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enter image description here

I took the image above yesterday in the afternoon somewhere outside. If you look closely, there are slight fringes of light all around the subject forming a thin kind of boundary which I find very very annoying.

  1. What caused the fringes on the first place?
  2. Can they be removed somehow?

The camera used for taking this shot was Canon 550D with a 70-200 f4 lens at 200mm.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I think you should post the original JPEG file produced by the camera in order to get useful advice. Oversharpening might be produced by the tool that you used to scale down the image. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jukka Suomela
    Mar 7, 2011 at 20:06

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It's hard to tell for sure at that resolution, but it looks like overly aggressive sharpening (unsharp masking) to me -- you are probably taking JPEGs straight from the camera, right?

Unsharp masking works by "forcing" the contrast at the edges -- it makes the darks slightly darker and the lights slightly lighter where they meet in order to increase the difference between them and make the edges more noticeable.

You can either shot in RAW format and take control of sharpening in post-processing or (and this should be possible with the 550D/T2i) go to the settings on the camera and reduce the amount of sharpening applied automatically to JPEG images (if you want to continue using JPEGs). I'm not familiar with that model's menu system, but the manual should tell you where you want to go.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes. I'm taking JPEG's straight out of the cam only. Well, I haven't have tried taking RAW simply because I never felt the need to do so. Photographs come crystal clear and tact sharp in JPEGs too. I don't think there's any setting in the camera to reduce sharpening, but I'll try taking RAW next time and see if that can help. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rish
    Mar 6, 2011 at 19:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ Yes there is such a setting. And if you did not play with it, then someone else probably did! I am used to seeing output from cameras such as yours and the defaults are rarely such oversharpened. If you can't figure it out, then read the manual and do a factory reset. Look for something like 'Picture Style' or 'Film Style' or 'Color Mode'. Sometimes choosing something like 'Landscape' or 'Vibrant' really screws things up. \$\endgroup\$
    – Itai
    Mar 6, 2011 at 20:08
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As the other answer states this is probably related to in-camera sharpening. On a 550D this can be changed by choosing or customising the picture styles.

For a detailed explanation check the manual. The basic explanation is:

  1. Choose the picture styles option (press the Down button, underneath "Set")
  2. Select a softer style (e.g. Portrait)
  3. If this is still too sharp, you can press the "Disp" button while in the picture styles page to display the exact settings used. This allows you to adjust sharpness by hitting "Set" then using the left and right buttons to adjust the values.
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