A technique for correcting wavefront aberrations introduced by large primary optical elements in portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The aberrations of the primary element are first transferred to a beacon beam and this aberrated beam is interfered with a reference beam in a holographic medium. These beams are then turned off and a beam from a distant object, containing the same aberrations, is allowed to diffract from the hologram. The diffracted beam from the hologram contains the image of the distant object with aberrations removed. Use of this technique permits the construction of large optical elements inexpensively, since surface tolerances of the elements can be substantially relaxed.