Removing Purple Fringe

Purple fringing is evident in photographs taken with a digital camera. Purple fringing creates purple outlines on areas of high acutance. Learn how to remove purple fringing by using an adjustment layer.

	1. Open the image for editing. For this tutorial, select an image with purple fringe.
	2. Duplicate the layer "Background". Using the "Levels" tool (Ctrl+L), drag the white input slider to the left of the histogram until only most of the purple fringing is visible. Click OK. Use a paint brush to paint over the areas that do not have purple fringing with the colour white. Rollover on the image in this step to see what this image looks like after applying this step.
	3. Zoom into the area where purple fringing is evident.
	4. Create a new "Selective Color" adjustment layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Selective Color) as the top layer and apply the following properties: Colors: Reds Black: -100% Colors: Yellows Black: -50% Colors: Greens Black: -100 Colors: Cyan Blacks: -100 Colors: Blue Blacks: 0 Click OK.
	5. Create a new "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Hue/Saturation) and set the "Saturation" of the "Blues" to "-100" and the "Saturation of the "Yellows" to "-50". Click Click OK.
	6. With the "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer selected, use the "Apply Image" tool (Image> Apply Image) to apply the following properties: Mask: Checkmarked Layer: Layer 1 Channel: Gray Click OK.
	7. Delete the middle 2 layers so that there is only a layer named "Background" and a "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer. The purple fringing is now removed. Rollover the image on the left of this step to see the original image before this technique was applied.

By creating a new adjustment layer with a layer mask, only the colours produced by the purple fringe are edited. For many occasions it is possible to just set the saturation of the "Blues" to "-100" and the "Yellows" to "-50" using the "Hue/Saturation" tool, but that method will usually affect other areas of similar colours.