Try Tuts+ Premium, Get Cash Back!

Learn how to Create Chromatic Aberration

on Apr 27th 2012 with 44 comments

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Chromatic aberration is the failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. To a cinematographer this can be an undesired effect, but in motion graphics it can be a very nice addition. While it would be great to capture chromatic aberration naturally with real lenses, most modern lenses aim to minimize this effect. This is why we are dedicating this tutorial to learning how to recreate this phenomenon using built-in after effects plugins.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in March of 2009.

Music used in the final piece:
Clenastro from AUDIO JUNGLE

View Tutorial

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size MB

 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I run AESCRIPTS.com which provides useful scripts for Adobe After Effects. You can follow me on Twitter @aescripts  

Plus Premium
 
 
  • http://www.joestrong.co.uk Joe

    Thanks, I was wondering how to get this effect

  • http://www.mpasd.com.br Parrudinho

    Thanks, very good ^_^

    • http://medicalcodingandbillingcareer.net/ B. Dyer

      Thanks for the tutorial. This is fantastic! Will try on some graphics for my site.

  • Chris

    Thanks for the cool tutorial however I did look into this a month or two ago and came across this same question on Creative Cow.

    http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/932697

    “But then, you just apply the set channels effect to Red on one layer, duplicate the layer twice, change the set channels on the other two layers to Blue & Green, select the layers, change them to the add blending mode, use a set position keyboard shortcut (opt-p mac, alt-p win), move the timeline cursor, move the layers, and it’s animated. Move the keyframes around on the timeline to tweak the speed of the effect.”

    This way you don’t need to use the tint effect.

    Love your work btw!

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez
      Author

      @Chris – At the end of the tutorial I explain why I used the Tint effect. My goal with this tutorial was to dissect this effect for the greatest amount of creative options. You can use as many or as few of these options as you’d like. :-)

      • Chris

        Ah, I should watch the whole tutorial before I get all uppity. That’s a pretty cool btw.

  • Billy

    I’m still not getting anything when attempting to open up aetuts with Internet Explorer. In addition, I noted many people over at psdtuts.com complaining that they can’t get in with IE here or at vectortuts.com. Any chance this is going to get fixed?

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez
      Author

      We are working on it. In the meantime if you wouldn’t mind using firefox or safari, it should work as expected.

      • Sympathic Ironie

        either Opera work :), only microsoft seems to flop, strange ?

  • Savana Pictures

    You always do a fantastic job! Can we email you for topic tutorials in the future? lol. :D

  • http://www.whiteinkblog.com youssef sarhan

    you’re putting out great tuts.

  • http://www.logofi.com Logofi.com

    Thats a really cool effect! Great stuff, guys!

  • http://telescopemediagroup.net Carl Larsen

    Lloyd – just in case you want to remove chromatic aberration from your footage instead of adding it, check out the creative cow podcast from last Friday:

    http://podcasts.creativecow.net/after-effects-tutorials-podcast/removing-chromatic-aberration

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez
      Author

      Hey Carl, Very serendipitous! I actually found out about your podcast from Rich’s post on aeportal as well as maltaannon’s pixel bender plugin.. There must be chromatic aberration in the air!

      • http://telescopemediagroup.net Carl Larsen

        We must be… or we’re just getting used to the look of cheap optics. :)

    • Lyndon Alvarez

      Nice touch w/ the tint effect and explanation at the end, after all it is After Effects and you can do whatever you want to w/ it :)

      Nice to see you on the thread Carl, I very much enjoy your tutorials. You always seem to cover some interesting topics.

      Thanks again guys

  • Viktor

    Great
    Looking forward for more of your tutorials

  • http://www.merb.es merb

    Es muy bueno, y útil! gracias!

  • http://www.educateJA.com kamal98

    wow you guys are amazing!!!

  • BeyondOurGain

    “Because we are in Aftereffects, we can do whatever we want” – maaan, that’s the words :)))))

  • Bakoc

    I always do this rgb split with channel mixer its quicker, but then again it’s not 32-bit plug-in

  • Mitchell H.

    Lovin it, love the math.

  • http://gra-phix.com/ Joe Clay

    Nice use of optics compensation. A slight amount makes it much easier to do than having to precompose and then mask a non-CA version for a realistic effect.

  • http://dsgn.pw-software.com Nokadota

    This is interesting, I’ll look into this effect more.

  • greg

    Nice tut! I have a problem with it though:

    My comp is NTSC DV and my footage is 1080p. Now I want to move the footage around while looking through a camera, so it looks like the camera is panning acros the shot.

    How can I apply the CA effect so it stays at the borders of my comp size, and not the source footage size?

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez
      Author

      Pre-Comp your source footage and do the pan across in the pre-comp.

  • Oliver

    Thanks for another great tut! This effect has been bugging me for ages. And I really like how you go into ‘why’ the effects happen, not just ‘how’.

