Chromatic aberration and purple fringing are two distortion effects that can appear in photographs, particularly scenes with very high contrast and strong backlighting. A colored fringe or “ghosting” is seen around objects.

Many digital cameras process their images to remove purple fringing and chromatic aberration, but they are not always successful at removing them completely.

Photo editing programs such as Adobe Elements, Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro have plug-ins that will help to remove these undesirable effects.

Some editing programs also have a lens distortion correction filter. It corrects chromatic aberration by realigning the blue, green and red channels. This often yields a picture that is actually sharper than before.

For purple fringing, the best processing solution is to remove it by adjusting the hue/saturation/lightness tool when editing. If needed, the levels tool can be also applied to increase overall brightness and contrast.