Purple reflection in photos?

Meeskephoto · Aug 21, 2014

Hi guys I recently did a photo shoot with a friend riding bikes and I was noticing a lot of photos coming out with purple light where metal parts were reflecting. I was shooting in auto sports mode on my Canon 60d and not controlling my own exposures for this shoot. I can't seem to find any articles that properly describe why this is happening so I come here asking. What is this and are there remedies?

here is the photo that I noticed it the worst (mostly around the handle bars.)

pthrift · Aug 21, 2014

Idk the answer to the question; however I do know if you shopped a basket on the front of that bike it would simply scream "E.T."

Forkie · Aug 21, 2014

The purple fringe on the highlights is called Chromatic Aberration. It is caused by a lens's inability to properly focus all the colours of the spectrum to the same point. It is common in photography and generally occurs with cheaper lenses. Different lenses will cause chromatic aberration of different colours; some are blue, some are green and some are red etc.

Luckily, Photoshop is particularly good at dealing with it. Open up your image in Photoshop, go up to filters > lens correction. A new window will open up. Simply tick the "chromatic aberration" checkbox under "correction". If that doesn't get rid of it, do it manually:

On the right hand side, click the "Custom" tab. You will see some sliders under the chromatic aberration box. Find the slider of the colour you want to get rid of and slide it in the opposite direction until the aberration changes colour, then use the next slider to go in the opposite direction to that colour and keep going until it's gone.

Good luck!

Braineack · Aug 21, 2014

you missed the focus--focus is actaully a few feet behind the rider. CA shows up more in out of focus areas. Typically it will appear purple in front of the focus area and green behind the focus area.

Do you have a cheap filter on your lens as well? that area is REALLY brilliant for such an underexposed image.

Meeskephoto · Aug 21, 2014

pthrift said:
Idk the answer to the question; however I do know if you shopped a basket on the front of that bike it would simply scream "E.T."

I like your thinking sir.

Meeskephoto · Aug 21, 2014

@Forkie @Braineack I have a canon 50mm 1.4 I was using for this shot, pretty nice lens, no filter. The focus however was most definitely off, I was shooting fully auto and not paying as much attention as I should. I'm doing another similar shoot today with the same guy so I'll stay more in control this time and see if it happens again. (I usually tend to under expose my shots by a stop anyway so editing is more forgiving) Also you mentioned photoshop, is this function in Lightroom as well?