    Would you be able to do a tut on a digital signal break up? I have no idea where to start, and the analogue version has its limits nowadays.

  • https://austinpage.tumblr.com sncfrk

    Awesome tutorial thanks

    but-

    how did you get that awesome warping effect in the first place? It looks really authentic. Do you have a tutorial for effects like those?

    thanks!

  • TMKdesigner

    Hey, awesome tut, thanks :)

    But i have a question… on your Cinematic Opening Title Redux tutrial, the chromatic aberration is happening on the rim of the camera lens. How did you make that work? Did u render out the movie and took it back into AE and did what u did here in this tut? Or did u somehow apply an “adjustment” layer that works the optical compensation?

    Thanks

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      Create the effect with the layers split into the rgb channels then put the original unaffected layer on top with a feathered mask in the center so that you only see the chromatic aberration effect on the edge. The feathering helps make it a smooth transition to the original layer in the center.

      • TMKdesigner

        Thanks for the tip, you’re and inspiration :)

  • http://www.jeffmcbride.tv Jeff

    The hangup I’m having seems to be that this method only works when you’re not intending to composite the footage. You can’t make any changes to the background without ruining the effect. Pre-comping and/or rendering don’t solve it. Any thoughts?

  • Thijs

    can you also make it whit a video so not whit the text but whit a video?/

    -Thijs

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      yes, of course

  • Pingback: The Ultimate Motion Graphics Tutorials Round-Up | Tutorials | Smashing Magazine

  • Pingback: | The Ultimate Motion Graphics Tutorials Round-Up

  • hoktar

    Your way of explaining the things and your comments are epic ;)
    It’ awesome to listen to your voice^^

    Ant for the tutorial:
    Thank you so much, I always wanted to know how to create real looking chrom ab. It just makes CG stuff way more realistic.

    Awesome site too btw, great design!

  • ryan

    Hay what screen recorder did you use to make this? I’ve been trying for awhile to find a good one to make tutorials with and this one seems nice because it brings up keystrokes.

    Ryan

  • Pingback: 绣AE欢迎您/// » 国外after effects视频教程大集合

  • Henry Hoyos

    Hey,

    Great website guys! Spectacular tutorial. This helps me out greatly. I’ve been secretly obsessed with this effect for some time now but never knew how to do it. Now I do!

    I’m still a bit lost when it comes to making the effect subtle though (As in the Cinematic Opening Redux). I can’t seem to get the effect to turn out the way I want.

    The Optics Compensation effect doesn’t give me the aberration I’m looking for, and it warps the frame undesirably. I’ve tried to move the top and bottom layers in opposite directions by 1 pixel, looks interesting but not what I was going for. I’ve also tried to scale the top and bottom layers by 1% in opposite directions, this helped but didn’t quite get the same look. It seems like I’m only getting a red and green aberration but the rest of the colors are sort of lost in the mess.

    How do you get the beautiful prysmatic effect you did in the Cinematic Opening Redux?

    Here are some other examples of the subtle prysmatic effect I’m trying to get.

    1. The spectacular sequence by Loyd Alvarez. How did you get the beautiful prysmatic effect you get here. Even on the very edges of the frame there are times where you can see every color in the spectrum. I need to know how to get this effect!
    http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/cinematic-opening-title-redux-day-1/

    2. The incredible sequence by Wes Kandel. How do you get the subtle effect like this. It’s great!
    http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/war-or-how-to-create-a-3d-particle-generated-video-display/

    3. In this beautiful collection of sample clips, using a Letus 35mm adapter, it looks like at about 31 seconds you can see some natural chromatic aberration, when the man and the woman walk by. Is it possible to get something like this inside of AE?
    http://downloads.letusdirect.com/extreme/featured/letusdirect720.mp4

    4. In this demo on the Letus 35mm adapter there’s a beautiful shot with chroamtic aberration at about 29 seconds, the wide shot on the wire cars. Is it possible to get something in AE?
    http://exposureroom.com/members/philipbloom.aspx/assets/cb3a118c5f254a93892e72c029ee21a5

    I feel sort’a embarrassed posting this because I realized how long I typed. I’m sorry this turned out to be the longest comment in the history of comments, but I’ve been trying to get this effect for a very long time and you guys inspire me tremendously. Thanks so very much for your help and for creating this great website!

    Henry

  • Pingback: Separate RGB

  • fsg2009

    thankyou

  • http://www.ofelias.tv Elias

    Thanks so much for this tutorial! I learned a ton of useful things about After Effects and I am happy.

  • Gabriel

    THANKS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://zebravideo.ca video company toronto

    really like the effect , it was easy for me to do it in shake , now i know how to do it in AE

  • Zincsmith

    Thanks for this tut! Excellent!

  • http://www.facebook.com/thatbeastaroundthecorner Caleb Alms

    nice tutorial!