Canon® EOS Digital Photography Photo Workshop

5.5. FALSE COLORS

False colors can occur when photographing subjects with detailed, high-contrast geometric patterns — whether it is clothing or the pattern on an object in a product shot. Your camera's image processor can misinterpret the signals from the image sensor and add colors to the image that are not actually there. False colors are not a common occurrence in Canon dSLRs. Images with false colors are simply ones that are not true color, meaning the average person's vision (and, obviously, someone who is not color blind) would find the image colors to be incorrectly represented. Color variations frequently occur between camera, computer, and print, although the differences are often still within a range of normal perception — in other words, a green leaf would not appear to be purple, for example, but it may range within what most people would call green. Certain features, such as Canon's Picture Styles, have been implemented to try to maintain color consistency from camera to software, and from software to printer.

THE LOW-PASS FILTER Canon uses a combination UV and "low-pass" filter on the imaging sensor to reduce false colors and moiré patterns to negligible levels, in most cases. The filter sits directly in front of the image sensor and contains three layers that separate image data horizontally and vertically and optimize sharpness. Often, however, you may find that your photos need to be sharpened a little, even if you think your focus was perfect; this is a result ...