Chromatic aberrations are defects in an imaging system caused by the fact that different wavelengths or colors of light are refracted by different amounts. There are two types of chromatic aberration: longitudinal and lateral. Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration arises when a lens fails to focus various colors sharply in the same plane. If white light is used, the resulting image will be unsharp due to the different focal points of its component colors. Some colors will be in focus (and therefore sharp) and other colors will be out of focus. Lateral Chromatic Aberration results in a lateral shift of the different color components of an image as a single lens with a fixed refractive index will disperse each color by different amounts. This results in color stripes at slightly different magnifications, much like a rainbow, around hard edges and a general softening or decrease in resolution in all areas.