Chromatic Aberration
Real lenses focus red and blue light at slightly different magnifications, so detail near the edge of the frame gets a coloured fringe — cyan on one side of a hard edge, orange-red on the other. Reproducing it is one of the cheapest ways to make a flat digital image feel photographed, and one of the standard ingredients of a glitch or vaporwave look.
Drop images here
PNG, JPG, WebP — multiple files allowed
The two modes are for different jobs
Radial scales the red channel slightly outward and the blue channel slightly inward about the centre of the frame. With "keep the centre sharp" ticked the displacement grows with distance from the middle, which is how lens aberration actually behaves — the middle of a photograph is clean and the corners fringe. In radial mode the amount is read as a percentage of the radius, so 2–6 is a subtle, believable amount and anything above 15 is stylised.
Directional shifts red one way and blue the other by a fixed number of pixels at a fixed angle, uniformly across the whole image. No lens does this, which is precisely why it reads as digital rather than optical: it is the RGB-split look of broken video, VHS tracking errors and glitch art. Here the amount is in pixels, and the angle chooses the axis — 0 is horizontal, 90 vertical.
Subtlety, and how to keep it
The effect works on edges, so its visibility depends entirely on how much fine contrast the image has. On text or a hard-edged logo, 2 pixels is already obvious. On a soft photograph you can push 8 before anyone notices. Judge it at 100% zoom near a corner, not on a thumbnail.
The green channel is never moved, which is deliberate: the eye takes most of its luminance from green, so leaving it in place keeps the image sharp while the colour fringes appear around it. If you shift all three channels the whole picture goes soft and the effect reads as a mistake. Aberration also stacks well with a small amount of vignette and grain — those three together are most of what "shot on a real camera" means.
FAQ
Can this remove aberration from a photo?
Partly. Radial mode with a negative amount is not offered, but you can approximate correction by working out which way the fringe runs and using the opposite direction in directional mode. Proper removal needs per-channel lens profiles; this is an effect tool rather than a correction tool.
Why does the edge of my image get a coloured border?
Because one channel is being sampled from beyond the edge, where the nearest real pixel is clamped in. It is a one- or two-pixel border at typical settings. Crop a few pixels afterwards if it bothers you, or add padding first.
Does it affect transparency?
No — alpha is left exactly as it was, so only the colour channels move. On a cut-out object the fringing appears inside the shape rather than leaking outside it.
What is the difference from Glitch?
Glitch displaces whole blocks and rows to simulate corrupted data. This only separates colour channels and leaves the geometry intact. They are often used together, aberration last.