compare the results from Affinity Photo and Lightroom or another Raw developer. Are you experiencing the same differences as I do or am I wrong?

[James Ritson]

Jornerik, I think it's all relative. I was able to achieve defringing results using your raw file that I felt were fine. All of the fringing around the buildings was gone and unless you zoomed in past 100% there was no visible fringing in the branch detail. My benchmark is basically "how does it look at 100%?" (or, if you're using a retina panel, 50%).

 

It's really about finding a balance between the three sliders (Tolerance, Radius, Edge Brightness Threshold). I appreciate it's more manual work: Photo is still in the early stages of development. All of the power is there but it needs some manual work to really harness it.

 

A great example of this is the RAW development: there's actually nothing horrible about it, it's simply that people are used to raw developing software cleaning up their files for them. Believe it or not, your raw files actually look a lot closer to Photo's output than you think. Chrominance noise especially is always present, even in larger sensors. Photo doesn't automatically remove it, therefore it's left to the user to decide how much denoising to apply. It's the same with sharpening and lens artefact correction (distortion, fringing, CA).

 

We do provide the option of using Apple's Core Image Raw decoder, which does some automatic sharpening, noise reduction and lens correction. It's always worth trying that and seeing if you prefer the output.

 

Photo's CA reduction is more intended for extreme lens issues (see the tutorial video here for some really bad CA examples: https://vimeo.com/133350551) - for most cases I stick to the defringe filter.

 

Hope that helps!