Editing Corrective lens (section)

=== Minimizing power error and lens induced astigmatism ===
As corrective power increases, even optimally designed lenses will have distortion that can be noticed by a user. This particularly affects individuals that use the off-axis areas of their lenses for visually demanding tasks. For individuals sensitive to lens errors, the best way to eliminate lens induced aberrations is to use contact lenses. Contacts eliminate all these aberrations since the lens then moves with the eye.

Barring contacts, a good lens designer does not have many parameters that can be traded off to improve vision. The index has little effect on error. Note that, although chromatic aberration is often perceived as "blurry vision" in the lens periphery and gives the impression of power error, this is actually due to color shifting. Chromatic aberration can be improved by using a material with improved ABBE. The best way to combat lens induced power error is to limit the choice of corrective lens to one that is in the best spherical form. A lens designer determines the best-form spherical curve using the [[Oswalt curve]] on the [[Tscherning ellipse]]. This design gives the best achievable optical quality and least sensitivity to lens fitting. A flatter base-curve is sometimes selected for cosmetic reasons. Aspheric or atoric design can reduce errors induced by using a suboptimal flatter base-curve. They cannot surpass the optical quality of a spherical best-form lens but can reduce the error induced by using a flatter-than-optimal base curve. The improvement due to flattening is most evident for strong farsighted lenses. High myopes (-6D) may see a slight cosmetic benefit with larger lenses. Mild prescriptions will have no perceptible benefit (-2D). Even at high prescriptions, some high myope prescriptions with small lenses may not see any difference, since some aspheric lenses have a spherically designed center area for improved vision and fit.<ref name="Meister_lensdesign">{{cite web |url=http://www.opticampus.com/cecourse.php?url=lens_design/&OPTICAMP=f1e4252df70c63961503c46d0c8d8b60#asphericity |title=Ophthalmic Lens Design |first=Darryl |last=Meister |work=OptiCampus.com |access-date=November 12, 2008 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130104185359/http://www.opticampus.com/cecourse.php?url=lens_design/&OPTICAMP=f1e4252df70c63961503c46d0c8d8b60%23asphericity |archive-date=January 4, 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

In practice, labs tend to produce pre-finished and finished lenses in groups of narrow power ranges to reduce inventory. Lens powers that fall into the range of the prescriptions of each group share a constant base curve. For example, corrections from -4.00D to -4.50D may be grouped and forced to share the same base curve characteristics, but the spherical form is only best for a -4.25D prescription. In this case, the error will be imperceptible to the human eye. However, some manufacturers may further cost-reduce inventory and group over a larger range which will result in perceptible error for some users in the range who also use the off-axis area of their lens. Additionally, some manufacturers may verge toward a slightly flatter curve. Although if only a slight bias toward plano is introduced it may be negligible cosmetically and optically. These optical degradations due to base-curve grouping also apply to aspherics since their shapes are intentionally flattened and then asphericized to minimize error for the average base curve in the grouping.
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