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I am trying to fix chromatic aberration in images taken with wide lens industrial cameras. Searching the internet I didn't find a good software to do so. I tried Hugin and a few others, but without success.

Actually, I was left with a number of questions:

  1. Is this actually possible to do automatic CA from a single image? Meaning, without any knowledge/profile of the camera/lens?

  2. Assuming that I have access to each of the cameras, could I then use some kind of industrial/software tool to generate a profile for each camera, in order to fix that chromatic distortion?

TFuto
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rub
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  • Thanks all for the helping answers, I evaluated a number of applications, Hugin has actually exactly what I needed, although it didn't work for me... after installing Hugin, go to bin folder (in windows -> program files.../bin) there are 2 bins:
    1. tca_correct.exe -> generates a profile string for that camera, based on a calibration image. works automatically - although I probably didn't use it with the correct calibration image (I tried using it with one of my images, and sadly it did not work well at all.)
    2. fulla.exe - fixes an image based on the generated profile **So, What I did?
     – rub Jun 25 '14 at 07:15

2 Answers2

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1) Is it possible to do automatic CA removal from a single image? Yes. Lightroom does this, and probably Aperture too. Most dedicated photography (as opposed to generic image processing a la Photoshop & GIMP) software should come with a tool to reduce CA too.

2) Can you automatically generate a lens profile to reduce CA? Not that I know of. CA is induced by lighting conditions (strong contrast at sharp edges) as much as it is by the properties of a lens. Unlike with, say, barrel distortion - which will affect every image produced by a given lens in the same predictable way - there is no way to just apply some negative CA value to cancel out the aberrations produced in all images from a given lens, except perhaps desaturating narrow and specific colour ranges, which could have unintended effects on other objects in the image.

user29742
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  • Forgot to explain... These are industrial cameras fixed to place, having their captured objects fixed to place with a very well known distance / lighting.. – rub Jun 24 '14 at 15:16
  • I presume you mean GIMP rather than Photoshop in (1) - Gnome is a desktop environment, rather than image editing software? – Philip Kendall Jun 24 '14 at 15:22
  • Thanks for the correction. All these GPL offerings start with a G, it's hard to keep track of them all. – user29742 Jun 24 '14 at 15:27
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    Plain old lateral chromatic aberration is independent of lighting, so an automatically generated profile could be applied to all images. Things like purple fringing of highlights is different and depends on lighting. – Matt Grum Jun 24 '14 at 15:30
  • So, with all these tools, is there some kind of stupid-proof tool, command line - best, to generate profile of [camera+lens+equipment] bundle? I tried the GIMP pluging, but if i am not wrong it is not automatic.. I will try and use lightroom, but AFAIK this is just like photoshop/GIMP, a photo editing software. My question is: Is there any tool specifically tailored for lens distortion correction? A tool that have automatic profile generation capability. – rub Jun 24 '14 at 15:50
  • Using Lightroom it is fairly simple to save all of the adjustments that you would make to remove CA from the images from a given lens and then apply them to all images during import. However I'm, not aware that this is doable via the command line, and a profile per lens would need to be created and applied separately to batches of images from each lens. – user29742 Jun 24 '14 at 15:53
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If you are interested in just one single image from an uncalibrated system - not really. If you are interested in number 2) setting up your own custom profile for those industrial cameras, then I'd say talk to Tom from epaperpress(dot)com - maker of PTLens. He may be able to help you.

V/R

B.

B Shaw
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