Street Photography Magazine

workaround. You can, however, use the Mkey
to toggle between views. The potentially cool
loupe view took too long to refresh on our
2011 2.3Ghz i5 Mac Mini, and it’s quicker to
use a 100% (or larger) preview. The tool
removed the lateral aberration from our RAW
test image in fine style.
Apple’s brush HUD is a great bonus and
can be used to apply, strengthen or weaken
the effect selectively. This is a great aid when
you are using generic filters that you only
want to apply to part of an image. In such
cases you can also modify a filter’s effect once
you have applied it.
We weren’t able to improve our axial
aberration using the Apple tool, and it doesn’t
have a dedicated defringing option. Our
JPEG test turned out very similar to our RAW
run-through.
The brush functionality is great for
performing selective adjustments, but is far
less practical than tools like Nikon’s Capture
NX 2that support profile-based corrections.
Many automatic correction tools nowadays
produce results that are just as good as
manual corrections and are also a lot quicker
to use.Aperturedoes not have a dedicated
filter for correcting axial aberrations.

Capture One

Capture Onehas included lens correction
filters for a while now, but the lens profiles
supplied are few in number and are aimed
squarely at medium-format photographers. It
does enable you to define and save your own
presets for individual lenses, but this is a
laborious process, especially when dealing
with zoom lenses. This is because a preset’s
aperture, focal length and ISO value (amongst
other settings) all have to match those of the
photo you want to adjust.

There is also a separate Chromatic

Aberration tool, which we tested using the

program’s preset generic lens profile. All you

have to do is select the Analyze option in the

tool’s drop-down menu and wait for a few

moments while the program calculates the

appropriate adjustments. The process works

very well for lateral aberrations, but there are

no user-configurable options. The Viewer’s

Zoom function enabled us to detect slight

fringing in our target and skyscraper sample

images that we were unable to see in the

standard view. Generally, you can ignore such

slight errors.

The filter is obviously designed to correct

only lateral aberrations, and using it on our

images with axial aberrations produced

additional flaws. The model in our test portrait

acquired a red fringe on her hand, so we can’t

recommend using it as a general chromatic

aberration correction tool. On the plus side, the

axial errors in our images were less severe due

Chromatic Aberrations | Software Test

Original Corrected

The reflections on the surface

of the water produce obvious

purple fringing that can be

effectively reduced using the

ACDSee Pro 4Defringe tool

Aperture’s Chromatic Aberration

tool can be applied and removed

selectively using a brush