Lens correction in DPP

NeilL

I have played around with the tools available in Canon's DPP RAW converter. One of them is lens correction (and associated CA correction). Seemed like a good idea to me - undo the optical distortions-aberrations of the lens. However, I noticed that lens correction seems to soften images. And a friend of mine told me he suspects lens correction can cause malalignment of the RGB channels, and so in fact cause a smearing of the image.

I am sceptical that something offered by proprietary correction software could have a worsening net result.

What is the truth of this matter, and do people do lens and CA corrections as a matter of course in post?

Thanks for any wisdom!

Neil

pathfinder

I do use the chromatic aberration correction tools in Adobe Raw converter routinely. I learned to do this watching Marc M process his images at his workshopts.

It makes some images much sharper, and has a limited effect on others. It does remove or reduce the color fringing.

Each lens seems to have a specific correction needed.

Zooms may need different corrections depending on the focal length used for the image.

I do not use DPP at all, so I have no comments to make about it.

I am confident that pros like Marc Muench and Jeffe Schewe would not use the chromatic aberration corrections in ARC if they degraded the image at all.

Tee Why

Not sure about inducing CA but seeing as most of the time, the distortion control is correcting the barrel distortion and the corners of the image seems to be stretching out, I'd guess that covering more space with less pixels would make an image softer.

My personal experience with distortion correction as well in PS and to a lesser degree (both in terms of correction and softening in DPP).

NeilL

Thanks for your replies, pathfinder and Tee Why.

Maybe the wisdom in the case of lens correction is to let well-enough alone

pathfinder, I'll do a little bit of empirical on the CA.

Neil