Defringe
Defringe is a brush that removes chromatic aberration (CA). These are the saturated red, green and blue dots and thin lines on out-of-focus highlights. Think of the color specks on a spider-web junction or a shiny reflection.
To open it, click Defringe in the Editor header, or press D. Pressing D again doesn’t apply your work. Use Apply, or Esc to cancel. If you’ve made changes, Macro Studio asks whether to apply or discard them.
Advanced mode. The Defringe button, and the
Dkey, work only in Advanced mode. If you don’t see the button, flip the Standard / Advanced switch at the top-right of the Editor. See Editor overview.
What it does
Section titled “What it does”A global slider would mute real color everywhere, so Defringe works only where you brush. Inside the brush, it pulls stray color back toward the color around it. Brightness and detail are left alone, so it won’t smear texture or erase fine structure like web strands.
A faint gray speck may remain where a bright colored one was. A quick pass of Spot Correct usually removes it.
Using the brush
Section titled “Using the brush”- Drag across the fringe. The brush paints as you drag, so you can trace a line or cover a patch.
- Repeat over each fringed area. Rough brushing is enough.
- Click Apply to keep your work.
| Action | Control |
|---|---|
| Paint | Drag |
| Pan | Right-drag, ⌘-drag / Ctrl-drag, or drag with the hold-to-pan key (Spacebar by default) |
| Zoom | Scroll |
| Fit, and back to your zoom | Z or Space |
| Brush size | [ / ], or ⌘ / Ctrl + scroll |
| Undo / redo a stroke | ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z, ⌘⇧Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z |
The brush size is a radius of 1-200 image pixels, so it doesn’t change when you zoom. Macro Studio remembers it. Click the zoom readout in the bottom-left corner to pick a magnification.
Apply adds each stroke as a step in the image’s edit history, so you can undo it later. Nothing changes on disk until you save.
You can change the pan key in Preferences, and what a scroll does in Wheel gestures, per screen.
Your adjustments while you work
Section titled “Your adjustments while you work”The canvas shows the image with your Adjustments applied, so you see the fringe as it will look when saved. Color is still removed from the pixels underneath, so your masks, sliders and crop stay editable.
This is the one tool where you may want Adjustments off. White balance, vibrance and saturation change the very colors you’re looking for. They can make a faint fringe look worse, or hide one that’s still in the file. Untick Adjustments, or press A, to see the plain pixels. Defringe keeps this setting separate from Retouch and Spot Correct.
On a camera-raw stack, an amber bar may say your repairs can no longer reach the Raw DNG. Your work is still safe in your TIFF, JPEG and Macro Studio DNG. See Retouch: How it’s saved.
- Zoom in to 100% or more. Fringes are small.
- Match the brush to the fringe. A bigger brush removes color from a wider area than you need.
See also
Section titled “See also”- Spot Correct: paints over dust and blemishes.
- Edit History: step back through your applied strokes.
- Saving: your Defringe work is in the saved file.