2017-01-13

Removing Chromatic Aberration with ACDSee Pro 10

I have recently downloaded a trial version of the new ACDSee Pro 10. To be honest, I wasn´t expecting too much. I have used version 6 for quite a while but when I started shooting in Raw I switched to Lightroom because it is so much better in many ways. One of the things that I missed in ACDSee was the ability to automatically fix chromatic aberration. They provided sliders to manually fix it but - seriously - if you come back from holidays with 1000+ photos, would you really want to fix CA manually in all of them. I have to admit that I am also not really satisfied with Adobe´s way to handle that. They provide automatic CA removal (based on lens profiles or image analysis - I don´t know) with no option to manually fine tune it.
Well anyway, I think it was in version 9 when ACDSee introduced lens profiles, including CA removal (at least for some lenses). I have tested it and wasn´t really satisfied with the result. Now I tested it again in version 10. To be honest, I didn´t spend much time on the test. I just picked one of photos which shows some beautiful CA (and for which ACDSee can provide a lens profile) and activated the CA checkbox.
I would like to share the results with you. First of all, let´s have a look at the original image, without CA correction applied. The screenshot below shows ACDSee with the phot of a mountain. The photo was taken with a canon 6D with the EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens attached. Of course it was taken in raw format. Without correction applied you can easily see the strong red fringes at the edge of the rock.

ACDSee - no CA correction applied

Now let´s see how ACDSee fixes the issue. Obviously, it does something. But I have to say, the result is quite frustrating. The image is now equally bad as before - except cyan is your favourite colour. The correction that has been applied was a little too strong. Instead of red fringes we now have cyan fringes. And they are almost as wide as the original red ones. Well, my rating is very subjective, but I think the image quality has not been improved at all.
ACDSee - CA correction applied


Now  let´s do the same thing in Lightroom and see if we can identify any difference. Again, the first screenshot shows the original photo without CA correction.
Lightroom - no CA correction applied

And finally, here´s the Lightroom Image with CA correction applied.
Lightroom - CA correction applied



It is easy to see that Lightroom removed CA far better than ACDSee. It is still not perfect but I can live with that. In a normal sized print I´m pretty sure you wouldn´t be able to recognize any color finges in the Lightroom photo but you would most probably be able to see them in the ACDSee photo.

UPDATE
I´ve claimed this in ACDSee´s forum and learned that the reason is, that there is no lens profile available for the lens I was using. Well, I would expect that it is not possible to activate the checkbox if no profile is available.