Big Blue Fringe

Wow.

This is really cropped into the frame, but still, I don't think I've ever seen such a nasty example of blue fringing.

The "remove blue fringe" in Camera Raw seems to have no effect on this. How would you fix such a thing?

Pete D.

This was taken with a 500 mm lens at f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/500s

Try masking the area and desaturating the blue?

You can try desaturating without masking.... use the Hue/Saturation tool set to "Blue". Then select the eye dropper in that tool and click the fringe. Move the saturation slider down, and it should get better. It might require some cleanup for sharpness, and if there's the same color anywhere else in the image you might still have to mask things. But it's a start.

Try the HSL/Grayscale tab in Camera Raw, Saturation sub-tab, pull the purples and blues down. It worked on your crop, should work even better on the RAW file.

As suggested by David above.... Add a Hue Saturation adjustment layer, then select the blues. Move the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Here's the result.....

Thank you. It works like a charm for this one because there isn't much actual blue in the image.

Pete D.

His nose, mouth, and the nut have lost some detail, though - and color. What is that due to?

Linnet - If you're talking about the edges, the fringing was just desaturated to make it less apparent; It's still there, which is the cause of the fuzziness. If you're talking about the overall detail, there probably was some amount of the same blue in other areas. It may even have been a bit of noise in the shadows, that the deasaturation got rid of. Noise can add "apparent sharpness" to an image, because your eye perceives detail that may or may not actually be there due to noise. In some cases, noise-less images can actually look odd, and I know people that add a little noise to big prints to simulate detail.

Another way to remove this is in Lightroom. In the "Detail" tab (where the sharpening & noise reduction settings are), there is a "Chromatic Aberration" panel. Just drag the "Red/Cyan" slider to the position where the fringe disappears. Easy peasy.
Hope this helps.

David - This type of chromatic aberration doesn't always get fixed that way - it's not really the type that ACR/Lightroom is designed for. I did try this one in ACR though and the CA controls didn't do much of anything.

Actually - I gave what Dave said a little more thought, since I was thinking I should see more effect, even if ACR doesn't fully fix it. Since this is a big crop, I wonder if that was affecting how ACR was trying to fix it.

I'm making some assumptions, but the software probably need to see the whole image captured, with the center of the aberration in the center of the frame in order to properly fix it. So Pete, if you have ACR or Lightroom, it's worth trying the CA sliders. They may fix this better, especially if you have the raw file.