Color Moiré or Moiré Pattern Correction with Photoshop

Example of moiré pattern.	No moiré in this crop taken with a higher resolution camera.

A Color Moiré or Moiré Patterns are often an undesired artifact of images produced by various digital imaging and computer graphics techniques. This wavy moiré pattern of yellow and blue stripes can appear if a scene contains areas with repetitive detail (ex. cloth texture) which exceeds the resolution of the camera. In fact the undesired moiré can appear on all digital camera even high end digital back. Below is example of visible moiré pattern from the image taken from PhaseOne H25 digital back (22 mega pixel).

There are different methods and also many Adobe Photoshop filter plug-ins that can reduce or eliminate moiré. For example Quantum Mechanic™ Pro and Quantum Mechanic™ Lite from Camerabits.com , that cost $189 and $99 respectively. Or you can use Anti-alias filter that can reduce moiré but also reduce image sharpness.

Luckily you can easily reduce the color moiré without loosing a penny and image sharpness with Photoshop Color blending mode.

To Fix Color Moiré or Moiré Patterns

1. Open the image you need to fix. I will use image below for this tutorial, please click at the image to view in larger resolution to see the undesired moiré.

2. Create new layer by press New Layer button at the bottom of Layer Palette. Change Layer Blending Mode to Color.

3. Select Brush Tool ,and hold-down Alt (Windows) or Option (MacOs) key (Cursor will turn to ) and click to sample the normal color (area that not have moiré pattern) around the area that you need to fix. For this example, I sample color from the area in red circle.

4. With the new layer selected, start painting over the moiré area. If you notice that color you are painting are shifted. You can press Alt(Option) to resample the new color.

View Final Image

Note: If you not want to create layer you can change tool blending mode to Color at tool option bar. But I strongly recommend you to use layer so you completely discard entire layer if something went wrong. You can also easily delete partial of painted area using Eraser Tool or Layer Mask.

Tip: You can use Clone Stamp tool instead of Brush tool and painting with Color blending mode in the area that have many variation of color. And in some tiny area you may need to create selection using Pen Tool or Lasso tool to limit the painting in only selected area.

Relate Articles:

• Photoshop Layer and Tool Blending Mode: Quick Reference
• All About Photoshop Layer and Layer Palette
• Using Photoshop Brush Tool
• New Photoshop CS3 Clone Stamp tool
• Using Photoshop Pen Tool
• Using Photoshop
• Lasso tool

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