What are purple fringing and chromatic aberrations?
Purple fringing is where purple “fringes” appears in photos where there is none in the original scene, and is particularly noticeable around areas of high contrast, such as along the side of the tree where there is a bright sky behind the tree. An example can be seen below, on the left, a small size version of the photo, and on the right, a view at 100% of the top left area showing purple fringing. You can view the full size version here, taken from the Samsung Digimax L55W review. Some more examples can be found here, or you can try and spot it in the “clock tower” photos in the photo gallery. Chromatic aberration is where coloured fringes appear in photos, and can appear as any colour, but is most noticeable on digital cameras as purple, and you can find it on edges of high contrast. It may appear yellow, red, green, blue or another colour, and is another sign of a poor quality lens. Although saying that, a number of cameras now try and reduce purple fringing using software in the ca
